Dear reader,

I hope you liked this story and I hope you’ll take the time to read this personal message that comes with "Just Hold My Hand".

I wrote this story for the Asexual Awareness Week 2019 because, in that year, I figured out that I am asexual and aromantic. This realization took a burden from me that I hadn’t even known I was carrying. Before that, I had often felt a disconnect from the people around me, an alienation that made me wonder if there was something wrong about me.

Only when I stumbled upon the term asexual — and sometime later aromantic — did I realize that I was simply not as heterosexual as the things I had seen while growing up had made me believe.

"Just Hold My Hand" is the result of this journey. The story can’t speak for the experience of all aces since asexuality is a spectrum covering many identities but it is part of what I have experienced: Duan Fang’s questions to Li Hong are the self-doubts I felt for many years before realizing my sexuality. Li Hong’s explanation is me coming to terms with this part of my identity but he is also my reluctance of getting involved in a relationship.

This story is very personal but I hope that it’ll help to spread awareness of what asexuality is or at least of what it can be. And I hope that by doing so, it can — somewhere down the line — contribute to somebody else’s realization about their sexuality so that this person won’t have to doubt themselves as long as I did and won’t have to experience the same feeling of alienation I felt, freeing them from the burden they might otherwise carry.

Sincerely

Yan Su Su

PS: If this story or my message spoke to you, then maybe you’d like to visit the website of AVEN, the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, at www.asexuality.org to learn more about asexuality and help spread the word.