auroras and sad prose

thank you, marjane satrapi!

I internalized a lot of negativity from bullies and my ex that I took out on myself with eating disorders and self harm. I also had undiagnosed pelvic floor dysfunction, I was veryyyy aware that something was wrong down there, but I blamed myself rather than asking my mother or doctor for help, and shyed away from age appropriate teenage sexual experimentation once I got out of my toxic relationship out of fear of being embarrassed, seen as abnormal or weird. I hid behind large glasses and heavy sweaters and starved my body to try to hide myself from being viewed in that way by others as a mode of self protection. One of my closest female friends used me to experiment with before affirming her heterosexuality and immediately getting with the boy she’d later marry. This friend and I are good friends to this day, and all of our romantic/sexually charged interactions had been mutual and consensual, but the experience left me feeling disgusted wirh myself. Like I had somehow corrupted my innocent, pure, normal friend

I fell desperately in love with a close male friend after the two of us graduated high school, and when his feelings were not returned, though he flirted with me shamelessly and openly. I felt that similar experience of guilt for simply longing for him, again I found myself feeling as though I had somehow done something wrong. I decided to quit putting myself out there in this way.

From the ages of 18-22, I became borderline sex repulsed, though as always, I still felt plenty of desire for sex and self-pleasured regularly, but I was just so afraid of being vulnerable in that way. (I am to this day still terrified of being too close to someone out of fear of entering into another abusive relationship, and don’t really date much because of this, despite getting what I believe to be a normal amount of romantic/sexual attention and the fact that I DO really want to experience a healthy romantic/sexual bond with someone). I experienced a massive “glow up” and had become significantly more beautiful and better looking, but the more attention I seemed to get from men and women alike, the more frustrated and scared of reciprocating or allowing myself to experience it I had become. I had also started to internalize a sort of restricted view of sex, I became pretty critical of kink and of portrayals of sexuality (specifically women’s) in the media and culture, this was out of very real discomfort and feelings of being unsafe and needing to be protected, and because of my own traumas relating to sex and love, I had just began to start unpacking that I had experienced CoCSA (I usually dismissed memories of the experience as either “I must be crazy there’s no way that could have actually happened to me” or “it was all my fault I’m a dirty disgusting ruined girl who no one could ever love now”) and anything relating to sex was genuinely very triggering to me, I also felt a kind of spite towards outwardly kinky or sex positive people because of this too.

Over the past three years I feel like I’ve done a 180, even if I don’t feel ready to full on have sex quite yet. I’ve had to accept about myself that I do have kinks (quite boring, pedestrian ones at that too, just like…being a submissive woman who wants a more dominant partner) and that doesn’t make me a bad person or a bad feminist or a dirty slut who deserved her abuse, and remind myself that I am allowed to desire sex and it is not me somehow harming the people I desire to desire them. I began to unpack and release a lot of past trauma as I treated my pelvic floor dysfunction and as I continue to manage it. I think also what I find so fascinating and alluring about BDSM is that it takes a lot of the guesswork that makes me fearfully avoidant towards sex; I would know exactly what was being done at all times, I could shut it down immediately with just one specific word, I would know what was expected of me at all times, and myself and my partner would have clear and precise boundaries and communication between us. I think my desire to be submissive and dominated by a partner, and my desire to feel beautiful, adored, taken care of, protected, and seen as a princess or an angel comes from the ways I was rejected by my peers, and the ways I was specifically mistreated in the abusive relationship I spent almost my entire adolescence in. I struggle to view myself as someone who can even be loved, I struggle so much with feeling like I’m a disgusting creature or gawkish little girl instead of a beautiful woman, but I also struggle with the fear of being victimized or abused again, so, so fiercely and it takes a lot for me to feel safe enough to be vulnerable or open up with somebody. I get off to the idea of praise and degradation an equal amount because they both would hypothetically come from a place of having truly known me. It requires a level of effort and devotion I long to experience, and I suppose requires similar of me. As a queer girl, I was often treated by my female friends as a stand in for a potential male partner, so occupying a very “feminine” role in a sexual or romantic relationship is highly desirable to me. As a control freak, I want to trust someone else enough to hand them the controls.

(Anyways, I’d love to talk to some of my mutuals around my age and older about this and hear some of your thoughts and experiences.