Sexuality

Last night I wanted to write a post about one of the things which has caused me confusion in the past and now seems to be doing the same thing. For many it may not seem like a big deal, but for me it is hugely confusing and I don’t know what to think of believe.

Wow, this is so hard to write……

Sexuality is something which confuses many people through their teenage years and I was no different in this respect. The difference for me was that I knew I liked boys but I also seemed to like girls. I was curious about other girls and found that I was often attracted to them in the same way I was to boys. I remember being about 9 or so and puberty was just around the corner for many of my classmates. A few were really developed for their age, far more than I was and there was a sense of them being grown up because of it. I may have started puberty early but it was not like I was suddenly a woman. I was still a kid, a very confused kid.

I was by this point in my life a little scared of boys. I had been molested by the male family friend and I really didn’t like it that much. I was however not scared of girls even though they had done far more with and to me. When I close my eyes I can still see one of the girls and thinking how beautiful she was but this was from the mind of a 6-year-old so it is confused because whilst I liked looking at her I didn’t like what she did…at least not to start off with.

As I grew older I experimented with girls from school. I felt safe with them and liked what we did…baring in mind that I am not yet 10…By the time I was 14 I had experienced far more and understood what sex was, I understood that being a lesbian was something that got you bullied and that it was better to stick with liking boys. But this was hard for me given how much they scared me.

The first boy that I really liked was older than me by 4 years, had a car and I thought he was pretty cool. However he was a little socially inept and whilst we did loads of things sexually, I just didn’t feel anything. I dumped him because there was another boy I liked. He was only 2 years older than me and we got on really well. I lost my virginity to him and he is the father of my eldest daughter. We went out on and off over the next 4 years. I couldn’t get him out of my system, but when we weren’t together I went out with other boys. At about  15 I fancied girls as well as boys which kind of confused my head a bit. I knew my experience from the past but figured that this was not who I really was. I liked boys – didn’t I? How could I like boys and girls too? Why did I like girls? Was it because of what happened when I was younger? I experimented a lot over the next few years and a whole heap of other things which I don’t want to talk about…

By the time I was 19 I had my daughter and lived in a mother and baby hostel with other young mums. There was a girl there who I clicked with. Her son was 10 days older than my daughter so we had a fair amount in common. I really liked her, not just as a friend but I really fancied her. I was half seeing a boy at this time but it wasn’t serious and to be honest I wasn’t after anything. I was trying to cope with being a young single mum and not screwing it up.

As I got to know this girl, who we will call Z, I began to have really strong feelings for her. She admitted to me that she had slept with girls too and we talked about all that. She was the first girl I had met who liked boys and girls. I didn’t feel so weird for 5 minutes and felt safe talking to her about things.

One night we got drunk. The kids were asleep and we kissed. I remember my heart pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears and my stomach had that butterfly feeling. It was different to any of the other kisses I had experienced with a girl. It was deep and sensual leaving us both breathless. I loved her and I wanted to be with her, but I was scared by these strong feelings I had for her. She told me that she loved me too and we wound up sleeping together. She was beautiful and I was amazed by her. It didn’t last. It was confusing for us both and we drifted apart. I saw her a couple of times and the attraction was quite clearly there still. But it wasn’t for another 3 years or so before I spent proper time with her. She came to my house for a party. My first husband was there and my bf (now husband). We mixed drinks, played loud music, got stoned and had a laugh. However, Z and I were a little awkward with each other. The boys thought she was great, beautiful, funny and a handful! I didn’t know what to think or how to feel. All those emotions I had from years before came rushing back to the surface, but I was married and knew that I couldn’t act on these feelings. She did kiss me and grope me….and eventually I had to push her away. I didn’t want to though. I wanted to be close to her and be with her. It was so hard and confusing for me. I was not happy in my marriage by this point but I wouldn’t fuck things up because I was confused by her.

However, I got angry with her when she made a pass at my husband and he seemed to be willing to let it happen. I was sat between them and got mad. We were all drunk, but this just pissed me off. I was really pissed with him more than her. What the fuck did he think he was doing? He knew about my past, he knew that I had slept with this girl. Did he think we were going to have some kind of threesome? It was never going to happen. The last time I had a threesome I wound up being assaulted. There was no way this was going to ever happen.

I never saw her again….

Over the years I have met other girls who have claimed to be bi-sexual and have dared to fancy them but nothing has ever happened. I am a mother with 3 kids and have been with my husband now for 10 years. My husband has known about my feelings towards girls but I have tried to make it clear that it was in the past and I have moved on and know who I am.

Ha, well, so I thought! In the past few months my head has become confused again. I don’t know if this is because of the past and all the feelings I struggled with when I was younger or whether this is something which I am going to have to accept is a part of who I am.

