Believe in You!

So I promised myself a WickedWednesday if I got all my paperwork done. Well, I didn’t, but it was stop or die. So here I am! Forgive any errors – I am flying by the seat of my frilly knickers today.

This week’s prompt is ‘Believe in Yourself’ – boy, do I need a bit of that. I think I suffer as most creatives do with the passion for making and sharing but the creeping crushing horror that maybe my stuff is just pants.

So, I was pondering something that happened long, long ago…

I have always, and I mean for as long as I have existed on this world as me, been able to come. Of course there was a time when I couldn’t put a name to it, but I could always do it. It was usually accompanied by extremely visual fantasies. Anyhoo – whilst I never felt weird about doing it, I never mentioned it to anyone, even my mum, who was always very open about sexuality and ‘the birds and the bees’. It wasn’t until I was older that I heard words like ‘masturbate’ and ‘wank’ associated with my actions – euuww. These words did NOT sound like the lovely comforting, sensual thing that I did. They sounded icky and sordid or something. And besides, the terms seemed only to apply to boys.

When we were told in sex education that boys masturbated loads and thought about sex every seven minutes I almost snorted out loud – only every seventh minute? How dull for them, I thought, and waited until the teacher brought up the girls’ sex thought stats. None. Nada. Zip.

So I realised that either I was the only girl in the world doing this orgasm thing, or people were being very strange.

Months or maybe years later, during a camp – some sort of high school or guide camp, we were all snuggled and giggling in the girls’ dorm late at night when one of the girls said, “Hey do any of you wank?”

you do what???

I was thrilled! But because she used one of the euuwww words, I momentarily hesitated before jumping up excitedly. And I must say, at the time, I was glad I did because there was one of those hideous awkward silences that just fill the room. You could breathe in the horror.

“Euww, what are you on about, you perv?” was the first reply, whereby everyone thereafter wrinkled their noses and ridiculed the poor girl. To my shame, I simply kept quiet, hiding in my sleeping bag and blushing to the roots of my soul. So it was true. Most girls did not do it. And if they did they were pervs.

When I think back to this moment in my life, I feel so sad for all of us in that room. We had an opportunity to be open about something amazing and not make each other feel shit about having normal sexual feelings. We could have normalised, been honest and created a bond. We were certainly not too young to be discussing our own bodies and how wonderful they are. What I feel most bad about is not seeking out that girl later and confiding in her. I just left her thinking she was alone in her pervdom.

Now, in adulthood, I put the blame for this firmly with the sexual education of the time. Though, I’m saddened to say that from what I hear from mothers of girls, not much has changed.

So what has this to do with ‘Believe in Yourself’? Well, I let other people make me feel like I was wrong. That masturbation was wrong, that sexual feelings for yourself is wrong. I’m sure it put me on a path of not believing in many other aspects of my life too, not just sexual. So here I am, telling that other girl, “I do it too! And probably so do they – and hooray for us all!”

Phew! I’m glad I got that off my chest.

I have grown up trying to be as sex positive as I can be through all my erotic endeavours. I just wish I’d believed in myself a little sooner… and I could always do with believing a little more...

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