I couldn’t accept myself as grey ace until I accepted my ADHD

Figuring out my Queerness

It wasn’t that I first realised I liked girls, it was that I first realised that I didn’t like boys. I was lying on a camp-bed in my sister’s bedroom, wrapped in a navy blue sleeping bag painted with big yellow stars. It was where I always slept when we had sleepovers, even though my bedroom was only next door. Her latest crush was our topic of conversation, as it often was ever since she’d started senior school. Being supportive was the only language I knew so I listened as intently as I could, giving her as much advice as I could muster from my unwise thirteen-year-old brain.

We were chatting for quite a while, but then she turned to me in an accusatory tone, “why don’t you ever talk to me about this stuff? I don’t even know your type.” “Ummm” I responded, taken aback, “I’ve never really thought about it before.”

She still seemed upset, like I was lying to her. “I just don’t like that you don’t share things with me.”

“I do tell you stuff, but I’m being serious, I haven’t thought about it before.”

We soon turned the lights out to go to sleep but instead of sleeping, I lay with my cheek squished against my pillow, thinking. I didn’t lie to her; I honestly hadn’t thought about it before, but I wished I’d thought about it, I was terrified to be left behind. I tried to figure out where my interest-lay, but the thing was, any ‘interest’ I had, was confusing, because it wasn’t anything to do with sex, it felt more like hyper-fixations, although I didn’t know that word at the time, and they were always famous women – Avril Lavigne, Miley Cyrus, Hayley Williams. I used to describe them as “cool”, but that adjective only brushed the surface on how I felt about them.

I always just thought that I loved them so much because I just wanted to be them, but I was starting to feel unsure. Because the day my sister asked me that question, I started to think about who I wanted to date – who I wanted to be in love with, and every time, the same image came to my mind until it was clear, it would never be boys.

Learning about Sex

It's amazing how much clarity I can reach and then ignore it. I didn’t think about it after that night, for a long time. I think it’s called denial; I call it purposeful forgetting – the feeling of something being too big for our brains to process so we have to discard it for a little while, it sits just on the surface of our understanding, but never really properly goes in. I still participated in the senior school game of finding a boyfriend. Even though I didn’t really want a boyfriend; deep down I think I just wanted a boy as a friend. Or maybe it was social status I was looking for, or just for something interesting to happen to me.  

But it didn’t, and I probably sulked at the time but looking back, it was probably the best thing, because I was chasing things that I didn’t really want. People at school became more and more ‘into sex’, everyone started using new words and phrases in class which teachers would always gasp when they said it and throw them out of the class – so I knew it was bad, and I’d come home and look-up these terms, revelling in knowing a new and exciting secret language. Everyone was always talking about something new each week like ‘blue waffle’ or ‘two girls, one cup’ – and what we were all talking about became increasingly explicit as the weeks went on, but it all felt like weirdly essential learning when compared to the teacher droning on about Pythagoras Theorem endlessly. I had a friend who was particularly sex-obsessed, and she made me fascinated too. She introduced me to Jeffree Star’s music and was fanatical about gay Anime fantasies – she was responsible for both my introduction to the gay world and in hindsight, probably an enormous production of dopamine in my brain.

My first experience with sexual desire hit incredibly late in comparison to most people I knew. When it did, the pieces clicked into place – why everybody around me was so mind-bogglingly sex-obsessed. I was so happy when it hit me – the thing that everyone had been talking about, the thing that had been dancing around me, I finally fitted, my rite of passage into adulthood had been achieved, I wasn’t going to be alone forever! However, I am to later learn that it wasn’t all so simple.

ADHD & being Grey Ace

I learnt that I do have a sex-drive, but not really to the level of other people, not even close, and it was always something I’ve hated about myself, it’s the thing that’s left me feeling like everybody else is having fun, making connections whilst I am just not functioning correctly. It’s broken up relationships – even really good ones and made dating inevitably harder, which has hurt. But we live in a sex-obsessed society, lockdown taught me that. I always had the idea that being sexual meant being interesting, being an adult, being a woman, being wanted. But that wasn’t my idea at all. It was a cultural ideal spun from TV shows, advertisements, other people asking who I’m dating. Sex = success, but of course it doesn’t, I realise now that it’s a personal choice, a mutual agreement between two (or multiple) people. More importantly, I realised it is my personal choice and I am under no obligation to have sex.

It's made me realise that in a world that’s sex-obsessed, it’s something we talk about it very little – the simple questions - like how to discuss expectations for sex on first dates, how to reject sex without making your partner feel rejected, how to calm down my ADHD-brain long enough to have sex (and not get distracted). I read ‘Women with ADHD’ by Roberta Sanders recently who helped. There is an infinite list of reasons why we may struggle with sex – from our brains being too busy to relax to hypersensitivity to the touch, tastes and smells in sex. When I read this, an enormous weight came off my shoulders, what I was feeling was suddenly real, it was valid – and made sense.  

All of the things I’d learnt about sex up until now, didn’t really matter. The important thing was the knowledge that having a neurodivergent brain means that sex is also affected. And learning about the uniqueness of my brain and how it’s nuances are always affecting me in some way, but that’s okay, as long as I’m communicating these things to others, as long as I can advocate for myself. Asexuality wasn’t considered an option in my world, at least not until I was about 21 years-old, let alone greysexuality which I only heard about a few years ago. The word scared me, much like most words that feel too close to my chest. The word greysexual feels confronting, like being called out in a line of people, told to step-forward and reveal myself, reveal the truth. But this was also the year I got an ADHD diagnosis and the year I learnt that revealing the truth isn’t always a bad thing.

So, I guess if someone were to ask my sexuality, I would tell them I’m gay, but also grey ace, and it’s something I’m finally comfortable with.