Before you continue reading, understand that as I am writing this it is almost eleven pm at night. My household is sleeping and quite honestly I should be too. I’m not sure why I suddenly feel the need to type this out. And i’m not even sure if I will end up posting this. I’m not even sure what I want to say. I just know the topic. And I just know that even while I have no idea what words need to be spoken, I realize that there are words that are waiting to be spoken. And these words are specific. They aren’t easily digestible. But they are important to a part of me and sometimes that is all that is necessary to write about something you never thought you would. I’ve already given a couple of these pieces before, but not publicly, not like this. So the way I see it, I can let my fingers speak in a way they couldn’t before. And if I choose to post this in the morning, when the sun rises again, then I will be able to. Because when the darkness surrounded me, I spoke the words only the quiet of the night would allow me to.

Let’s talk about sex. And not just any type of sex. Sex after trauma. Sex after childhood abuse. Sex when you are healing from the past while growing into an adult that has needs, trauma, triggers, and desires. It’s messy and there’s no right answer. But isn’t that how it always is? Maybe it’s just another thing that needs to be talked about more.

When I was young, like really young, like four or five young, I got in trouble for publicly masturbating. My parents and I were hanging out at one of their friends' houses and for some reason I began to touch myself in the room full of grown - ups. I don’t remember why I did it, I only remember the reaction. My mother was horrified and yelled at me about being inappropriate. My father just…stared. In horror? In shock? In…another feeling. I’m not sure. I just know as I looked to him in confusion, something didn’t add up. Even into my adult years, this moment was still mentioned and there was always a question of “Why would you think that was okay to do? To expose yourself to a room full of adults?”

Then there were the naked Barbies. I’ve talked about that a ton already. That’s because it is a big wound for me. Those Barbies meant the world to me. The scenarios I played out gave me the ability to figure out what was happening inside my head. Unfortunately, I spent more time with them out of clothes than I did with them in them. My Barbies were big fans of jacuzzies and bubble baths. They also loved to cuddle naked. Clothes weren’t necessary because most of my playing involved them being nude. Which I thought was a normal thing, so imagine my surprise when I’m at yet another birthday party where the topic of my naked Barbies comes up. “Why do I buy you clothes if they are always naked?” “ Maybe you should lose your Barbies every time you take their clothes off?” and my favorite “It makes your father uncomfortable to watch you play with naked Barbies.”

Does it? Does it make him uncomfortable? Does it cause him agony to watch his daughter take her Barbie's clothes off yet again? That’s odd because last time we played Barbies…

When I was twelve I was sexually assaulted on a Spongebob ride while our Girl Scout troop celebrated our cookie sales. The details don’t matter except that this boy was a stranger, he stalked me and my friends the rest of the day, and when I told my mother about it later she asked why I had let him unbutton my jeans in the first place.

A short time later, I met my girlfriend. And very quickly I realized the house I had been playing with other kids was much more fun when it was the real thing. House had consisted of me being the Daddy due to my much larger build than my friends. But it was full of pretend kissing where I place my hand over their mouth and kiss the back of my hand. Then they do the same when it was their turn to kiss. Clothes stayed on and secrets remained. With my girlfriend, there was no hand blocking things and clothes definitely were not on. Just like the Barbies. But I felt powerful with her. I was still (lol) Daddy because I was significantly taller than she was. But I didn’t feel exposed with her, not in the ways I had previously. We had fun and while I am horrified to realize now I was only twelve and clearly knew too much at too young of an age. So did she and that makes much more sense now why we connected as well as we did. But just like everything, the safety I felt with her was taken before I had a chance to learn why it had happened in the first place. One minute I am teaching her about the bathtub faucet at her house, the next we are at my house and my doorknob is jiggling with my father on the other side, and soon she’s gone and I’m left alone with a whole lot of knowledge, big puberty feelings, and now I don’t even play with Barbies anymore.

When I was about thirteen I was laying in bed and snuck my hand under the covers. I had learned about the way my bumblebee back massager made me feel but it was….loud. And I had learned how the tub faucet made me feel but it was…also loud. So late at night, I decided to try to find something that wasn’t quite as loud.

Apparently I still made too much noise because out of nowhere my bedroom door flew open. On the threshold was my father fuming with rage. He stormed into my bedroom and began to glare around the room until his focus landed on me. My hand was still under the cover, now frozen in fear as my father spit as he asked, “Where is he?” I blinked. “Where is who?”

