the making of ambivalence
The formation of my sexual identity has been shaped mainly by ambivalence and instability. I was born an expressive child who was unafraid to show or say what I felt; I loved so freely. At 21, I’m desperately trying to become that carefree child who was lost amidst contradictory messages, hardship and emotional abuse.
I was born the third and last child of two loving parents, but I was their first unplanned pregnancy. Since my mother had been constantly told as a child that she had been an unwanted pregnancy, she and my father did all they could to tell me that I was not only wanted, but loved. However, two years before I was born something else my parents did not plan started to happen; my mother began what would be a 23-year struggle with Multiple Sclerosis. In that time, my mother has become quadriplegic, is almost unable to swallow or cough, and is in constant pain. In spite of this hardship, my father treats her as if there is nothing wrong with her. He will still tell anyone that she is the most beautiful person he knows and that he was truly blessed when she came into his life. This is my role model for an ideal relationship. Unfortunately, their undying love is the only part of their relationship that is healthy. My mother’s illness keeps them from having a healthy sexual life; therefore, sex has no part in my envisioned ideal relationship.
My mother’s illness also brought something else into my life that has greatly shaped my sexual identity. Her name is Mace (short for Maxine). She is the widow of my mother’s half-brother. Mace began living with my family shortly before I was born, when MS first started to give my mother trouble. My parents couldn’t foresee the pain they were bringing into their house. But even when she began to wreak havoc on our family, they couldn’t stand up to her or force her to leave.
The first sign of trouble was when Mace forbade my father of changing my diapers. She said that she was afraid my father would “do inappropriate things” to me if he was allowed to see my private parts. As I got older, she would have a tantrum every time I hugged my father. On top of that, she was always complaining about how lazy and worthless she thought my father was. She effectively separated me from the only male role model in my life. When my brother, Caleb, was about 10 (which means I was 5), Mace accused him of putting his hand up mine and my sister’s skirts when he picked us up. Her unsubstantiated outbursts regarding my father and brother made me afraid to go near them. And she instilled a fear in me that men would go out of their way to hurt me. She said that if a woman stepped out of her house after midnight then she would be raped, and if a woman left her door unlocked that a man would come into her house and rape her. She made it seem like all men are evil and that they only want to hurt women.
While she was separating me from the men in my life, she became closer to me and my sister, Rosa. She convinced my parents to let Rosa and me sleep in the same bed with her, which continued until I was in the eighth grade. And she wouldn’t let anyone else bathe Rosa or me. It was then that she began to accuse me of wrongdoing. Whenever she washed me between the legs, I would shudder, and that betrayal of my discomfort led her to accuse me of “letting boys touch me down there.” She said she could tell that I was becoming a dirty whore. Once when we were grocery shopping after church on Sunday, I was twirling because I liked the feeling of wind that was created by my twirling skirt. Mace saw me and reprimanded me. She said that I was only trying to show off my underwear to the men in the store. When I was about eight, I began to pretend that my Barbie and Ken were having sex, and yet I don’t remember being told exactly what sex was. After a few months, Mace caught me doing this and she took all my Ken dolls away, with her usual rant about how dirty I was.
But she wouldn’t just be angry with me for being around men or doing anything she considered sexual; she also got angry with me for no reason. Being a child I thought that there had to be a reason. Eventually I didn’t think that my actions were bad, I thought that I was bad. The older I became, the more I hated myself. Part of me thought I deserved Mace’s wrath, because I couldn’t stop having sexual thoughts or wanting to have a good relationship with my father and brother, and I couldn’t stop making her angry. Another part of me hated to be yelled at, so I decided to hide all of my feelings. I thought that maybe then people wouldn’t realize how evil I believed myself to be.
Many other things in my life added to my secrecy. I grew up Episcopalian and was involved in the church’s youth group, Junior EYC. In this group we talked about all sorts of topics, including sex and masturbation. The basic sentiment of our adult leader was that any sexual activity outside of marriage and masturbation were Satan’s work and that God hated it. I had masturbated a few times when this teaching make me less comfortable with it than I already was; before then, I had been uncomfortable with giving myself pleasure, but now I thought that God would hate me for masturbating, so I stopped. This sealed my belief that I was evil; I had the urge to commit an act that God hated.
I never went through the “ew boys” phase of childhood. All the time I was growing up I had crushes on boys, but I always hid them. However, I also had crushes on girls, but I would never identify them as that. In middle school I didn’t date any boys, so I was constantly call a lesbian. I did like girls as well as boys, but I didn’t want my tormentors in school to be right, so I refused to admit being enamored with girls in my class or famous women. And though my parents preached the virtue of loving people regardless of skin color, religion, nationality, or any other reason, my mother’s biggest insult for a person was to call them gay. My mother loved me in spite of all the “bad” things I did, so I couldn’t admit that I was bisexual for fear that that would cause her to hate me.
