The shame still comes...but now I finally do too.

When I was 15 years old, I took my first pregnancy test.

I remember leaving 6th period with a “stomachache”, meeting my friend’s boyfriend in the hallway outside my classroom.

I remember him asking me, with a sneering look on his face, if I had “studied” for this test, as he handed me a small cardboard box that made my heart drop to my toes. Asshole.

Dear 15 year old me, this wasn’t wrong because you were “too young” to have sex. This was wrong because you didn’t want to have sex. Other people, including yourself, will try to pass off what happened to you as age-inappropriate sex, when it was in fact wrong because it was nonconsensual.

I remember going to the vending machine, buying a bottle of red powerade, chugging it as I ran upstairs to the second floor chemistry wing bathroom. Handicap stall, sitting on the floor with my head between my knees, cell phone opened and poised to make that call. Then the flood of relief, the sobs of relief, the stunned face looking back at me in the mirror. We are n e v e r doing this again, I said to myself over and over.

I had lost my virginity just two weeks earlier. I really hate that phrase, “lost” my virginity, but in this case it feels accurate. A sense of loss, is exactly what I felt after he dropped me back at school after we had sex. I never said no, I never rejected him, it was always just assumed. We had been dating over 6 months, and we had done everything else physical, so when I felt him between my legs I just thought, “I guess this is what happens next”.

I was raised in an incredibly progressive, sex-positive, open-minded household, I had all the educational resources possible available to me during puberty and my childhood. I have ever privilege possible as a cis able bodied white womxn living in a liberal, urban environment. So how the hell did I end up taking a pregnancy test as a freshman in high school? Because it is impossible to protect young womxn from rape culture. From a culture that tells them their worth is defined by a man's desiring gaze. From a culture that tells her to shut up and be chill and open their legs.

Dear 15 year old me, your first sexual experiences do NOT define you. They will not dictate anything about your future, or future sexual experiences. You are resilient, you will shake the world, anyone would be lucky to have five minutes of your time, much less

I am 21 now, and I had my first orgasm one year ago, after over 6 years of being sexually active.

To this day (and I mean literally last night) I sometimes sob after sex, even though I’m in a committed, loving, healthy relationship now...I cry because I feel overwhelmed with the layers of shame I have to work through almost every time in order to just feel good and deserving of an orgasm.

I cry for my 15 year old self, how much I want to crawl back in time and shake her and tell her that she can go far far away from the people that have hurt her. Tell her that she doesn’t ever have to do anything she doesn’t want to do ever again. Tell her that she will buy a vibrator and make herself feel amazing anytime she wants. Tell her that while the shame won’t go away, she’ll learn how to turn it into productive rage that keeps her certain she’ll never let herself be treated poorly again.