This isn’t really a question - just something I wanted to get off my chest.

I’m 24 and I’ve never had my first kiss. I’ve never been on a proper date - only “meets” with guys from dating apps who wanted to make it very clear to me it wasn’t a date. I’ve never been in a relationship. (Edit to say: this especially hurts me because it seems that although these guys probably found me attractive or “f*ckable” they seemed to want to go out of their way to ensure I knew I wasn’t special.) I think it goes without saying, but I’ve never done anything sexual either.

I resent all the books I read and movies/shows I watched that depicted teenage romances. Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Divergent, Stranger Things, all the Disney sitcoms and musicals, all the family dramas... even classics like Their Eyes Were Watching God. I hate how so much of the media/books portrays romance as part of the “coming of age” experience. My coming of age experiences included voting for the first time, transitioning from high school to college, getting my driver’s license, getting a job for the first time, and getting a college degree. That wasn’t nothing. However, there was no handholding with a cute boy. There was no first kiss. There was no going on dates or being with a guy at a school dance. There was no dancing with a guy or anything, at any kind of event. And there was definitely no relationship or sex.

To clarify, it’s not that I wish the media/books didn’t portray teenage romances. I’m not critiquing them like that; this isn’t an analytical takedown of Western culture. I resent that the romantic adventures they portray never happened to me. No one had a crush on me. I had girl friends (and that’s not nothing!) but no boys thought I was cool/interesting. There was no giddy moment of mutual attraction or awakening to the world of relationships. I might be going down a route of self-pity, but I feel like I lost something. Is teen romance as typical as it’s made out to be? If it is, I feel regret that I never got to experience it, and may die without experiencing romance or loving (key word: loving) physical intimacy. I guess I feel bitter and jaded that, even amidst the inevitable negative experiences, most people have experienced the things I want to experience. They take it for granted. They can rest assured they won’t die still never having had them.

This isn’t about me being ashamed of my lack of experience or thinking I need to have had these experiences to measure up or something. I want to experience things things because I want to experience them. It’s for me.

I feel angry that nobody has seen anything in me that’s cool/special/interesting/attractive enough to warrant pursuing romantic interactions with me. I wanted to have a first kiss experience, and I may never have one. I feel angry at life. I know this rant is getting intense, but I don’t want to die still seemingly having these experiences withheld from me. While on one hand romance and physical intimacy are incredibly normal and mundane to me because they're everywhere in society and people around me, on the other hand I feel like they're on the other side of a thick glass pane and they seem sort of unreal.

I just wanted to share this with people and as I’m social distancing I don’t have many IRL to share it with.