If there’s one thing I knew from an early age, it’s that I wanted to write. When I was little, I spent my downtime during family summer vacations scribbling on blank picture book templates, recounting the highlights of our trip with a few embellishments. In third grade, I would turn mundane homework assignments from writing ten sentences using the vocabulary words on that week’s spelling list, to page-long short stories. This always annoyed my teacher at the time, since that wasn’t the point of the assignment, but I never understood what the problem was with being a little bit creative with my interpretation of the instructions. My elementary school fantasies probably weren’t the works of artistic genius that famous authors like George Orwell or Sylvia Plath came up with at that age, but there was always a new story idea marinating in my head that I would try to bring to life on a sheet of paper or when I was playing with my brother in the basement after school. But as much as I loved to write, I was never really an avid reader, mostly because it was hard for me to find a book with representation of people like me. I had quite a fondness for Percy Jackson and the American Girl Doll books in late elementary and middle school, but I’ve found most books I’ve read in the Young Adult genre since then to be just okay at best, to actively excruciating at worst. There are several reasons why I get turned off by so many YA books, but a big one is cliche romantic subplots of starry-eyed characters who will meet someone and just know from day one that they are in love. “Love at first sight” was always a foreign concept to me as someone who could never quite wrap my head around what romantic attraction was exactly, let alone if I even experienced it for myself. This was one among many reasons I discovered I am aromantic and asexual: someone who experiences little to no romantic or sexual attraction. Asexuality and aromanticism (or aro-ace for short) are identities under the queer umbrella that, for better or worse, do not get the mainstream attention and representation other identities such as “gay” or “transgender” do, which means the feelings I wrestle with as a queer person are less about being hated, and more about being invisible. I often find myself surrounded by people who claim to be allies of the LGBT community, but who are so often oblivious to the existence of aro-ace people; often dismissing my disinterest in romantic or sexual relationships as me having “not found the right person yet.” I’ve also struggled with my experiences as a femme-presenting agender demi-girl being dismissed in favor of the mainstream narrative of gender dysphoria and androgyny. Things like this, as insignificant as they may seem, slowly but surely eat me up inside everyday, to the point where I feel very, very small. That’s why writing has become ever more important to me as I’ve gotten older, because I believe there are a lot more interesting and thought-provoking stories we can tell when we see the world beyond the simplistic narratives and binaries presented in fiction; when we give a voice to the stories of people who have often been ignored and erased. Because I believe these stories can reassure others of a simple truth I wish I had known sooner: You are not alone.