melancholy

I Chose To Stay A Virgin, Here’s How The World Treats Me

Artwork by Yelena Briskenkova

I’ve had a lot of relationships. I’ve had the perfect ones, the horrible ones, and all the stuff in between. And through them all I stayed a virgin because I was assured that, each and every time someone came along, I’d know when the time was right. I’d feel it. I trusted that instinct because I was told to do so.

With time passing by, relationships were built and destroyed. Now, don’t get me wrong, I had wonderful experiences with many people; please do not paint me as someone ungrateful or unsatisfied. However, as with everything else, disappointment, arguments, anger, and betrayal came. Things so dark and twisty, as Meredith from Grey’s Anatomy would say, that one only wishes not to speak of them. And the two things I had upon resurrecting from all the emotional bending and breaking were my pride and my dignity. You know, in today’s society, that is only terminology for women. It’s not an actual thing. Most women, it saddens me to say, don’t have it. It’s either taken away or has never been written within them in the first place. But I was born and raised different, and I sure as hell grew with the affirmations that pride and dignity are what makes a woman. Heck, it’s what makes a human.

So you might call me a strong independent woman, but everywhere I went I was tagged as “foolish” and “pathetic.” However I didn’t mind, because, besides restraint and “mind over body,” I excelled at rebelling against the ordinary, mainstream, society-devised standards.

“Oh, you’re a virgin? That makes you worthless.”

“Inexperienced.”

“Dumb.” 

“What the hell, you won’t even take a sip?”

“Just one smoke won’t kill you, mommy’s girl.”

 I loved those. They had an opposite effect on me from the one people wanted to achieve. They made me stubborn, more determined, and more alien.

However, none of it really got in the way of my „love“ life. I dated. Oh I sure did. There were guys who were terrible for me and who were perfect for me. And I gave all of them a chance, really. I gave myself one too. I thought to myself (regarding the terrible ones):

“Opposites attract, right? I’m supposed to fulfil him and he’s supposed to fulfil…ehm. Right, yeah. Not literally. But yeah, I get what I’m saying.”

And for the perfect guys, I went:

„We are exactly the same, we don’t even have to talk or bond or hang out because we are so alike. I definitely know what he’s thinking of right now. We just haven’t done that one physical thing, but apart from that everything else is in order.”

And I told myself a number of many more things and hoped my body would work along with my reassurances, would take over my constantly working brain, release a happy hormone here and there, and I’d take that step, that leap, and I’d no longer be „foolish“ and „inexperienced,“ let alone „pathetic.“ But the time never felt right. That last bit of something, the magical surge within, the powerful craving that would take over my reason and restraint, that whim of emotion and adrenaline that would make me do crazy things like act upon my physical urges never bloody happened. It never accumulated within me.

Perhaps I was way too stuck to the ground, or I was and still am asexual. Or, perhaps, deep down I knew that, if I had done it with any one of them, I’d feel the very last bits of my dignity would be gone, and thus I would be worth nothing. I would have traded the last resource I had, and I’d never have it back. Pretty sure I sound ungrateful again.

You’d say: “Well if it was done out love, you wouldn’t have lost anything.” Ah yes, indeed, you are right dear pure soul. And the guys I had been with were really loving, and all of them left a mark of their own upon my heart. However, their personalities, aspirations and beliefs, goals and motivations, appearances or charisma, none of it ever reproduced a love for them as strong as I had for Him. None of them felt worthy. And even though today nobody feels right for me and I certainly feel wrong for everyone, as tattered and empty as I am, as much as I felt incapable of love or trust, I would without hesitation do the act with Him, regardless of the fact that I haven’t seen him in over three years and regardless of the fact that we are both different people than we used to be.

It wouldn’t be a whimsical act, something that required my reason to fade in the moment. No. It would be a thorough thought process, an idea that I so longed for once, and now I just feel like he owed it to me. He owed it to my reason, which I had lost the day I fell in love with him. He owes that to my ego, which wants to take over and conscientiously manifest the act, for we both know that we are equally broken on levels only known to us, and our loveless act would make little difference in our ordinarily loveless lives. But it would give me a peace of mind. It would give me a false achievement: that I have made love to the love of my life, as broken, unloving, and as irreparably unaware of my existence as he is.

I am a virgin by choice, for I choose to have one big loveless lie with someone who left me dead inside rather than dozens of small lies with people who are trying to resurrect me. With that said, I also may be a masochist virgin *laughs*. But then again, let me quote my favourite author: “Pain demands to be felt.” And mine is sure as hell one demanding bitch.

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Anonymously submitted to ArtParasites

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