One of the girls from my STEPPS group has got me confused. She was sitting in the pub garden with her sunglasses on and her hair flicked over. She looked stunning. I got all these feelings come racing at me and I have not been able to stop thinking about her. I do fancy her and I would sleep with her. I am scared by these feelings. I don’t know if they are real or in my head.

Last night I decided to tell my husband about how I am feeling, not about the girl, but about the fact that I think that I might be bi-sexual. I am not sure how to feel about this, I am not sure whether this is real or part of my mental health problems and the issues surrounding the past. I know that I love my husband and I know that I would never cheat on him, but I have this massive desire to sleep with a woman.

This is so hard to write because I don’t talk about this with anyone. The girls I have been with in the past are not in my life any more and the girls I know now do not know all the gory details of my life. Everyone is under the impression that I am heterosexual and happily married.

My family would disown me if I ever mentioned that I had willing slept with girls in the past.

I am confused because I am very attracted to my husband…….

I want to say more but I honestly can’t. I am too scared to say what I am thinking. I am too scared to write it and to be so open about things…Yes, I know I have been past posts, but I was not sober. I am neither stoned or drunk right now and this is me writing. The other posts I have written are blurs to me. I don’t remember writing some of them and the ones where I have talked a lot about my past I know that I was off my face on something…

I want to be open and honest, but being me, being open and honest when I am so confused about things is really difficult. I am a really private person, I don’t talk about things. I keep it all inside and letting people in scares me. I am very different from the drunk/stoned version of me and I am worried about what I am saying….I am embarrassed by some of the things I have written and I am trying to work out so many things right now…please don’t give up on me. Please don’t decide that the person who is off their face is more interesting and has more to say…I can’t be that person any more….I need to be me….whoever me is.

Day 4/30 – Your views on religion

This is easily one of the more challenging of the items on the list to write about and it is fair to say that I have been dreading it. I have decided that best way for me to write about this is just to talk about my own education in religion and where I am today. 

I was Christened into the Church of England and attended our local church alongside many of the people who lived near us and were friends of my family. We stopped going to that particular church when I was 7 as we moved house and there was a church a little nearer. They were both under the same diocese or whatever they are called so we still had involvement with the old church and the people with whom we were friends. Being only little we went to Sunday school for the first part of the service and would go in for the last 15 minutes of the service. I remember loving the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah etc…They were intriguing and my book had great pictures and the stories sounded amazing and magical. 

When I was 7 I also changed school, I went to a Catholic day school run by nuns. This was a bit of a culture shock, suddenly we had feast days and Mass to attend as well as some of the girls first Holy Communion…those of us who were C of E were the choir. This was fine by me and I managed to convince my mum that I really needed a white dress…eventually I added that it was perfectly fine for it to have blue spots on it!! I loved that dress and felt as amazing and special as those whose day it really was.

At 10 I went to a Catholic boarding school, again run by nuns, but these ones didn’t wear habits….I was utterly confused but felt that this was far more normal and the fact that they all had ‘boy’ haircuts was highly amusing to me.  I was the very first non-catholic boarder at the school so def stood out on Sundays when we went to Mass. Being young, the services never made any sense and the best part of having to go was that we sang some great songs. We also celebrated feast days, had Mass a lot, had to fast on a wednesday. The feast days always meant Mass on that day which was great because we missed out on lessons. I was more than happy to do that, anything was better than double science or maths!

I would say that the influence of both C of E thinking and Catholicism gave me a greater education than many have when it comes to religion. They believed in the same God, celebrated many of the same things but also had very differing views on other things. You can imagine that at 14/15, given what I was already going through I found this all very confusing. I was meant to be confirmed and attended classes for it, but there was one lesson which really got my blood boiling. I didn’t agree with what the preist was saying and found myself walking home really thinking about being confirmed into something where I would have to agree with things. I can’t remember what it was exactly, something to do with homosexuality, or abortion or something like that.

The whole thing just felt so narrow minded and controlling so I stopped going to church. The last school I went to had no religion attached to it so religious study lessons would embrace ALL religions and suddenly I found my world opening up as well as being even more confused. 

Over the years I have given myself the time and the space to think about it.  For me personally, and I do not mean to offend, but I find it hard to believe in a God. I believe in evolution and the big bang theory and it makes sense to me. However, there is a little bit of me which then ponders like many ‘well what is the point of all this if there is nowhere afterwards, something better’. This thought scares me, so there is a part of me which hopes that there is something waiting for us when we are done here. 

For me, Religion taught me many important lessons, one of which was kindness to those more vulnerable than myself. This is how I have chosen to behave as a person in a world which is filled with horrors and beauty. I do not believe in ramming religion down people’s throats nor do I believe in making fun or dismissing anyone for their beliefs. We should all be allowed to find our own way and be respected for that choice. 

I hope that this has not in anyway offended anyone, it was not my intention. This was just a writing challenge which was supposed to make me think which it definitely succeeded in doing.