*Trigger warning: discussion of unwanted sexual activity. Nothing too graphic, but want to give a heads up of what's to comeThis month is not only Sexual Assault Awareness Month but also National Child Abuse Awareness Month, making it a particularly heavy time. I would like to start this by saying that if you are struggling with experiences from your past please PLEASE seek out a licensed professional to help you work through it. I know that is easier said than done, but burying these things deep down can sometimes lead them to pop up unexpectedly, as well as hold you back in life in ways you may not even realize. I will go into this more in depth below...
Just a few decades ago we basically synonymized sex abuse with rape, solely, and much like other topics I discuss in my blog, we viewed it as an act of penetration, meaning a man put his penis inside of a vagina against the woman or girl's will. Flash forward to 2021, post "Me Too" movement and #savethechilden, we know much more about the pervasiveness of sex abuse and how it's not so black and white as we previously thought. We have situations like those with comedians Aziz Ansari and Louis C.K. We have child sex trafficking rings like those run by Jeffrey Epstein and R Kelly revealed from grown women feeling empowered to come forward with stories of what happened to them as teens. We also have the knowledge that child abusers are usually someone close to the child: a family member, coach, or other trusted figure in their life, and young boys are just as likely to be abused by a pedophile as young girls since they often don't have a preference and just take advantage of whomever is vulnerable and readily available. The world is a frightening place where we often feel unsafe, especially as teenagers growing into women.
My purpose in writing this blog today is to encourage anyone who feels lost or broken from a trauma to reach out to someone for guidance to move beyond it. I'm not saying take your abuser to court, if that isn't something you're up for, but to talk to someone and develop a plan to tackle those feelings weighing you down. Sometimes recounting an old trauma brings you back to the moment and can be very painful, which is why our brains can at times block out a memory to protect us from reliving it. I work with trafficking victims and we see this all the time. It's important to acknowledge your experience and put it behind you, which can be a very difficult and trying process, but will eventually set you free. I share my story for the first time below in hopes that it will help someone else on their overcoming Vaginismus journey.
When I was 19 the love of my life dumped me. We were together 2 years and 2 months, but had been growing apart towards the end as he made new friends I wasn't particularly fond of and hid from me that he applied to my college but didn't get in. The break up was brutal, but we both moved on quickly that summer since we were young and ready to be on the market again. He was the first person I had been intimate with, but we never attempted sex. I told him I wasn't ready and he never pressured me because he was just that kind of guy (sweet, reliable, and crazy about me for me). After him I dated an old coworker, initially as fwb, but eventually he gave me the all or nothing ultimatum. Then, naturally, when the summer ended and we were going to our separate colleges an hour away from one another, he quickly realized there many girls with more in common with him than I who would go all the way with him, so he dumped me 2 weeks into the school year. Since I was a transfer student who had attended community college my first year (in order to stay home and be close to my high school sweetheart, who was a year younger) I did not get the pleasure of attending fish camp and meeting new people at my school. I had no friends and as a very innocent, non-drinking virgin who didn't party and liked to read books, I had no idea how to make them. I was completely out of my element.
Then comes social media. I had created a MySpace account over the summer and a Facebook account my fall semester to try to find people with shared interests in my area. I messaged people from my school (this was when Facebook first started and was only available for college students to search in their network) but people either didn't respond or uttered lack luster replies that showed no desire of meeting me in person. I became pretty depressed and sullen and would drive home every weekend to see my friends and family, to escape the monotony of studying in my dorm room beside a roommate I had nothing in common with besides being a Pisces. One day on MySpace a guy sent me a friend request and messaged me, super eager to talk punk music and bad movies. I was elated and smitten rather quickly.
I had never spoken with someone much older than me before. I'd only ever encountered dudes around my age through school and LiveJournal, my original blogging site, so it had never crossed my mind that a 27-year-old wanting to meet a 19-year-old was sketchy or potentially a bad idea. I just knew that I was lonely, I wanted a bf, and this cool guy was super fun to talk to. I wondered if he would be good at kissing, too. The loss that I felt from my recent double rejection was growing unbearable and my hormones were at an all time high. My biggest concern was how I was going to deal with them any time I wasn't sitting in the classroom.
The first time we met, Daniel came to my dorm room and I took him on a walk around campus. I showed him "the pit", the building where most of my classes were, the cafeteria. We sat on the grassy hill and he picked up blades and threw them at me when I wasn't looking. He wasn't the most mature guy so I figured that, despite our age difference, maybe we were on the same level after all and would make a reasonable couple. We went back to my dorm and had our first kiss. He was a good kisser and I was excited at this prospect so I asked him to be official.