My school’s “sex education” only added to my policy of secrecy. They didn’t teach us about sex. They separated my class by gender and only taught the girls about how girls’ bodies change in puberty while the boys only learned how their bodies would change in puberty. They showed us that it was okay to not talk about sex, even in a sex education class.
At the same time, the media became less concerned with the amount of sexual content they allowed the public to see. The media made it okay to show nudity, intercourse, masturbation and even homosexuality and violent sexual acts. Social norms for displaying sexuality became less stringent as everything else in my life told me that the rules for such displays should be made more stern.
Everywhere in my life I was being given opposing messages: either express none of your sexuality or all of it. Unfortunately, I internalized both views, but it wasn’t until I was 15 that I expressed the latter. I became frustrated with concealing every emotion I experienced. I was tired of playing the role of the innocent little girl. For the first time I rebelled and showed the world just how unstable I had always been by commencing on a long list of impulsive and self-destructive behaviors. I had always been an insomniac, but now I began taking walks in the middle of the night (and never once was I raped for doing so). I would say whatever crude sexual thoughts came to mind, no matter who was around. I had been a self-mutilator since I was 12, but now I displayed my wounds and scars. I began to mutilate all of the parts of me that were considered “bad,” especially erogenous zones. I started having many different sexual relationships with no thought as to contraception or protection against STDs.
My most prominent and most devastating relationship was with Simon. Simon was my neighbor and my first love. We dated off and on for 3 years. I loved him unabashedly and completely, and he did the same for me. Except he was just as unstable as I was. He popped pills, drank copious amounts of alcohol every night, and was in trouble with the law many times. But my instability reached a breaking point before his. That breaking point led to a suicide attempt when I was 18. Simon was driving the car I jumped out of. It was going more than 70 mph, but I was miraculously unharmed physically. Simon stopped trying to deal with my self-destructiveness. He stopped speaking to me altogether and refused to see me.
After that I tried to shut out my emotions again. I didn’t want to feel anything. I began to lose time. I would black out and wake up in places far away. I had many relationships in rapid succession over a four month period, until my careless sexual encounters left me pregnant. I realized at that moment just how reckless and unstable I was. I didn’t know how to care for myself, so there was no way I would survive long enough to give birth to a baby, let alone raise it. Though I had always been against them, I had an abortion. On that day I decided to change myself. I stopped having casual sex, educated myself on safe sex practices and was tested for STDs. I worked with my therapist to attempt to be stable. But my stability I hoped for would be postponed because of an occurrence almost a year after my abortion.
I was close friends with Simon’s father, Mr. Jones. I was in Simon’s backyard talking to Mr. Jones about Simon and how upset I still was that he wouldn’t talk to me. Mr. Jones was going to give me a hug, but then said he was concerned his daughter would see us, so he led me to his garage. I didn’t see it coming. He lifted up my shirt and pulled me to his bare chest. I squirmed away from his grasp and yanked my shirt back down. I didn’t know how to react so I just started making jokes and pretending nothing had happened. But I still felt uncomfortable, so I quickly made an excuse to get back home. I was about to leave when he said, “Before you go can you give me a hug?” I shouldn’t have. Before he let go of me, he forced me to kiss him. I didn’t know how to tell anyone about it and at the same time didn’t know how to stop myself from telling everyone about it, so I just stopped speaking. All of my friends and family loved to hug and hold hands and clap each other on the back, but after my encounter with Mr. Jones it became unnerving to be touched. I just felt that everything remotely good inside of me died. I started to formulate a plan to end my life. I went home to see my parents one last time. When everyone else in the house was asleep, I went outside and cried. I was so upset that I didn’t see Mr. Jones come up behind me. He realized that I didn’t notice he was there, so he took the opportunity to surprise me. When I shied away from him he saw that I wasn’t simply surprised, I was frightened. He asked what was wrong. I told him that I never wanted to see him again. When his face fell and he walked away from me I felt a rush of life. That simple command was enough for me to want to live again.
In my renewed life I have been searching for a tiny glimpse into my true identity, but the truth is that I don’t know who I am. The basis for my sexual identity is simply a culmination of individual experiences. They have made me both erotophilic and erotophobic, completely open and completely shut off, courageous and hopelessly afraid, but nothing in between. The task I will spend the rest of my life completing is to sort through those experiences and put back together my shattered sense of self. I must form a consistent identity in which I am not evil, but beautiful and worth loving.