by YASMIN BENOIT Creator of #ThisIsWhatAsexualLooksLike • Model • Asexuality activist • As seen in @teenvogue, @papermagazine, @Cosmopolitan

I was 10 years old when I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me. I realised I was asexual around the same time as my peers realised they weren’t. In late primary school, the boys and girls didn't want to play together anymore - they 'fancied' and wanted to 'go out' with each other. I watched girls fighting over boy drama in the cafeteria and wondered what had gotten into everyone.

That’s when I decided I’d attend an all girls’ school under the naive belief that, in the absence of boys, none of the girls would care about sex or dating. I quickly discovered that a same-sex environment had the opposite effect.

By the time I was a teenager, my peers started to wonder what was wrong with me. The sexual frustration was turned up to 100, which made it all the more obvious that I wasn't reacting the same way as the other teens. While their sexuality was directed towards any nearby boy, a poster of a boy, or even each other, mine wasn't directed anywhere. And other people wanted to work out why that was more than I did.

Before believing that it was just my innate sexuality, it was easier to assume that I was gay and in denial. Maybe I was molested as a kid and I’d forgotten about it, but been left with psychological scars. I could be hiding a hidden perversion – my dad asked me whether I was into inanimate objects or children when I told him that I wasn’t attracted to men or women. I might be a psychopath, unable to empathise with people enough to deem them attractive. The theory that held the most weight was that I was 'mentally stunted', and I was treated as such. I started to wonder if they were right. Read more via Cosmopolitan