I was once a hot mess. I know this because I’ve asked old friends what they thought of me back then. There was no rhyme or reason for my behavior in my teens and early twenties. I was completely unaware that I was, in my own way, desperately trying to work through my damage. Sometimes it is easier to admit to sexual abuse than to discuss the fallout. What we hide in our teens and twenties, and sometimes, our lifetimes, and how we present ourselves are often at odds. I’m willing to bet not one of my peers in high school had any inkling that I was sexually and physically abused by my brother, just as I had no inkling of their troubles.

Let’s go back even further, before any of that happened. My dad says he knew I was going to be a handful at an early age. What he meant by that is I am a natural flirt. Does this go hand in hand with someone who is a sexual being? I don’t know, all I know is I enjoyed the game. Of course, the game was interrupted and quashed at an early age, through no fault of my own. This had a tremendous effect on my budding sexuality. I’m sure I gave off mixed signals, especially in high school. I was desperate to be wanted, yet terrified that anyone would want me. I wanted to be physical and experiment, yet some part of my brain would not allow that.

My therapist told me this is common behavior in sexual abuse victims. The next phase is definitely common behavior in sexual abuse victims: promiscuity. I am neither proud nor ashamed of that phase in my life. The mid-70s were a heady time for sex. Pre-AIDS, post-birth control, and post-women’s liberation, the act of taking control of your sex life was, for women my age, almost a political statement. I was in Austin, Texas at the time, and the city was teeming with liberated women. I had fun. I had some fabulous encounters and some scary ones and many that simply were. The key thing was that I was in control of my sex life, and who I had sex with. Mind you, my taste was all over the place. My standards were capricious and ill-thought-out. I was at peak hot mess-ness during this period. It’s a wonder I survived relatively unscathed.

Then I got married. Did I submerge my sexuality to make the marriage survive, or did the marriage submerge me? I’m not sure how it worked, only that after a few years and many, many missteps, I was no longer true to myself. I didn’t know how to ask for what I wanted, and I’m not sure he did either. No blame, ours would hardly be the first or last marriage where sex sputtered and died.

Lyme struck just as I was ready to fully reclaim ownership of my own sexuality. Divorce, telling my dad (finally!) of my brother’s abuse, and therapy had combined, along with being single, to get to a place that was healthy. Not that I was unhealthy,  just fucked up enough to have to work through all that crap to get to a place that felt healthy. What Lyme gave me was the gift of contemplation times ten. I worked through everything else until there was nothing else but this, the most personal of issues. I almost feel ashamed discussing sexuality in my blog, but isn’t that part of the problem? Why should I feel that way? Why should any of us feel that way? It’s not like I’m confessing to dressing up like a chipmunk for my sweet bear (not that there’s anything wrong with that…). I’m admitting I’m a sexual being. It almost feels frivolous, and, in the grand scale of things, it is. After humans have fulfilled their biological functions, sex really serves no use but for pleasure.

There is a scale of human sexuality, all the way from asexual to sex addict. I fall well within the norm, thankfully. In this day and age to be outside the norm is becoming a subversive act. Why people feel the need to quash others sexual orientations and sexual proclivities is beyond me. Unless someone is underage or hasn’t consented, I don’t care what other people do or who they love. I’m proud that I am no longer a hot mess. I’m happy that I know what I want, what I like and that I feel unashamed. Humans are, by nature, hardwired to want and enjoy sex. My wiring got a little crossed at an early age. Fifty-eight is not too late to rewire and find a new spark.

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