Over the course of the next 2 weeks my friends expressed concern over "the old cable guy" I was dating and wanted an answer for why. I was just an undergrad student so his profession didn't bother me a bit and I had made up my mind that his age didn't either. He had a bit of a belly, but I liked his dyed black hair and goofy sense of humor, so I felt confident that we were a good match. I didn't need to prove our compatibility to anyone.
When we were both free for him to visit again (my roommate went home on the weekends so it made the most sense for him to drive up then) Daniel returned to my dorm. We were going to go see Little Miss Sunshine at the 2 screen movie theater in my college town, which had just come out and I was really looking forward to seeing, so we were just going to make out a little bit first.
My heart was pumping as we stood in the living room kissing, full tongue action and hands moving everywhere. I wanted to take it a step further so I brought him to the bedroom and removed my shirt. Daniel was surprised and asked if I was sure. I said of course, being topless wasn't that big of a deal, and we continued. Before this point, we had spoken at length about our previous relationships, expectations, and limitations. He knew I had been with someone for over 2 years and not slept with him and that I had just gotten out of another relationship with an old friend and also not slept with him. Perhaps he just mistook my moxie as a green light for full speed ahead, but here we were, lying in bed, and suddenly he's taking my pants off.
I froze not sure what to do. I wasn't prepared to be totally naked with him, or anyone, for a long time. I was caught off guard and thinking about how I couldn't remember the last time I'd trimmed myself or what underwear I put on that morning. Stuck in my own head, I just let it happen.
"Can I go down on you?" he asked me. My head was on fire and screaming no internally but I couldn't get the words out. "I, I don't know," was all I could stammer and I started to shake feverishly.
"Are you cold or scared?" he asked me. "A little bit of both, I think," I replied. "The movie is going to start soon. We should probably get going." I hoped that got my point across that I wasn't exactly thrilled with him moving forward with his plan, but I guess I still sounded too uncertain so he proceeded anyway.
I don't remember anything about what it felt like, except that I was clenched the whole time in fear and he spread me and told me I was beautiful, which creeped me out on a level I had never known before. When he finally stopped he suddenly said he forgot something in the car and would be back. He ran out quickly and was gone a long time so I got dressed and went looking for him. We ran into each other on the stairs and he looked worried and a bit bewildered to find me outside searching for him and asked if I was alone. I said of course I was, only we were going to movie together. He told me he had accidentally grabbed his mother's credit card and put it in his wallet. This made no sense to me so I asked him what the big deal was. He said she called needing it back and he had to leave to take it to her. He left and never contacted me again.
I didn't bother reaching out to Daniel and I blocked him on MySpace without telling my friends what happened. I led them to believe that he just ghosted me for no reason and luckily I hadn't even told my parents about him yet. I was so ashamed that my besties had been right about him that I couldn't bear to tell them the truth so I bottled it up inside for years. When the "yes means yes" campaign came out my stomach dropped because it was the first time I realized that I didn't actually consent to what happened that day. I had blamed myself for meeting someone off the internet, for dating someone 8 years my senior, for moving too quickly physically and giving him the wrong impression. I basically thought I deserved it and pushed the situation deep down where no one could find it.
When I started treating my Vaginismus, after years of not having a name for what ailed me and no explanation as to why I could barely find my entrance my first sex therapist asked me if anyone had ever done something to me against my will. I thought long and hard about it and remembered Daniel, my 2 week relationship at the beginning of my sophomore year of college. I didn't think it was relevant, but I told her what happened anyway, in harrowing detail. She assured me that this incident could very well have caused my fear of penetration, because even though his tongue didn't penetrate me it still caused me to clench up and protect my body from invasion. We then proceeded to rehash the memory through EMDR therapy for a couple of sessions. This was like a giant weight lifted off of my shoulders and I wrote about the experience in my Vaginismus workbook that went along with the program I was following.
What I want readers to take away from this experience is that no matter how society defines sex abuse or "going too far", if someone pushed you beyond your personal limit and crossed your boundary, that can affect you mentally AND physically. It's up to you how you want to label it, but be aware that something which may have felt minor at the time, like being felt up at a club or pressured by your partner to do more than you wanted that day, can cause serious emotional pain, even if it didn't hurt you in the physical sense. The mind body connection is SO strong and muscle memory is a huge aspect of Vaginismus in particular, so if you identify something in your past that could be a potential trigger, bring it up to a physician. No one needs to burden themselves with carrying such information alone forever. Yes, there will be tears, and yes, you will have to learn to forgive yourself, but always remember, what happened to you was not your fault.