Probably the hardest thing about admitting to myself that I have a problem (Hello, Al-Anon training!), is not that it’s “a” problem, but that it’s “this” problem. I wish it could be something simpler like “porn addiction” or that disease that makes you pull out your hair (I keep thinking trichamoniasis, which is NOT that disease, but a lovely STD. Forgive me for not researching further), because then it would not be my worst nightmare come true. It would be something simpler, at least for me to handle.
When you grow up surrounded by mental illness, there are a few things that happen to your development.
One, you associate all of the “bad things” that happen to your parent with something unrelated, a bit of magical thinking if I may (and I always may), i.e. Mom is sick because the house is dirty. Of course, this carried over into my adulthood, and maybe I’m not the most fastidious housekeeper on the planet, but my house is usually fairly clean, even on bad days.
Later on it occurs to your childish brain that maybe, just maybe, the reason for her illness is because YOU did something wrong. Kids, apparently have a knack for guilt rivaled only by the Catholic Church. This, too, carries over to your adulthood, and you find yourself blaming YOU for any little thing that has gone awry i.e. it’s obvious (to you) that it’s YOUR fault that the dog crapped on the carpet because you’re such a bad pet owner (and not the more logical “the dog crapped on the carpet because he is an asshole”).
I was once told that this is the way children of alcoholics feel as well, so let’s just give your Aunt Becky a double whammy here: my parents are BOTH alcoholics, too!
And lastly (this is a brief list here), children who have a mentally ill parent become absolutely phobic about turning into this parent (in this case, my mother). Admittedly, no one wants to turn into their mother, because ew! but I can assure you that it’s that much worse when your parent is completely unbalanced and unstable.
WHO would want THAT to be their aspiration?
(Please God, let me turn into someone who alternately screams or cries or looks comatose at a mere change in the breeze. Let me be unable to get out of bed for weeks at a time, and let my kids raise themselves until I can get my medication regime right. Please, please, please, please?)
Not so much fun, right?
So let me assure you that I do mental health checks daily (if not hourly) to make sure that I am not Going Off The Wheels On A Crazy Train, and to check whether or not my reactions to situations (pleasant or unpleasant) are normal enough. Dave informs me that this is one of my better features, as it leaves me pretty stable most of the time. I rarely fly off the handle at minor infractions (real or imagined), I approach (most) fights as logically as I can, and because I am prone to think and rethink issues, I’m fairly level.
Shit, I just wish it wasn’t this problem, y’all. Really, I do.
(is it weird to want to bargain with God to give me an STD instead of PPD? Don’t answer that.)
I was a sickly kid. Had I been born before the invention of antibiotics, I would have bit the bucket before my first birthday, not a doubt in my mind. Modern medicine saved my dimply ass more times than I could ever possibly count, but even still I was out of school more than I was in it. And while it SOUNDS kinda cool when you think about it really, it sucked ass.
When I was 14, I begged my doctor to take out my tonsils after I realized that they now had holes and craters in them where stuff was getting caught that I had to fish out. Which, hi, EW.
The surgery was a nightmare because my tonsils, having been used and abused by so many bugs for so many years had, for lack of a better word, rotted. LET THIS BE A WARNING TO YOU, PARENTS OUT THERE WHOSE PHYSICIANS TELL YOU TO TAKE OUT YOUR KIDS TONSILS: DO IT!
While the surgeon was in there, he niftily removed my adenoids too, because, well, why not?
What he never bothered to tell me, and what I didn’t realize until months later is that now I had no barrier between my mouth and my nose. At the wrong angle, let’s say a drinking fountain, water would simply pour from my mouth and out my nose.
It’s a charming party trick.
Having NO adenoids has made oral sex most irritating to perform, although now that I think of it, I bet there’s an untapped goldmine market for porn out there.
Nose Porn.
HOT.
I’m not a virgin.
No, hold back the gasps of amazement, I know it’s unbelievable. I am 24 years old and I have had sex.
To me, this statement means marvelous little. The lovin’ sessions I have had has always been nice, never earth-shattering, but nice. But to talk about my sexual status is something I’ve always done in the same tone as saying “I like Crest toothpaste, the kind with the sparkles.” It has never meant much of anything to me. It’s not some kind of feat, nor is it some kind of curse on my house. It just sort of is.
Through the years, I have come into contact with people who have not actually had sex. Maybe it was because they didn’t believe in sex before marriage due to their religious beliefs. Or due to a childhood trauma. Maybe the opportunity never presented itself. Or just because. I dunno. Never really mattered much to me either.
I consider it much in the same vein as my statements about having had sex, to be something like, “I like cheese omelets for breakfast” or “purple should be a flavor, dammit!” It’s another nothing statement. I’m full of them.
So what? Big deal. Who cares?
Pashmina informed me that there was this blogging site for virgins over 25 so OF COURSE I had to check it out.
Holy balls, these people are OBSESSED by their virginal status. Totally obsessed. Freakishly obsessed. Like they cannot stop thinking about it ever.
I dunno. If you want to Not Have The Sex, that’s cool, I don’t see The Sex as all that Earth Shattering an event. I’ve never done heroin and I don’t think about how much I wish I could do it all day every day. There are plenty of other things besides The Sex that you can do.
Then again, this is coming from a woman practicing “asstinence.”
Yup.
I’m saving my ass for marriage
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