Many queer people find incredible strength and power in the act of coming out fully as themselves. While being able to show up as our full queer selves in our lives is a very beautiful thing, it can also be a lot of pressure to craft the perfect official coming out. This is especially true for aromantic and/or asexual folks, who still lack a societial template to navigate their sexuality, and for queer Asians, for whom coming out has communal repercussions. So what are you to do when you are a Vietnamese asexual and aromantic woman who grew up in white, cishet, francophone-dominated Montreal in the 1980s and 1990s?

For Asian heritage month, I sat down with Tam (not her real name) to candidly chat about her journey navigating her asexuality and aromanticism. Over many laughs, we discussed her confusing process into finding her sexuality, her dating adventures and how she came to find empowerment in the closet.

This article is published in Autostraddle, a digital publication and real life community for multiple generations of LGBTQIA+ humans (and their friends).