“Don’t play fucking stupid. I heard you. There’s no way you’re doing that to yourself so where is the boy you snuck in?”

It’s really hard to hide a boy you snuck in from your enraged father. It’s even harder to prove there was no boy in the first place. My father checked the lock on my window, secured. He opened my closet and moved my stuff around. No boy in there either. He then took a couple steps towards me, looking down the length of my bedspread until he stopped where my hands were shaking. Then he turned and walked into my bathroom. No boy there either. The entire time he is cussing me out for sneaking a boy in. The entire time I am naked under my blanket and praying he doesn’t pull it down in search of “the boy”.

My father didn’t find the boy. So eventually he left my room, slamming the door behind him, and went to tell my mother about his suspicion. I listened as I got redressed but all it was was my mother defending me and saying there’s no way I’d be smart enough to sneak a boy in. And my father explaining that he heard quiet moaning and that’s not something girls do without help.

Then I met Cougar. Enough said.

After Cougar, I got my first “boy kiss”. My girlfriend had been my first kiss but then a boy I had a crush on kissed me. He only kissed me, he still didn’t pick me. Then I met another boy and he was okay with kissing me and me giving him oral but he didn’t want me either. Then I met another boy and he liked me enough to offer to tutor me in Math. We planned a “tutor date” where he came over, we did no math homework, and he convinced me to sneak outside so I could give him a blowjob. It was freezing and my knees hurt so I accidentally panicked and bit him. He wasn’t happy but he didn’t stop me or anything because he’s a gentleman I suppose. Out of nowhere, my mother called out in search of me so we rushed around the corner and she invited him out to grab Subway. He took her up on it and we all went to get Subway as her thank you for helping me. Fool me once, I’ll bite you. Fool me twice, he invited me to his house where he turned on IT and offered to give me oral. I agreed because…well hey at least I’m getting satisfied. That’s good, right? 1. No, he sucked at oral. 2. I was apparently about to start my period because he looked up at me with disgust and told me I tasted weird. I asked what he meant and he said I tasted like pennies. “You mean like copper? Like i’m bleeding?” He shrugged. “I don’t know but maybe it’s time for you to call your mom to pick you up.” That was the last day we hung out because the next time I saw him at school he pretended to have never met me. I became a crazy stalker and he had no idea why I was trying to talk to him. As far as he was concerned, we had never seen each other outside of school.

Then there was Doug. And notice that I’m using his name. Because Doug deserves the attention. I survived everything leading up to this point. Only to agree to date Doug. Doug did many things, the biggest of all being guilt me for not wanting to have sex with him. I believed I was a virgin at the time and wanted to give it to someone special. Doug was not that guy and I knew it. Still when Doug said jump that meant jump, so I did my best to fulfill him in any way I could outside of sex. So when he demanded I come to his house and I informed him I was babysitting, he told me to bring them with me. Looking back, I should have refused to ever degrade myself to that level but I didn’t know what would happen. So i brought my brothers, genuinely believing his lie that we were all about to watch movies. No more than five minutes after we arrived, Doug forced me to leave my brothers standing in his living room while he took me to “look at something in his room”. I will never in my entire life forget how it felt to close that bedroom door and immediately have a hand roughly grab the back of my head and drag me by my hair to my knees. I thought that would be the worst of what Doug would do, but eventually he would attempt to rape me in a family’s garage and hit me anytime he felt like it. I never took my brothers back to his house though. Even if it meant I got hit later, I refused to risk them ever seeing any of it.

Doug dumped me eventually, a wonderful change of events for me. And, would you believe, that’s where the main part of this post tonight starts? It’s almost midnight now so if you’re still here, thank you. I realize this is a ton of information, and unfortunately I’ve still skipped a couple of moments. I’m trying to take this one step at a time and tonight it’s these moments that need to be released.

When Doug and I broke up, I started dating Kevin. And I decided I wanted Kevin to be my first. Kevin wanted to wait and I took it as a personal attack because what do you mean you don’t want me? I was sure he was repulsed by me. My broken, tainted, dirty body. I was sure he could see the other guys’ hands all over my body and he could taste them when he kissed me. I would take boiling water showers where I scrubbed until my skin bled. All in an effort to be clean for Kevin. I needed to make Kevin want me. Because I wasn’t sure if there would ever be someone I felt was more deserving of my virginity. So I begged him daily. Flirted with him. Guilted him. I’m not proud to admit that, and my heart hurts to remember that teenage boy who had his own sexual trauma that I had no idea existed.

