asexuality - not just for amoeba!

Since I spent most of Saturday wrestling with my blog template, obviously there must have been something I was avoiding. Well, there were multiple somethings, but one of them was this post and I'm still not sure I'm going to finish it. This is the post I was thinking about last week when I was asking questions. It's actually one I've thought about writing for a long time but I've been thinking about it more and more for some reason lately. I should stop being all mysterious and actually write the thing, I suppose...
As I'm sure you could tell from my questions, I've never felt that "magical pull" of attraction described in the quote from Prep, and others in their answers. When I was younger and people around me were just starting to be interested in boys I assumed I'd catch up at some point and become interested. At that point, I figured my lack of interest resulted from not ever meeting any boys, except those I'd known since primary school when they were reviled as carriers of boys' germs so it was difficult to see them as anyone interesting. I was also incredibly shy and awkward (not that that's changed much) so I was fairly reluctant to venture into this new, scary world.
When I did start going to school dances occasionally, I never danced with anyone, any boys that is. At the very first dance I went to, I got asked to dance during the last song of the night by some guy on behalf of his friend, but I was having fun with my friends and I'd been told to be scornful of boys who relied on their friends to do the asking (yeah, I'm still ashamed of my hypocrisy) so I said no. If I'd known that was probably my only chance, I would've said yes. My brother used to tell me I had to look at people if I wanted them to ask me to dance, but that just confused me because how was I supposed to tell if I wanted to dance with them based on a glimpse in a dimly lit crowd? It also scared me off even glancing anyone in the eye, I think. I never really understood my friends' obsessions with guys they'd only ever seen from afar, either, although I did wonder if I was thinking about it too much and maybe you weren't meant to have a list of reasons before you could like someone.
I don't know how much my social anxiety contributed, but it certainly didn't make anything easier. I know on the odd occasion I thought some guy was cute, someone else would too, so of course I wouldn't say anything. For starters, I almost never said anything at all anyway, plus thinking someone was cute wasn't the same as like-liking them, anyway and there was no way I could take precedence over someone else who had real feelings. I felt pretty hopeless about ever being able to have a conversation with anyone of either sex, anyway. Although, somehow I managed to remain optimistic for a surprisingly long time that someday I'd meet someone I could magically talk to and I'd turn into a normal person. And win a pony.
When I was 17/18-ish, I realised this was fairly delusional thinking and tried to resign myself to being alone forever. I think I lasted a few months before I decided I had to at least pretend to have some hope to avoid being paralysed with misery.
I just remembered one of my early posts here was a list of all my awkward encounters with the opposite sex over the years, so there's no need for me to go over the development of obliviousness and avoidance as coping strategies. I'm not sure if it's just because I've trained myself to ignore such things, but I'm still occasionally surprised when people reveal that they're constantly scanning passers-by for attractive people (at least that's how I take it when they comment on the frequency of such people in a given population - is that what people do?).
So now I've managed to reach the age of 25 without ever having a crush on anyone. At least, I don't think I've ever had a crush on anyone. Sometimes I wonder if I'm expecting too much and the couple of times I've thought someone was both kind of cute and interesting count as a crush (and then I'd get alarmed because my advisor is pretty cute and interesting and incredibly nice). So now you see why I was asking questions last week. I definitely didn't feel a "physical pull" toward anyone, though, so I think I'm convinced I've never actually like-liked anyone. There are a few potential theories why not, but I'm not sure which, if any, is true.
I think the rest of this is going to take a long time to write (this has already taken quite a while and is pretty long) and it's getting late so I'm going to continue this tomorrow.