I've been afraid in the past to share my story because of how people would judge me and possibly how my actions would reflect upon my family.
I want this blog to be about truth and how I came to know truth.
In the upcoming post I will tell you how I went from being raised in an apostolic church with strict parents, to being a woman who was involved in witchcraft, drugs, violence, sex, cults, and all other kinds of dark things, to being someone who has been changed by the power of God.
I guess I'll start with how I became addicted to sex. My memory of my first sexual encounter was when I was perhaps five or younger. I remember hiding in my brothers' closet masturbating with my little brother's baby bottle. I wouldn't begin to know how a child of five would know to do such things and I have often wondered since, if I had supressed sexual abuse memories. One memory that I did keep was of me and my brother, who was three years older, hiding under a blanket with our pants down and him telling me that a penis goes in a vagina (not in those words of course). Years later this brother mentioned to me that he had been sexually abused, he didn't say by who, and I was too embarassed to ask. It was an akward conversation and has faded in my memory somewhat, making me question if it really happened.
A lot of that has happened concerning the past. Things that are too difficult to bare, I tend to unconciously 'fade'.
When you are young you don't understand what sexual abuse is, or even what sexuality is. Although, there is the knowledge that it is somehow sacred or private. Something not shared with others.
It wasn't until we got cable television in the mid eighties that I learned what sex was all about. I used to sneak out of bed while the whole house was sleep and watch pornographic movies with the volume turned all the way down. You never saw actual genitals, but the women were always completely naked and there was a lot of grinding and faces twisted in 'pain'.
When I was about ten my older brother found a porno VHS tape. In defense of him, this particular tape was titled with the name of a children's fairy tale, so it's possible that he didn't know what it was until he actually put it in the VCR. Regardless, once we knew what it was, we would watch it every chance we got. We even got good at putting it back how we found it, making sure to rewind the tape to the exact spot it was on when we found it. My brother would some times use threats of revealing that I had watched the porno to our mom, just to get me to comply with petty demands.
I continued to seek out pornographic material in whatever way I could find it. The tape was the only thing in our home besides cable t.v. and I didn't find another source until I was fourteen years old and started working at our local library.
I enjoyed reading, so working at the library seemed like an ideal job. One day while shelving paperbacks, a historical romance novel caught my eye. After randomly flipping through to find a section to read, which so happened to be a sex scene, I decided that I HAD to finish the book. I was certain that the library clerks and librarian would know what kind of book I was checking out, so I was too embarassed to check it out. I ended up ripping the cover off the book (which was an imagine of a man and woman clinging to each other passionately) and stealing it.
This novel was the first of hundreds I have read since then. Those books consumed countless hours of my time and shaped my views on sex and relationships between men and women. In that particular novel, the heroine was forced to marry and was raped by the 'hero' of the story. In some, this might have drawn out a reaction of disgust or anger from the reader. In me, it merely excited and aroused a dark desire to consume more of books like it.
Over the next few years, I became convinced that the only satisfying relationship I could have with a male, is one where he completely dominated me and even used rape as a method of control and an expression of love.
Messed up? Yes.
Keep in mind, my mother was a very independent women who held many feminist ideals. She always taught me to be self sufficient and to not give any power over to a man. This teaching was in stark contrast to what I learned at church, to submitt to your husband. So in many ways, it was strange. I also witnessed my mother practicing what she preached with my stepfather and my own father.
I didn't actually have sex until my second year of college. My first real sexual ecounter was with a friend of mine in my dorm room. It involved me giving him oral sex and in the end I didn't even get the favor returned. This didn't deter any future encounters we had because I thought I was so 'mature' after that first encounter. I remember thinking how 'cosmopolitian' was was now that I had done what so many other girls in the dorm gossiped about doing.
This guy never offically dated me and I tried to pretend that it didn't bother me. I was doing the 'cool' thing, and having a friend with benefits. Later that semester when I did find a guy I like, in less than a month of knowing him I had giving him my virginity. I remember feeling like the actual experience was not what everyone hyped it up to be.
From there things quickly went downhill.
I had always hoped to be married to the only man I had slept with. Yet, my desire for that was not as strong as my desire to be loved in the now. Marriage seemed so far off and I was intensely physically thirsty from drenching my mind in so many pornographic images and reading so many sexually explicit novels.
In hindsight I see now that my soul was shattered from those meaningless encounters with my 'friend with benefits', then I was completely lost after I had given away my virginity. Things did not turn out the way I thought that would be.
I began to self medicate after a friend invited me to try ecstacy at a rave. I didn't have to think about how dirty I had allowed myself to get, now easily I had made the mistake to share my body with men who were not my husband. I told myself that I would never stop doing X. I started smoking marijuana around this time also.
To be continued......
