I'm doing 17 things
I have been planning to do this since I was younger anyway, but I never felt more of a need to confirm it than I do now. I have been on the internet and have found stories of girls as young as 12 years old losing their virginity to boys as old as 15. It kind of scared me at first. But then I thought about it for a minute. I remember when I was that age I was very curious about sex and wanted to know more about it. I even mentally desired to have sex I just didn’t have a willing participant. I didn’t realize the magnitude of it at the time. I went to church and heard the whole ‘sex before marriage is bad’ speech hundreds of times. I accepted it and said OK, but I was never given a clear reason why it was so bad until I got older. I had to learn through other people’s experiences that sex is a complicated physical and emotional act that can change your life.
When I got older I unoffically decided to remain a virgin until I got married. I just wanted to belong to only one man for the rest of my life. From age 11, I have ALWAYS been a romantic and believe in true love and happily ever afters. I knew that I would be married one day and that I would lose my virginity to my fairy tale prince, my husband. I just did not understand that there was a reason people were tempted to have sex outside of marriage until certain parts of puberty set in. I would go through ‘waves’ throughout the month when I really wanted to have sex. Then a couple of weeks later I would feel repulsed by it. I didn’t know that people’s bodies responded to sexual desire even if a person wasn’t going to have sex.
When I got to high school I saw so many teen girls who were pregnant that I knew from middle school. I couldn’t imagine that they had changed so much over the course of a year or two. Some of my friends that had been having sex would talk to me about it and I felt more inclined to have it myself until I noticed the constant worry of pregnancy that would be in their minds. I never kept up with my menstrual cycles at that age and when my friend told me that when she was on The Pill she had to take it at certain times of day and days of the month. I viewed the whole thing as too complicated. But on the other hand, I was a very shy and lonely girl at the time. My friends around me had boyfriends and I felt kind of jelous so I thought if I had sex with someone maybe I would be happy like my frineds. I was still too shy to act upon it and Thank God I didn’t. Since ninth grade, I have had two opportunities to have sex. And my physical body was responding but my mental body was screaming, “No, no, no!” Maybe that’s a good thing? If I can resist the temptation to have sex even when I’m not in a relationship will it be easier or harder to resist it when I’m with someone who loves me? (Like Elizabeth from Wisconsin!)
At times I do get angry, especially knowing that more of my friends and even cousins and relatives my age and younger are having sex and it makes me feel stupid at times. Come on, I’m a teenager that’s basically all we talk about and when the conch shell gets passed to me I feel embarrassed that I have nothing to share. My older and favorite cousin commended me on my goal but he doesn’t think I can follow through. Since I have self-esteem issues he thinks that if a guys compliments me I will do what he wants because I like him. But I like to believe I have become more mature than that. I may feel ashamed at times when I’m with friends and close family that I haven’t done what they have but I think I will turn out better in the long run. They always brag about how great it is but they never tell about the heartaches and sadness associated with losing their virginity either. I feel it makes better sense to have someone fall in love with you, for your personality and character, not just sex. That is why I think that so many people get their hearts broken.
They have sex and then ‘fall in love’ with the person. They think they have gotten closer but in reality they have put themselves in a dreamy delusion like the ‘honeymoon phase’ of the relationship. When this phase is over, the girl feels emotionally wronged when her guy doesn’t want to spent every waking moment with her anymore and blames him for being distant but he says she is clingy. Eventually, the relationship fizzles out and they move on. The same cycle repeats over and over until the woman meeets a man she really wants to marry and he asks her about her past. (or vice versa). Then the whole ‘none of your business’ or ‘the past shouln’t matter’ thing comes out because the girl is just ashamed of it. No mattter waht a guy says if he really loves you, it does upset him to think of you with other guys. It may upset you to think of him with other girls as well. Then you have to both get tested for STD’s before you get married which can be a very nerve-wrecking experience. I’ve seen my high school friends enter relationships and have sex with every guy they date as if it’s a natural progression. It makes me feel sad for them to think they need to do that. I don’t feel I need to. If a guy asks me about sex and I tell him I’m not doing it do I really need to offer up some kind of explanantion? No, I don’t. It gives me a sense of empowerment to know that I don’t have to do that just to keep a boyfriend. If he dumps me for refusing to give it up, he’s a jerk! I know it sounds like that same tired old line our mom’s gave us when we we’re in high school but I find it to be very true. Chances are, even if you did have sex with him, he wouldn’t have been a good boyfriend anyway. I’m currently not in a relationship. Not becuase of my decision of abstinence, but because I don’t really want a boyfriend in my senior year of high school. I have too much to be looking forward to than to be wondering if my boyfriend is going to pressure me for sex or if I’m pregnant, etc. I still believe in fairy tales, but I don’t think the princess needs to be with every guy in the kingdom until she finds Prince Charming. He already knows who she is and he will find her, no matter how many men she has been with or not. It will just make things more interesting, in my opinion, if the princess waits for her true love to marry her and she is only his princess after that.
