CW: This post deals with sexual trauma, with mentions of flashbacks and memories, sexual frustration, mental health, and therapy.
I’m in this part of therapy where everything just feels incredibly itchy.
I can’t sit still, my chest heaves, and I feel like I’ve lost control of my breath sometimes. And my self awareness leads me to feel embarrassed that I’m showing physical symptoms of my discomfort. But damn it, I pay to get through my shit and learn to cope, so I sit there and let it happen.
This means that something is drastically changing and rapidly. The pacing scares me but it’s only the fruits of all my labor paying off.
I mourn and celebrate with my inner child. Mourning for the bodily discomfort in realizing that I’ve never known sexual safety. Celebration for the realizing and coming to understand sexual safety.
There are all these little memories I do remember and then there’s this side plot of flashbacks developing and it scares the ever living piss out of me. My therapist says I get to decide how much I want to remember and I have more control over that than I maybe realize sometimes. And I don’t know what I want to remember, but it feels important to know what bullshit led me to being itchy in therapy.
All this is going on and I have to exist. I have to exist in the world around me, with this chaos happening.
“Hey! How are ya?”
“Just fine. Remembering some traumatic shit from my childhood lately and working on my sexual expression, hbu?”
Is there a way to best describe what having all the attraction in the world but not being able to express it feels like?
My therapist suggested I take sex off the table of my life for a time. I understand why she suggested this. It makes absolute sense.
But I’m angry at the situation not being easier for me, and for the people responsible for making my sexual expression this difficult. I resent it.
It’s not only the feeling of embarrassment, but just as soon as I feel embarrassed, I get pissed that I’m embarrassed. I am strong but this area of my life feels awfully weak, and for reasons I’m not always tangibly able to express in a moment’s notice.
“I am attracted to you and would be interested in doing the do” is one of the most exhausting sentiments for me to both feel and express. Not because I don’t enjoy sex. It’s precisely because I do, and the process I have now unraveled where my attraction is neighbors with my trauma is chilling and of no peace. I’m not certain I know how to engage in sex without internal chaos, and it’s not even my fault, and the overwhelming feeling of futility is god awful.
I hate the sense of confidence I have when I allow my attraction to flow because the trauma response that immediately follows doesn’t align and I feel like such a foolish imposter.
“I promise, I meant what I said, but now it’s not here in the same way and it’s not because of you and I wish it wasn’t that way but please go out of your way to be safe to me.”
All my potential beauxs feel an arm’s distance away and that’s okay because I’m a romantic in need of connection first, but also ungodly frustrating because it’s not how I’d like it to be. It’s not how I feel internally and I know that.
I used to think there was something seriously wrong with me.
I used to think it was god punishing me for being gay and I used to think it was my life’s lot under misogynistic modesty/purity culture, but now I know it’s because I’ve been sexually traumatized.
And that’s the harder reality to live with.
How do I enable power where I feel powerful but just as soon feel powerless? It’s like a whisp in the wind. A hot breath fading in a millisecond.
I know the answer - I’m paying for it - but the distance in what I know versus what I experience is nauseating.
Do you know what it’s like to want to be able to express physical love but not be able to?
I am not entirely incapable and I am getting better every day.
But goddamnit, I don’t know how to express how soul crushing it is to not have words for what I am going through right now.
And I’m sick of the way it impedes on my expression of polyamory as well - this desire of abundance but the feeling of falling short in the giving. I know this is an unfair sentiment towards myself, but my hope is its’ unpacking will pull some weight out from under it.
I could give a masterclass in consent though, and I think that’s sexy because safety is sexy, and I physically cannot accept anything less than crystal clear understanding of consent.
I just wanna be able to be in love with people and say and do what I mean, when I mean it.
And my body will catch up and my brain will slow down and I’ll find my way. I always do.
But as for this moment in my healing, I will fight and wrestle with it.
For now, in every way, everything soft and slow and sweet, soft and sweet.
