My First Kiss/Never Been Kissed

341 words

3 minute read

It was around this age that everyone started talking about having their first kiss:

6th grade school picture

I was eleven years old, and had zero interest in boys, girls, or anyone.  In fact, it was around this age that I started to really think about how I had little interest in kissing or anything beyond that.

A boy in fourth grade tried to woo me with handwritten notes, gifts, and even an invitation to go on a "date" at McDonald's.  Luckily, my mom put a stop to that, with a firm, "Tonia, you are nine years old."  I remembered liking the gifts, and the attention, but it never moved beyond that stage.  In fact, I don't remember myself and this boy ever actually speaking to one another, much less sharing an innocent first kiss.

By my senior year in high school, I did notice some of the football players, but only because that's what everyone else was doing, and what I thought I should be doing, too.

Now, in my 30's, I have still never been kissed, in the romantic sense.  Honestly, I don't care to be.  It took me years to realize that there was a term for what I grew up feeling and what I still feel: asexuality.  I haven't talked about it around here because it's very new to me, and also because it's a common stereotype about disabled people.  There's this belief that all disabled people are not sexual.  Let me be clear:  most of my disabled friends are into dating and romance and all of that.  One's dating.  Another's engaged to be married.

I understand that there is not necessarily a sexual connotation to kissing, but having grown up with it going hand in hand with other things that I have no interest in, it's no wonder that I also feel I'm not missing out on anything, having never been kissed.

Tara and me, around age 2, in slides taken by our great grandpa

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