Authors Note : Speaking of Kevin, He just told me I need to go to sleep. It’s very late and I have therapy in the morning. Goodnight. We’ll talk more tomorrow.

I’m not joking when I tell you that I wrote everything you read a few nights before my house caught fire. I got a bit distracted after this but…you know what? I’m not even going to read it back. I don’t need to. I’m just going to keep going.

Yes, I pressured him. I take full responsibility for that and made amends with him for it. He laughs it off and makes comments about his resistance being due to his own fear, not because he wasn’t more than consenting to my advances. If the roles were reversed, people would tear him apart, so I want to make it clear that if I could go back I would do things much different. Unfortunately, I cannot. So all I can do in this moment is tell you what happened after he agreed.

Not the details but the feeling. It is a moment I can still see in my mind all of these years later. I felt safe. Exposed but also somehow completely safe. I couldn’t put words to it in that moment, I just knew it felt good. I recognize it as safety now. A good feeling. Great, even. We were on a golf course in a set of nearby trees, yet I wouldn’t have wished to be anywhere else with anyone on Earth. I felt so safe that I forgot I was supposed to be scared. That didn’t happen much back then.

I didn’t bleed. Didn’t feel that…pop? (I’m sorry. This isn’t something I’m used to writing about.) It’s true though. Whether we use code words or not. Something that I expected to happen didn’t happen. I knew that some girls didn’t have intact hymens due to normal activities. This wasn’t that. I just didn’t know what it was that was happening.

Would you believe we got into a fight after due to the fact Kevin was concerned that I wasn’t being truthful about being a virgin? He hadn’t exactly received great sex ed about women and *remember* I was extremely persistent. What I now know to be a form of “Please take my virginity before a monster can take it from me.” to Kevin was…well…you can imagine what he feared.

The cruel joke is that neither of us were wrong. He was right to feel like I wasn’t being truthful. I was right to believe I was a virgin. Why wouldn’t I be?

Many years have passed and I’m no longer that fifteen year old girl laying on a piece of wood. I’ve gained many things as I grew up, including my memories. And because of that, things are clearer for me and I’ve had quite a few harsh realizations. It took a long time to get everything back, and it only happened because of that safe feeling I got around my soulmate.

He’s the only reason she ever spoke outside of Happy Place.

There’s no other way to say this other than we’ve had sex many times in between our first time together and now. And before that our actual first time separately happened many years before that. Both of those reasons are why it has taken me this long to publicly address how raw this wound is for me. It used to be infected. Now it feels like there’s a scab that someone could rip open at any moment. I enjoy having sex with my husband. We have great sex where I feel pleasure and I’m heard. He holds my hand. All beautiful things. All things I’m deserving of.

Then a small voice in the back of my mind asks, “What if another monster finds us?”

And I’m not sure how to answer her because she’s right. My great sex with Kevin won’t save me from being raped. Here’s the thing though. The last time I was almost raped, I was fifteen. A moment happened a few years after I drank at a party, but Kevin forced them to take us home, essentially saving me yet again. My point is that I have already lost so many great moments of pleasure to the heartache of trauma. I don’t want to drown in this pain any longer. But you won’t be joining us in the bedroom so I need to find a different way to heal with you all, huh? My words saved me before. Maybe they’ll save me this time. Because I am married to The Monster Destroyer himself. And he deserves a wife who can fully surrender to her own pleasure. And I’m healing my inner child. And she has come such a long way in learning safe touch, speaking her needs, and calming her nervous system. She’s learning how to be a little girl. Now it’s my turn to learn how to be a woman.

Sex is weird to talk about. It feels impossible when you’re a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. It’s even worse when you are attempting to raise families where your children never experience sexual abuse. Other than addiction, it’s one of the most *hush hush* wounds. That hurts my heart. If nobody ever speaks about it then how do any of us ever heal our pleasure wound? The one that appears when someone shuts the bedroom door and turns to face us. And the one that whispers to us when we are alone. Both of them are pieces of a topic that there doesn’t seem to be many people talking about. Sex therapists exist, and that’s a start. We can do more though. We can do what we’ve done with everything else and simply talk. You can choose to read or you can continue about as if you never saw this. I’m still not a hundred percent sure I’ll actually post this. It feels like weeks since I sat with this post, I guess that’s because it has been.

We’ll figure it out. We always do.

Until Next Time,

Brie