Far From Ruins

By Lilly on January 22, 2017 • ( 2 )

From all of my experience with men, I’ve come to the conclusion that I should probably not have any more experience with men.

Almost five years of abstinence. Five years!

I am like a de-flowered virgin.

A contradiction, I know. What can I say? I contain multitudes.

In all honesty, sex is so overrated while virginity is completely underrated. I’ve had experience with both so I can state that assertion confidently.

I’ve been abstinent for so long I could not conceive of just sleeping with anyone. Not taking my religious beliefs into consideration, I look at myself and my body – the combination of the two – and I see them as something special now.

I have never felt like this before. Growing up, sex was not spoken of (unless it was being crudely joked about) and was to be saved for marriage.

I lost mine on the couch in my living room when I was fifteen in a haphazard and awkward encounter with the boy who would become my boyfriend for the next three years.

Thinking about my childhood and considering my own children, I feel the idea of relegating sex strictly to marriage because otherwise you’re a cheap whore (unless you’re male and then you get a free pass) is not accurate or effective.

Sexual intimacy is a gift, an extremely personal gift. In theory, male and females are two halves of a whole. When they come together, they are complete.

I feel when you give yourself away in such an intimate and vulnerable way – when you give someone that gift – you can’t ever get it back. Even if the person you gave it to gives it back, it won’t be complete.

They will leave but they will take a part of you with them. And when you want to give the gift to someone new, it will be less of a gift. And so we lose bits of ourselves. Ironically, in the attempt of making ourselves whole we are losing pieces of ourselves instead. Each sexual encounter is like a pick chipping away at what was once a beautiful sculpture.

Sometimes, not often, I will mourn my old life. I will remember what it was like to feel a body, flesh, limbs, hands, tongue, a mixing of perspiration, the rise and fall of chests, the movement, the sounds, the taste…

I will pause and think to myself, is that it? Is that part of my life over?

Not so long ago, the thought that I would never experience the pleasure of sexual intimacy would have caused me anxiety and sadness, a feeling of despair.

But with each passing day, week, month, year a peace grows inside of me. If I should never experience sexual intimacy with a man again that is ok, because I will have built a strong respect for myself and love for myself that will fill up that hole made by the absence of intimacy. I will have traded an intimacy with another for an intimacy with myself.

On the other hand, should the day eventually come when I meet a man, a good man, who is worthy of my love, when I give myself to him I will be as whole as I can be. Perhaps not completely whole, but far from ruins.