Hello! Thank you for reading. It’s been a long while. I am finally feeling open to this again, whatever this is or will end up being. It’s going to be a bit of an experiment at first. I’m hoping to settle into some kind of rhythm, but I’m also leaving space for it to be as human as I am. It will be a mix of letters like the ones below, maybe some prose, expanded versions of the bookthoughts i usually share on insta, solicited advice (!), and anything else that makes me feel good.
CW// consensual sex that resulted in harm, grey areas of consent
I’m working on my first bit of creative writing in nearly three years. I don’t want to minimize it in any way, but I originally had working in quotes because it seems like too hard of a word for the shifty, delicate thing I have drafted. I feel excited and nervous about it, and I’ve managed to stay on the playfully curious side of things so far. Right now it’s prose. It may become a short story. It may never move beyond the google doc I’m crafting it in, but it will be mine which is enough.
The piece is about grey areas of consensual sex and emotional harm and neglect I endured, as well as harm I’m responsible for causing, in my relationship with D. From this side of things, I’m not quite sure how I rationalized any of these moments when or after they happened, but I did, repeatedly. Seeing them all stacked up in a row is making me reckon with many things. Primarily, the dissonance between the love I say I believe I deserve and the love, or lack thereof, I accept.
Here’s a snippet (that will likely change quite a bit):
It wasn’t considered toxic when
I said I needed him to go slow the first night we had sex, and he said sure and then shoved himself inside me so quick I was displaced from myself by an avalanche of pain.
And I told myself, I chose to lay my need down and bury it silently beneath the weight of his want. But I was choosing against what I didn’t want which was to ask again, and be affirmed and disregarded in the same stroke.
Earlier this week I read Melissa Febos’ essay about empty consent which felt resonant to me and shattering in so many ways. It’s mostly about nonconsensual touch, but also about the ways in which women are conditioned and socialized to ignore the wants of our bodies from young ages. There’s a section where Febos talks about attending a cuddle party, the rules of which require explicit consent, but also the requirement to reply to someone’s “No” with, “Thank you for taking care of yourself.”
Those seven words stuck with me throughout the day as I thought about the multiple instances in my relationship with D like the one described in my snippet above, but also so many others where my needs or “No” were barely considered let alone honored. The moments where I wanted a cuddle more than I wanted to come, when I wanted a friend not a fuck, and when the times my, “I don’t really want to have sex,” were met with, “Okay, but you have to keep kissing me,” which, of course, would result in us having consensual sex that in hindsight falls somewhere in-between consensual and nonconsensual sex, while still remaining outside of the realm of sexual assault.
Like many, I was steeped in criticism from birth. In moments like these where the running narrative in my head is about how I’ve failed to take care of myself well, or whether these allowances mean I don’t respect or even love myself very much, it’s easy to slip back into punishing myself the way my parents did. When you need love and get nothing, hurt can at least feel like something. Instead, I’m asking myself what is the most loving way I can imagine caring for myself in this moment, and doing my best to give that to myself. I’m reminding myself I can rebuild inner trust by taking care of myself so that I fear the repercussions of my mistakes less, I’m being tender, and I’m being forgiving. I hope you are too.
—Aim
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