Spring is Sprung and I Have Not
I am writing this in the month of the Worm Moon and of the equinox. March has barrelled in and now I am going down a rabbit hole of thinking about theories of "queer time" - how expected temporal markers and milestones do not exist in the same way for those who do not embody alloromantic, allosexual, cisgendered heterosexuality. I am wondering if the queer timeline that I am on does not have room for Spring and Summer.
To elaborate on queer time - our amatonormative, sex-normative world considers first kisses, first relationships, first fucks, moving in together, engagements, and marriages to be milestones of maturity. These events are laid out like dominos that you must knock over to be considered a full-fledged adult. People who do not get married because their kind of partnership is not legally granted that privilege, people who do not bear children, people who's first kiss occurs after high school or not at all, etc, are all subjected to being considered not yet. They are not yet adults, not yet mature, but they are expected to reach that domino eventually, and are ostracized if they do not. Sexuality and romanticism are tightly connected to adulthood - resulting in kids with non-allocishet identities being told they are too young to know, and many queer identities considered a phase that one will grow out of, and hysterical reactions to teenagers who date or have sex without parental permission. (Hetero) Sexuality and romanticism are meant for adults, but you will become an adult some day!
When exactly that day happens is regulated by a white supremacist and cisheteropatriarchal state - which is why the same child that is alleged to be too young to know their sexuality may also be subjected to sexual objectification if they have a Black body, and so on. But that day will and must happen. Resisting that day and that path is childish and naive, never mind that some people are legally barred from getting married or raising children. This timeline that ends with adulthood is selectively handed out as the state sees fit. People who can not or choose not to follow this timeline are scorned and pitied. Reaching these milestones at different times, or not at all, or multiple times with different genders, is queering time. In short, queer time is frowned upon in our cisheteronormative, amatonormative, and sex-normative society.
The achievement of sexual and romantic milestones often gets couched in weird metaphors of blooming, of cherry popping, of blossoming, and sexuality in general gets metaphors of birds, bees, and bunnies. As the Northern hemisphere creeps into Spring time, I am thinking of these metaphors and all of the other similar associations with Spring. The celebration of fertility deities. Wedding season. Exposed skin. Students being sent home because they are showing "too much" skin. Summer flings. Magazines encouraging tanning and shaving so that you seem desirable. The Spring season and warm weather has felt increasingly romanticized and sexualized the older I have gotten, as the youthful excuses for why I'm not interested in people are starting to run out. There are people who believe that if you aren't at least engaged to marry by the time you graduate college, then you are a failure. I am rapidly approaching that day.
I am now beginning to see the dichotomy of blooming alloromanticism and allosexuality versus cold aromanticism and asexuality. When the warmer months are claimed by amatonormativity and compulsory sexuality, I miss the frigidity of fall and winter. I want to retreat into temperatures in which I am not so closely critiqued for keeping my skin and my heart to myself. I want people to stop asking when I will finally reach adulthood and begin dating. I want to tell people that I want neither their pity nor their ideas of maturity. I am December, I am the end of the year, there is no where else to go. I am January, I am symbolic of time marching on, yet I am still not warm and still not blooming. My sexuality is a winter that does not end and that some people hate so much they rather face the rent prices of California than deal with this.
What does adulthood look like when you do not follow amatonormative and sex-normative pathways? What does winter look like when you are not looking forward to Spring? I am currently left in the phase of awkward youth, waiting a few years before I am launched into undesirable early elderhood and spinster-status. Am I left to be infantilized until then? How long is it really until my lack of participation in mainstream adulthood is no longer considered cute or awkward naivete? Will I be deemed undesirable and old faster because I am abrasive in disallowing the imagination of myself in an amatonormative and sexualized adulthood? Can I have youth longer if I am nicer about it, if I reassure people that I am trying to assimilate, I just haven't found time yet, or its hard, or the sunlight of warm weather hurts my eyes, or dating apps are terrifying, or this, or that.... Or maybe I simply don't want to be considered acceptable by people who have deemed me too unacceptable to treat me like a mature and autonomous being. I offer that adulthood isn't worth it if its something I must continuously argue that I am deserving of.
The blossoms of Spring do not happen here, I am too far North.
