Life After Sex

Warning: This post deals with disturbing concepts and frank discussion of sexual subject matter. Read at your own risk.

This is a day for the history books; the first time I am writing openly about something that happened when I was very little, and the impact it's had on me as a person.

When I was little more than a toddler, I was sexually molested. By whom, I don't know. My memory... well, it buried itself, and is only recently (over the past few years) coming back in bits and pieces... a voice that echoes in my head, the faintest flash of an image, a smell, a sound, a feeling... Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at its best.

I can remember a man’s voice saying to me "Go on, hold it. It won’t hurt you," and me saying that I didn’t want to, then being snapped at, the man saying "It doesn’t matter. This is what I want. You want to make me happy don’t you?"

I don’t remember much more than that... just bits and pieces which hint at something more malicious. I wish I could remember more. I wish I could remember who that voice belonged to, so I could hunt him down and disembowel him with a rusty spoon. There are things about it that I just know… without having a true memory to back it up, just things that trigger the fear, disgust, and self loathing that go hand in hand with the memories I do have. Like the fact that I freak when a guy asks me to kiss "it," or how I have to fight the urge to throw up when asked if its okay to cum in my face -- not that that particular act is at all appealing anyway, but my reaction is more than the normal level of revulsion. Even just writing about it, my heart is in my throat, and my stomach is clenching.

I also have scars that I can’t quite explain... I don’t remember getting them. I don’t remember when I first noticed them either. They’re just there... and of a type, and placement, that suggests something sinister.

You’d think that the experience would have turned me off to anything even remotely sexual, but instead it did the opposite. I became hyper-sexual at a very young age, instigating sex games with friends, intent on satisfying an insatiable curiosity about our bodies -- what they look like, how they work... I wonder at the fact that no one questioned my behavior, that no adult noticed that I wasn’t acting like a normal little girl.

As a pre-teen, and teenager, I dove head on into semi-sexual relationships, experimenting with everything except actual technical intercourse, and only avoiding that for fear of pregnancy. I gave and received as many things as I could dream up, and read as much erotic fiction as I could get my hands on... I had my first lesbian experience when I was 11, my second at 14, gave my first blow job and hand job at 15, my first experience with phone sex at 16, got oral for the first time at 17, and lost my virginity at 18 to a friend because I was frustrated with being a virgin and thus being considered untouchable, participated in a polyamorous relationship when I was 20...

I thought that sexual activity was the only way to show love. I thought that if you weren’t having sex with your boyfriend/girlfriend, there was something wrong with you. If a guy wasn’t trying to get into my pants, I thought he didn’t like me, didn’t care about me, didn’t love me. I couldn’t accept that a guy would want to wait out of respect, or love, for me. I dumped every boyfriend that wouldn’t be as physical as I wanted, or thought I needed. My issues about physical intimacy and with my hyper-sexuality even affected my marriage in a negative way.

After my ex and I split up, I immediately found a sexual relationship to be in. I went from one guy, to another after that ended... avoiding my emotions by throwing myself into emotionless sex, one night stands, fuck buddies... until I realized that it wasn’t helping. It was only making me feel worse about myself. In five months, I had slept with at least 10 different people, and I didn’t like the label I was beginning to get from my friends... I was considered "easy" or worse, a "slut"... and that made me feel dirty... not to mention the fact that I can’t even remember all their names, which is still extremely disturbing to me. Emotionless sex, isn’t my style, and never has been. I prefer to care about, or love, the person I’m with, because to me, sex is the ultimate way to express love for someone... and how could I say that, if I slept with everyone who I felt the slightest bit of lust for? How could I say that, if I was using sex to avoid feeling anything deeper than lust? I couldn’t. And that bothered me too.

So I stopped, all together, just flat stopped. I went out, had fun with friends, but left it at just hanging out, and I started to feel good about myself again...

I still get cravings… who doesn’t? I still tease, and flirt, and steal hugs whenever I can. But I don’t take it further than that unless I care about that person... really care, not just lust after. It’s a new tactic for me; something I’m not used to, in the least, and it’s a learning experience. But at least it’s a pleasant learning experience :)