Best Of

this week i matched with a guy on hinge and he's the only person i've consistently talked to for days on there. he seems genuinely kind and sweet and has respected my boundaries, and we added each other on other social media yesterday. but now for some reason i feel really anxious and want to run away, which really isn't fair on him because he's done nothing wrong.

i think there's a ton of reasons why i feel like this. i've always been a very quiet and awkward person, as i have anxiety and i suspect i may be autistic, too, so in school no one ever liked me in any way other than platonic. the only exception is one of my old friends who one day passed me a note saying she had a crush on me. it completely surprised me and i suddenly felt really awkward and anxious and just pretended like it didn't happen, then that was it. i've never been in a proper relationship before, i did date a guy online for 2 years and 11 months until he cheated on me. because we were long distance and he was asexual we never did anything in terms of physical intimacy nor sexting.

because of these things i don't have much self esteem, and there's several physical aspects of myself that i hate but can't change. adding onto that, i'm not cisgender—i'm nonbinary, an identity that most of our heteronormative society and even some other lgbt+ people overlook. and i think i might be on the asexual spectrum, too, maybe demisexual or greysexual? i've never been sexually attracted to anyone i knew in real life apart from my ex who cheated. when i was in school, i tended to pick a boy to have a crush on because i saw characters have crushes in movies, but these crushes were never genuine nor lasted more than a day. one time i told one of my old friends about one of these crushes, she told him, and his immediate reaction was to scrunch up his face and go, "eughh!" and when i was with my ex, i was constantly worried about him secretly hating me or not loving me and i hated not getting to talk to him, thought i did my best to keep all that to myself. my feelings were so overwhelming it's difficult to describe.

so i'm very inexperienced; i'm 21 and have never properly kissed or touched anyone or been touched or flirted with anyone. i don't even know how to flirt. i'm the only person in my friend group who's still a virgin and while my friends genuinely don't care whether i've had sex yet or not and have never made me feel bad about it, i feel so behind in life and even left out. i can't relate to them when they talk about sex and relationships, which is a big topic of our discussions now that we're all adults. i feel so othered and like such a freak that even at the thought of having sex with someone i'm scared that they wouldn't actually be into it or into me. the thought of being intimate with someone scares me. like, what if i do something embarrassing, or they take my virginity then ghost me afterwards, or what if i look ugly and unsexy and awkward, or what if they assault me?

i have not been sexually assaulted, but i've experienced a lot of verbal sexual harassment, even as young as 9 years old. i've been catcalled, received a rape threat, had boys make a few odd comments to me in school, and countless guys on hinge have turned our conversations sexual with no warning despite my profile saying not to be sexual with me right away.

all of this makes it feel impossible to be able to let anyone get close to me like that. i feel like something bad will happen or it'll never last, and if it's not likely to last then what's even the point in trying? i want to be able to let myself have a relationship and not be so scared of intimacy or new people but my feelings are so complicated, it'd be such a new and big thing it makes me want to just run away and hide.