This essay is part five of my year-long project where, each month, I’ll look through old journal entries by using a random date generator to decide which day of my past to explore. This month’s was March 5th.
March 5, 2012—2023
2012: We spent the entire day in Cambridge and it was so fun. Harvard is gorgeous and we just walked around talking and seeing the city. When we came home, we all hung out on our bed talking and watching videos we took today.
2013: We drank out of our light up cups that we got at Pineapple Willy’s and Team JACKT went to Sharky’s. We left and went to Hooters where we met the funniest guys pretending to be waiters. [REDACTED]
2014: I had a terrible day at work, then spent hours in Bracken. I didn’t get to go watch “Real World” because I was working in the office, but our team meeting went awesome and I got a good eval!
2015: I finished up the phone layouts and I think [my boss] was actually kind of impressed on how fast I caught on. After, I went to kickboxing, then talked on the phone to Mom for an hour and a half.
2016: I spent most of the day writing and doing laundry, but at night we went to the UWS for Wynne’s birthday party. It was really fun to be with everyone. [REDACTED]
2017: Jamie, Chels, Carrie and I spent the entire day in Jersey City getting our hair done by Kristina and eating tacos. It was such a fun day and I love how she did my hair.
2018: Annie, Zach, Gabe and I met up at Barfly for happy hour that quickly turned into an all-night typical Barfly evening, but it was a lot of fun to go back.
2019: Work wasn’t that bad today — Chrissy was out still, so Victor was in charge and I got asked to do this ridiculous freelance project, so I now have to work on that in the morning.
2020: I had dinner at The Smith with Jackie and Jenna which was really nice to catch up and then I went to meet Kim at Beverly’s because Cam was working and that was very fun.
2021: Today was [my favorite co-worker]’s last day of work which I am obviously upset about, but it just doesn’t seem real since we haven’t seen each other in a year. Still, I was in a really weird and off mood today from it.
2022: Kayla, Wynter and I went to brunch after celebrating 305 Day and it was really lovely — it feels nice to connect with new friends and get to know the people who I see almost every week in class.
2023: I woke up at [my old favorite co-worker]’s, then went to 305 Day, but was very tired. I went to the Nets game and dinner with Suhaib after which was really lovely. [REDACTED]
When I started this project, I knew the randomness in choosing the date would likely lead me to entries I did not want to share on the Internet. Whether for emotional or legal or just really, really, really embarrassing reasons, I knew there were going to be moments of my life I could not make public – but, because it didn’t come up when I ran the numbers on that first post, I figured I’d deal with the problem if and when it arose.
Well – it has arisen.
I share a lot of my life through my writing (I got broken up with for the rainforest! I had an eating disorder! My ovary exploded!), but there are other parts of myself I keep distinctly closed off, even from those surrounding me in real life. A goal of mine this year was to be more open and create more connections, something I feel I have been intimately lacking. One way I have been working on this is by joining a year-long writing group. The course is focused on diving into sexuality through multiple lenses and relying on the supportive community as a safe space for that exploration. Even just a few months in, it’s been really beautiful to share parts of myself I have kept hidden with people flung all across the globe and I feel genuinely lucky that it’s created an opening for me to feel seen, loved and vulnerable.
While I am learning to be open, I am not going to write about the redacted parts of the journal entries above. I don’t believe that it would be productive sharing. I am, however, going to share a piece of healing I wrote for my class. The module we were working on was sensuality and I felt nervous as I was doing the journal questions – my answers reminded me that I had gone through this big period, especially in my twenties, where I numbed myself and didn’t experience my senses as much as I thought I should have. This piece for March’s project is about exploring why I felt uncomfortable letting people know the real me as well as celebrating how much I have grown.
I lost my virginity in the Ball State Student Center, covered in chocolate syrup and whipped cream in a hotel room rented with cash above an important landmark – the only Taco Bell on campus.
In the retelling of it, I like to make the story seem trashy – emphasis on the whipped cream! more details on the sticky chocolate! mention how many people got food poisoning at the said Taco Bell daily! – but in reality, it was quite sweet. My partner was my boyfriend of three years, a person I genuinely loved who genuinely loved me right back, and I feel grateful to have experienced such a big moment in my life with him. He was my best friend and, truly thinking we’d be together for the rest of our lives, we waited to have sex, wanting to make the experience special. I was a year older than him and, my freshman year of college, he came to Ball State for a weekend to visit me after months apart. This, we both felt, was deemed as a monumental enough occasion for The Event.
Thus, the chocolate syrup.
To be honest, I can’t remember why we bought it. Most likely it was a joke, but maybe it was something we’d really wanted to explore. Maybe it was a thing we’d seen or heard that we thought sex was supposed to look like – sex with props, sex with food, sex with things we’d been told were supposed to be sexy. I can’t say for certain – we were so young and I have a tendency to shut my mind down after a relationship ends, a coping mechanism that causes me to lose huge chunks of memories that are too painful to think about or, sometimes even worse, I fear paint me in a bad light. We broke up a year later because I met someone else and it’s hard for me now to remember specific details leading up to the night without thinking of the guilt that came after.
