To say that I had a helicopter mom is an understatement. I love my mom and do not regret my upbringing in the slightest. However, for being barely Catholic, I sure was raised to be as modest as one. I wasn’t allowed to watch Nickelodeon. I never understood the hype around iCarly and Drake and Josh, but I know I would have enjoyed them if my mom didn’t deem them to be too suggestive for my young eyes. I was scolded if I said phrases like “crap,” “frick,” or “shut up.” I am still reprimanded if I say “piss” in front of my parents.

 

The most forbidden thing for me to witness was romantic intimacy. I was instructed to close my eyes when characters kissed on screen. Movies like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club weren’t allowed for my viewing until I turned 16 years old. I still vividly remember rushing home from celebrating my birthday so my mom and I could watch Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwald flirt on the TV screen in my parents’ bedroom. To this day, I have never had “The Talk” nor have I talked about menstrual norms with my mom. Since her experiences of “The Talk” with her own mom were too coddled, she figured that I would learn about everything at school. Well, she was right and wrong.

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I watched the dreaded puberty video in fifth grade. This film was definitely made in the 90s and was made to baby young girls, helping them realizing that they will bleed once a month. It was all anyone could talk about in fourth grade; the fear and disgust associated with puberty and talks of our bodies in a new way had us dreading fifth grade. In the video, I kind of learned about menstruation. By "learned," I mean I discovered that no one will know if I wear a pad or tampon; no squishing noises will be heard when I walk.

 

We watched the upgraded version of the puberty video in sixth grade which had discussions of the egg getting fertilized but left out the important information involving the mechanisms of how that happens. I took Health and Wellness the following school year in junior high school and my teacher never mentioned sex, though I knew many peers were already losing their virginities.

 

Even when I retook health in 10th grade at high school when most of my peers were in long-term relationships, there weren’t lectures about sex. My health teacher, in her thick, New York accent, told us that we were an abstinence-only school district and couldn’t discuss sex unless it was discussions of STDs and STIs. At this point, my close friends were starting to have sex and didn’t understand what was normal and what wasn’t. Hell, my first time really even learning how to put a condom on was during Relationship Remix, a training for how to engage in safe sex, on the first floor of West Quad in 2019.

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I think the first time that I really understood how sex worked was reading a fanfiction on Wattpad. Cringey, I know, but I thought that was the definition of literature as a tween. Whenever I read a story with a smut scene, a part of me felt dirty and I wasn’t sure why. Another part of me wanted to read more, and I was even more confused by that. I knew that sex was a thing that people had in relationships, yet it felt wrong to read about, like I shouldn’t even be thinking about it. My senses were always on high alert for an intruder when I would read the spicy scenes in my room in case someone would barge in and cast me a scarlet A. 

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I was even scared to have conversations about sex with some of my friends who were sexually active. I didn’t know how to ask questions without sounding too intrusive, without getting “the ick” from the thought of someone seeing me naked or touching me. These conversations were reserved for late nights when we knew no one would hear us and when it was socially acceptable to have tainted thoughts. As I got older, I didn’t feel any more comfortable talking about it, despite my maturation. I grew, both physically and mentally, thus rejecting the idea of a boy seeing my naked body even more despite this being the time that boys began begging to see all of me.

 

My friends became more sexually active and I asked a select few that I trusted what it was like. In a Hope College dorm during the dead of summer, a friend confessed what sex was like for her: a 14 year old girl losing her virginity to an older man. I never openly judged her, but internally, that didn’t sit right with me. A high school friend told me she had sex with her boyfriend and it didn’t feel correct. They didn’t use protection and she didn’t take Plan B. I thought that was immature of her; she shouldn’t be having sex if she couldn’t use protection. An old dance friend couldn’t even say the words, “I had sex” and that frustrated me.

 

I had no room to judge my friends, yet I found myself still doing so despite my raging virgin status. I wanted to gauge what sex was like, so I could determine if this was something I wanted, but the few conversations with friends about sex ended in internal judgement on my end. I vowed that when I decided to have sex for the first time, I would be vocal about my experiences to the people that matter to me. I would use protection, stop if I was uncomfortable, and only have sex with someone of high importance to me. I figured that wouldn’t be coming for a while, though, because I hated my body and felt ill at the thought of any man laying a hand on me.

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My first sexual experience was awful. I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say it was exactly what I expected: a liberating experience where I could finally tap into my unused sexual energy. It was a drunken one-night-stand that resulted in a hospital visit for me. It took lots of conversations with friends, my therapist, and health professionals to realize what happened to me, and even now I am not entirely sure. The conversations were awkward; I was scared of telling too much information about what he did and what happened to my body afterwards. Some told me what occurred was normal; first times are usually bad. Others told me that I needed to seek professional help, medically and emotionally. I still can’t have this talk with my mother in fear of being judged and shut out. My opinions about that night swayed constantly, but regardless I felt filthy and ashamed, like my V-card wasn’t just taken but stripped, ripped, and thrown into the dirt to be trampled by a pack of wildebeests. 

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Since that awful night, my sexual experiences have not gotten much better. Another drunken hook up and months of being with a guy who never emotionally invested in me didn't prove that sex could be good, something pleasurable; it only proved that I am capable of crying a lot. My therapist thinks that my celibacy since my late February breakup is a good thing; it allows me to recover from my bad sex and supposed sex-related PTSD. However, as a young woman attempting to discover and embrace her own sexuality, it's hard to refrain from giving into hookup culture again yet being genuinely terrified to do so.

 

Women like myself should be allowed to engage in sex if they want to, but unfortunately, sexual women are cast aside by society. I used to be one who scorned women for sleeping around, judging girls from my high school who were known to send nudes to every boy. Now, I am more forgiving after being on the same side of that situation.

 

My closest friends judged me for months following my first two sexual experiences. They constantly told me that I wasn’t allowed to leave parties with boys, even if I knew them. At first I viewed this as kind; they were being over-protective of me and had my best interest in mind. Then I was made fun of for flirting with boys, almost always pulled away so I “wouldn’t have any ideas.” They commended their male friends for sleeping with a girl, but when I talked to a boy for longer than five minutes, I was laughed at and told that I was "drooling over him." Moments like these made me resent going out with said friends, slowly pulling away so I no longer third-wheel and can flirt in peace.

 

I should be permitted to engage in sex if I please, but the thing is, I don’t know if I please. I am not sure what good, pleasurable sex is like and if I even deserve it. Other women should be allowed to experience good, relieving sex if they want to, regardless of if they are slut-shamed for doing so or called a prude if they don’t.