losing the big ‘v’ & the 7 year itch
ed: After leaving this post ‘in the drawer’ (so to speak) for the past two years, I am finally going to rewrite a significant portion so that it carries some level of sophistication and poignancy….
Original Post Date: 20th December, 2004
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For all the life that I appear to have lived, there is one moment in time which has shaped my destiny for the past 7 years and was the reason for quite a few hard-earned dollars being handed over to my local psychologist in an attempt to gain some clarity on the insides of my brain.
As you can probably guess, this defining moment was the loss my virginity… kind of ironic the one moment in my life where i’m supposed to be in awe, bewildered and dazzled that I would come so unstuck, hopelessly fall in love (for the first time) and start a journey that would see my heart torn out of me in a Woody Allen-esque sequence of inane suffering.
I know why I want to share this story with you, but i’m not going to share with you all the details. For all those who are close to me who think they know why i’m sharing, I can only assure you that i’m doing this for entirely selfless reasons in an attempt to qualify my feelings on a topic that dominates my life to this day.
I was 16.
Rebecca was a girl i’d met online (ed: this was a *long* time before Internet dating even existed) who self-described herself as sexually aware, an arts student and noted that the boys that she’d met thought she was ‘cute, in a french-italian way’ ….
…. She was never really that attractive …
I was fascinated by her. At no stage did I think that i’d actually meet her in person, I just fantasised about it. She was older than me and had seen the world in ways I couldn’t imagine.
Her life had been one of pain and suffering, drugs and alcohol. A brilliant mind shadowed by an uncanny ability for self-loathing and deprecation. I was smitten before I even knew what it was to be smitten.
Being in her company was thrilling, though I never really enjoyed her company as a person. I was in awe of her presence as an individual. I felt that I had a connection with her, and I was prepared to do anything for her. (ed: ever wanted to know why I’ve spent a lifetime putting girls on pedestals…).
She was living with her ex-boyfriend. I know where the house is and I lived only 2 minutes down the road there for some time with Kat. Strange how you find yourself back at the places you least expect.
It was never going to work.
I was young and wanted her attention, I wanted sex, I wanted what I didn’t know but couldn’t stop thinking about. And I was prepared to do whatever it took to get there.
So we talked, and she told me stories of the life that she lived, how she changed her name and escaped a violent and drug-fuelled existence. Of how much of this is true, i’ll never really know. Even though I was spiraling out of control and in her world, I didn’t care. For a boy who had lived a life of relative privilege, never doing without, never missing out, I was fascinated in a dark sense of those who had suffered and earned their way. I felt jaded and disconnected from the world. I had the perfect life but was never popular, never wore the trendy clothes, never had the cool friends.
I hated myself.
She is the first girl I went down on. It was awful. Thankfully at a later stage (next girl) I was to realise that most girls maintain far better care of themselves and that my repulsive experience wasn’t a mainstain of all foreplay. But I did it, I did it for her. I did it for me.
I remember going into the city, me in my jeans and t-shirt, looking barely 16 and a half. Rebecca in her black, catching the glimpses of the passers-by, a loser, an arts student, a nobody. But I didn’t care, she was the girl I had fallen in love with. It didn’t matter who she was, I was in love.
….
We were riding the train home that afternoon and I just knew that it was going to happen, and she knew it was going to happen. It was as if the world had changed completely. The air smelt different and world moved slowly, defiantly and valiantly toward my sexual awakening. It was as if the entire universe had planned this moment and I was simply along to fulfill my part of a destined path.
We laughed and joked and I knew that it was going happen. I was going to have sex. She laughed at me before we did, laughed when we were in the city.
I lied and told her that I could get into nightclubs. I’d never been near one in my life, and even if I had, i’d be the first person caught out.
I lied because I wanted her to love me. I lied because I wanted to feel the suffering. I lied because I hated my life.
We got back to her place and she stripped my clothes off, and we had sex (me on the bottom). I don’t know how long it lasted for, but i’m sure it wasn’t long at all. I was stunned and excited, and it felt completely different to anything i’d ever known, and it was to be the start of a frightful journey into a world that I still try to understand and fight on a constant basis.
When I came I was jubilant and I felt love and compassion in a way that I couldn’t explain to you, even to this day. I’m sure for all of you who’ve crossed that line you know what it’s like.
Then it started to go wrong.
Her face turned from happiness to anxiety to fear to torture to tears…… tears of pain and misery and suffering, tears that I couldn’t interpret, tears while she huddled in the bathtub mumbling apologies about not wanting to ruin my life. Foolishly at the time I tried to tell her that I loved her, tried to comfort her, when in my world I was spiraling at a rapid rate, feeling shamed and disgraced at my actions. I had made this girl cry, I had intruded *into her body* and I had left an unreversable mark on her body, and on her soul.