But, I do remember that night. I remember feeling so close to him. I remember laughing. I remember being sticky with the chocolate sauce and whipped cream and us so, so quickly realizing how bad of an idea that had been and then laughing some more. I remember, at some point, crying – not out of sadness, but because it felt incredible to be able to be myself with my best friend, with a person who knew me and loved me and accepted all of me, completely.
We were inexperienced and learning together, but the sex we had for the remainder of our relationship was consistently great. Was it because we were so in sync? Because we were so in love? Because our own pleasure was connectively dependent on the others? I was young enough that I assumed sex was always going to be like that – when we broke up a year later and I first slept with the person I’d left him for, I was surprised when it was just… fine. I’d become accustomed to having someone so in tune with my body and my unspoken thoughts or needs. I’d had such a visceral physical connection with this new person that I’d assumed the sex was going to be mind-blowing and was disappointed when it was not.
I was even further let down when that relationship never came fully to fruition in the way I’d expected it would when I left my boyfriend. This led to a lot of confusion in my life and how I treated sexual experiences in general. The man I’d left my boyfriend to be with was vocal that we had a connection, but refused to choose me in a concrete way. This devastated me, but I didn’t have the emotional tools to pull myself out of the situation. Instead, I just felt numb most of the time. Sex began to feel like something that was happening to me rather than something I was actively participating in, an opposite experience of when I lost my virginity and was so comfortably present.
I started to party a lot, to drink a lot, to eat a lot – to numb myself, clouding my body with food and alcohol. It’s ironic, a little, that the only time I’ve ever used food in the bedroom was the night I lost my virginity, but the sexual experiences that followed caused me to lean on food as a crutch. I was no longer feeling my senses, not really. I was eating too fast, unable to fully enjoy the taste of food as I gorged myself. I was drinking too much, trying to forget the things I was seeing – like all the other girls who were slipping into the man who wanted me (but, not enough!)’s room – while also trying not to feel the hands of the men I was putting on me in direct response.
I never felt connected. I craved nothing more than the connection I’d taken for granted, but instead of exploring that deeper, I started to lean into being performative. I was no longer having orgasms, let alone at the same time, and would often let sexual experiences happen to me because it felt easier in the moment to pretend I was enjoying it rather than be vocal about my preferences. What I was doing was not tied to what I was actually feeling, but what I thought my partner would want to experience. I was self-soothing with alcohol and food and sex – and it wasn’t about the physical feeling of sex, but the act of just being wanted. I was trying to fill all my empty spaces with false appropriations of sensuality.
And, of course I was. There was this piece of me that didn’t think I was actually worthy of the connection I wanted. I’d left the person who was supposed to be the love of my life to pursue something different, something like this – after hurting the person I had loved most in the world, wasn’t it fitting this emptiness is what I deserved?
It took me a long, long time to unravel those feelings, but over a decade later, I’d gotten so tired of feeling numb – I sometimes would be shocked by how much time had gone by and how little I felt like myself. I got sober in 2020 and something in that shook me awake. I no longer could treat sexual experiences as things that were just happening to me. I was fully present, for the first time in so, so long, that I needed emotional and sensual connection to feel safe and even have the ability to escalate a relationship to a sexual level. The result was me having less sex – far less sex – but when I would, I’d have connections that felt more genuine and closer to what I experienced that very first time, connections that made me feel secure and worthy.
Connections that made me feel like me.
I still struggle with fully feeling my senses, but I’m trying to be better. I spent so long not feeling or seeing things that were happening to me and dulling my experiences down with excess that it’s been a learning process, but I’m giving myself the grace and kindness I usually reserve for other people, recognizing now that I am also deserving of good things. I’m learning to do this by trying to pay more attention to my senses in all aspects of my life. I’m trying to be more observant, to take notice of delightful things. I’m recognizing that I love seeing the colors of the sky blend into each other in the morning and hearing my neighborhood slowly wake up. I love feeling the sun stroke my face as I take long walks to nowhere, a peppermint tea in hand. I like the intention of lighting a candle and later walking into my apartment and it instinctively smelling like home. I like ordering the chocolate chip cookie with sea salt from the bakery and eating it slowly – so slowly – making a memory of the moment rather than the binging I grew used to. And, I love the way my partner now (surprise! it’s my favorite co-worker from 2021!) holds my face and stares into my eyes and plays with my hair and makes me laugh – when I think of the word “connected,” I first think of him and that alone makes me smile.
I appreciate these feelings, these experiences. Sensuality is important to me because my likes and dislikes make me feel like I know myself. I was someone who didn’t know who I was for so long, someone who didn’t allow herself to feel confident in her preferences. Being able to become a person who has a set of queues has made me feel more connected to not only myself, but to the people around me. And, that feels like a gift – a gift I deprived myself of for so long, a gift I will never let go of again.