January 24th - In Thought
And I’m not dead!
I say that to say, that I have been celibate for almost 3 years now. My abstaining from sex is not for religious reasons. Rather, it is for spiritual reasons.
For too long I was looking for a connection all the while I was disconnected from my own spirit and everyone else’s. I thought that sex was such intimate act that I assumed that there was connection with whomever my sexual partner was on a given night. Looking back, if this beautiful act of sharing my body with someone was so precious, then why did hop from bed to bed? My search for Prince Charming trumped everything, and if I had to give of my body to believe that the next man was The One, then that I did.
I wanted someone to love me so badly because I was so uncomfortable in my own skin. I sought validation from others because I saw myself as ugly, unworthy, stupid, boring, and all of the self-loathing above. My skin tone uneven due to severe flare-ups of eczema in my adolescence. I feared disrobing in front of anyone. The voice in my head told me that men would runaway from me. My early sex life the lights were off or dimmed. Already had been doing club drugs; one morning after staggering out of a club I ended up at a bathhouse and I had sex for the first time high.
For a long time the drugs quieted the voices in my head. Then it stopped working and I found myself not able to stop the voices and using more because the drugs worked once before. Surprisingly, HIV status was not a direct result of my drugs use. Nevertheless, the diagnosis fueled the idea of my being punished by God and that I was unworthy of a happy existence. Another thing the drugs did was enabled me to just have sex and leave, until they stopped working on that too. My addiction manifested into romantic obsessions. The search for Prince Charming was on again. I was looking for someone to save me from me.
Who was “me” in the first place? I didn’t know.
Believe it, or not, I stopped having sex with anyone at least 5 months prior to me coming into recovery. Things got to point where, I didn’t want to go through all the drama of finding a partner for the night - I just wanted to get high. I chose not to have sex in my first year on recovery because it was suggested to me. Don’t get me wrong, there was some resistance at first and when I tried to pursue casual sex it was plain to see that the only thing I knew was to go online, go to a bathhouse, go to a bar/club to find sex. For me, abstaining was right thing to do for my recovery.
Still on my journey and nurturing my spirit; that is why I am still abstaining. Not having sex hasn’t killed me. Recovery gives me the chance to become the person that I want to be with and to start becoming comfortable in my own skin.
No one is going to come riding in a white horse to carry me off into the sunset; I have to learn to love myself so that I can save myself - one day at a time.