20:56 I turn 25 in less than a week and I feel free in the way of a rain storm. An uncontrollable and unpredictable type of free. I have an apartment in the city that I chose after a meticulous comparison of all options. I have a job that gives me PTO and allows for me to work from home where I can spend time with my 2 cats that I love dearly. I’ve picked up hobbies that I enjoy and made friends who enjoy the same activities that I do. I have curated my life to be exactly as I always imagined and I feel out of control.
Today I picked up groceries from Walmart and exercised patience in the parking lot. I waited 40 minutes for my groceries to be brought to my car and I tried to keep my eyes from being pinned to my phone. It was a nice night out and people walking by were friendly, chatty. It was a good wait. A lot of my time was spent looking at the cars and the trees and the sky, trying to find any stars peaking through the clouds. Any stars that were strong enough to win the fight against the city lights.
I thought I would love the city. I always dreamed of living in a high rise apartment with floor to ceiling windows and drinking wine gazing across the city lights. That’s what I have now, thats why I picked here. The city lights twinkle just like the stars, and during storms I can see lightning strikes miles away. I knew this life would be beautiful. After the first year though, it feels done.
I thought I would love the city,. but I find myself missing the stars more than anything. When I was depressed, the stars in the mountains were the first sight that helped me feel emotion. I used to fall into the stars burned into the backs of my eyelids at night. In drugged versions of consciousness the thought of losing the stars to death kept me from missing out on the rest of my life. Date nights laying in the middle of the desert without fear. The desert with stars became my safe mind space to ground myself in therapy. The stars in the Walmart parking lot tonight fought so hard to be seen.
I think the reason the stars feel so grounding to me is the consistency of them. Physically, they never change. They are easy to understand. In the sky, their organization is set, the constellations dont change. Our perspective changes and we will see the same stars move across our view of space but the stars themselves stay where they’ve been all my life. My memories of the stars themselves stay in the happy part of my mind. All emotions I associate with the night sky are positive in some way. Awe, curiosity, stability, possibility. Being enveloped by the night sky feels free and light.
Today I thought a lot about my future while waiting in the Walmart parking lot. I don’t believe in predestination but I don’t believe in linear time. i think my routine is the source of a lot of my uneasiness. I have been very comfortable in my routine, my days are almost indistinguishable from eachother outside of planned vacations and holidays. My life is very stable, and it has been very good for my mental health. I think my uneasiness is stemming from the desire for more, the desire for change, and the implications of a change in my routine.
I got sterilized a few weeks ago and I didn’t realize how much my potential fertility was mentally holding me back from romantic desires. The decision was motivated by the assurance that I would never be forced into pregnancy but I didn’t realize the avoidance of pregnancy was so ingrained into my mental functioning. I always thought I was just not a very sexual person. Recently, I’ve found myself desiring intimacy, desiring the act of loving another person and being loved in return.
I knew my trauma had mental implications but I didn’t realize it bled into the framing I hold around relationships. As a teenager, I didn’t desire relationships. I was busy and awkward and logical and viewed high school relationships as temporary. I was marriage minded then, I didn’t see a point in dating in high school when i had plans of moving away for college and desired the freedom to relocate where I pleased.
Then my entire world was flipped upside down. 8 years ago, almost a decade, and I’m still discovering new ways it has impacted the core of my being. I knew the numbness oscillating with despair was a symptom. I knew the resulting physical loss of sensation was a symptom. Through reflection, I learned my hypersexualization and conflation of my sexual use for others with my worth was a symptom. After working through that, I even considered that my aversion to touch could be a resulting consequence. I thought that one couldn’t be resolved.
Now, the threat of pregnancy has been removed. For so many years, I have not sought after relationships and thought it to be a feature of my personality, not a symptom. I would find people attractive, I could recognize their appearance was pleasing. Sometimes I would even want to sleep with a person. I didn’t place much value on sex but was still guarded. I thought sterilization would lift my guard a bit, but the impact has been more than I imagined.
I have noticed I am indeed less guarded with those I find sexually attracted to. Moving through life, I feel more free to flirt, less scared for others to perceive me as attractive as well. The fear has lessened dramatically which is something I had hoped for. Unexpectedly, I also have a desire for it to mean something now, though. I want it to be special, I want to feel special and to show another that they are special.
When I began, I did not kid myself with imagining I was special in any of the interactions. I was a body, and the ideas my tongue could express were the least important part about me to those I connected with. My damaged idea of myself was perpetuated by the situations I entered into repeatedly and my self worth only began to heal after my mind was touched by God. I had been regarding myself as a prop to satisfy the desires of others in a twisted people-pleasing way and had nothing to do with whether I desired the interaction at all.
Once I stopped, I vowed to listen to myself and my desires first. I wasn’t against having sex again, but I was only going to engage if I felt the urge to pursue that kind of experience. The urge rarely came and I assumed I was asexual or permanently broken. In the past few years, sex has taken up minimal amount of my mind space.
That is why I was so surprised with the sudden desire for intimacy. I had given up on sex let alone relationships, but am now feeling a desire to be desired. I think thats why I feel so unstable. The addition of a romantic partner in my life feels so destabilizing. My routine is extremely consistent and adding a consistent person into my daily life feels unfathomable.
I have discovered a few of my friends are in the kink community recently and learning about it has been intriguing. I don’t think I would enjoy the activities they describe but the idea of openly discussing, learning, and experiencing new sexual possibilities seems comforting. Without much healthy sexual experience, I feel behind while entering this new aspect of my life. I don’t know how to explore vanilla sexual situations. If I treat them like I did when in unhealthy situations, I do not feel true to myself and feel like I’m just acting for the other person. If I treat it like exploration, I feel like an awkward teenager again and it is not comfortable for either party involved.
I know the only way to the other side is through but the prospect has been daunting. I am glad to be free and am excited for life, I just hope it will result in more positive memories and not more instances to work through in therapy.
22:04
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