I was the cause of her tears, I was the cause of her pain, I was at fault.
Terrified and excited and shamed and angry that I had caused such pain, I didn’t know what to think. Before I got a chance to evaluate she was out of the shower, she apologised and kissed me. Laughed as if it wasn’t a problem.
I will never forget the way she looked at me in those moments for the rest of my life. Those tears haunt my dreams, they haunt me when I get near a woman, haunt me when I want to be close and cause me to lash out and retract at a woman’s touch.
My endless battle began on that day.
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Three days later she broke it off with me. I lashed out and punched the wall. I cried… I howled and I hated her for making me so miserable. She was the love of my life dammit! .. how could she do this to me, and how was I going to live without her in my life…..
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Fast forward 7 years and my life had not significantly changed. I have been in situations for which I hold too many regrets. To this day I find it difficult to marry the symbiosis of anger, fear, anxiety and lust that seems to endless drive me in my love and in my life.
Now in english…
When I meet a girl these days, I place her on a pedestal above the world and beyond contestation. I make her life my life and my world and I make her the impossible princess.
Problem is that it’s not real. I really hold people *so close* to me that I am, in reality, pushing them away as fast as I can. Those who break through the exterior are usually so far beyond what I want in a girl, but i’m impressed by the fact that they break down my barriers. All of them have satisfied an urge of my personality.
The sex goddess, the stripper, the whore, the mother, the artist, the level-head, the bachelorette. And none of them work out, but I hold them all responsible for the way they make me feel.
And then one day my world comes crashing down when I realise i’ve forgotten, once again, who I actually am in this equation.
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An event in my life occurred that snapped me back to reality. Sent me packing to do something with my life and finally get my shit together. And day-by-day I have taken the task upon myself to work out what’s going on in my head. This is a small part of that journey.
Today I am better. I have a more realistic understanding of who I am and what I represent in the world. I no longer have people in my life who are going to fuck me beyond all recognition, or at least I try to keep them to a minimum. I am not perfect, I do not have a perfect soul. I have made mistakes, I am ashamed of many parts of me. I cannot change my past.
But for the next time that you think you know me, think you can understand why i’m overly nice, why I’m overly cheery, why I give that vibe that I want everyone in my life to be close to me. You can now take a step back and realise that nobody has ever really been close to me, but i’m working at it. I’m taking the steps to let people in, taking the steps to show the world that i’m reformed. Taking the steps to show me that i’m reformed.
My blog is my journey of my world. It will encompass almost nothing of what’s in my heart, and mostly of what’s in my head. You see only a small subsection of the thought processes that occur. I don’t do this to be withholding, just sometimes I can’t explain why I do what I do.
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For those that I have cheated on, hurt, cut lunches, annoyed, upset and angered over the years, this is a small part of my apology. I cannot change my past but I am learning to understand my actions. I will not ask your forgiveness for I know better than anyone that I deserve nothing of it. I am only writing this to myself to help me understand, maybe one day I’ll forgive myself for the mistakes i’ve made. Who knows about everyone else.
It takes a strong man to grow into the person he really wants to be, i’m working on taking that journey.
With that in mind I know that this journey will take a lifetime to complete and an age to understand. For those that have shared it with me today, I thank you. For those who will share it with me in the future, I applaud you. Love is something that most people think comes easy for me, but i’m still learning to share it.
So when i’m strange or distant or emotional or angry for no reason, take a step back to realise that this is all new for me. I usually get upset or become quiet when i’m scared. And i’m scared because I don’t know how to deal with people reacting normally to normal situations.
I’m still expecting you to curl up in the bathtub and cry about how you’ve ruined my life………
With love
Adam
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2006 Update:
It’s funny looking back on that post and seeing where I was attempting to head and how the (very real) pain of that day 12 years ago still permeates in my system.
I am a lot better now. I have let people get close and I have loved, truly loved, and lost, and now I am a better person for it. I’m still following through on some of the items. I still need to be better to friends, still need to set proper boundaries rather than keeping people in my life who pander to my needs when I give nothing in return.
I still talk too much!
On the other hand, I lost something along the way as well in the past couple of years. I stopped talking. And by talking, I mean really talking, sitting down with friends and loved ones and family and ‘talking’. Talking about life, talking about love, motivations, fears, goals, relationships, friends and just the simple things in life.
Sydney is an amazing place, though I can see in many ways how i’ve let it take the part of me that throws out ideas to the world and sees what the reaction is. In Sydney success is an expectation and I find myself a very small fish in a very large dam. In some ways I feel like a fish that is drowning.
Let’s see how this year goes..
A
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