Author: aczodryn

by

Pleasure and Correspondence

Image by TIVASEE on Pexels.com

content warning: sex and masturbation

Oddly enough, I remember my first orgasm. And that’s simply because it wasn’t too long ago, about over a year to be exact. It’s aggravating how the shame I felt towards my body kept me from exploring it. The repressed Christian girl is no foreign stereotype to us, but we never seem to focus enough on the shame hoisted upon young girls that makes them conceal any and every part of their sexual nature. Why was “acting your own age” or “not looking too grown” a priority for my middle school self when I had just barely started to develop tweenage crushes on my classmates? The only people who were in touch with these notions I had no idea existed were the adults around me. My body as a child shouldn’t have been a battleground where I had to prioritize mannerisms over my black girl joy.

Looking back now, coming into my body has been a long and tiring journey. My family’s obsession with purity stems from the dominating Christian culture we came from. The ideals instilled into me as a young girl weren’t just the opinions of my aunt who raised me, but that of her mother and her mother’s mother. For generations, no, eras, we were told to protect young girls through forcing them to adhere to paltry rules about how we use the space we take up. But who am I to break the sanctity of these rules? They seemed to do enough for my female ancestors who succeeded in having families of their own.

Don’t think for a second, I didn’t rebel. I wore what I wanted, listened to punk rock music, and tried my best to escape my family’s expectations. I even came out as pansexual in middle school, which my family brushed off as a phase but was still mildly appalled by it, to say the least. Back then, I thought knowing my sexuality meant being comfortable within it. I was pretty far off.

The sin of masturbation was never discussed by my family, but the weight of it was still there. In my late teenage years I explored my body in the few hours I had the house to myself. All I remember was the constant rush of shame every time I attempted to get myself off. I could only ever think of the judging stare of God from above or that my ancestors or guardian angels were disgusted with me. Despite this shame, I never even reached a climax. Maybe it was what I deserved.

Eventually, I entered my first relationship and there went my virginity. Many people were actually surprised I stayed a virgin for so long as I always tried to make myself come off as the raunchy, sex-positive funny girl. Despite wanting to be known as a “sexpert” in my youth, I never took my chances to engage in any sexual acts until I was a legal adult. I convinced myself this was the safest option to avoid being grounded into oblivion. It wasn’t until I bought my first sex toy that I actually learned the extent of my own pleasure. Like a great number of people with vulvas, clitoral stimulation led to my first success.

It was a moment of cathartic relief like no other. Any feeling of my body being broken immediately left me. Is this what my shame kept me from my whole life? Feelings of purity and shame no longer mattered, because I had finally come into my individual pleasure. Shame only held me back, which is why I refuse to give into it any longer. Those moments of fear now correspond to a time long ago where I was afraid of my body.

by

This is the part where I ignore you.

On the weekend of this past Halloween, I ate shit on the stairs of a frat party. In the 30 seconds it took for my friend behind me to realize that I was sprawled on the floor, it took just as long for everyone to realize they needed to ignore the fat girl on the ground. I didn’t know what just happened to me, but I was embarrassed, in pain, and scared. I was also ignored.

Later in the party, I moved around from group to group trying to awkwardly join whatever conversations my friends were having. I don’t hate parties, but I was pretty fucking uncomfortable. I don’t fit into the white standard that’s present at my PWI, no matter how diverse it may pitch itself to be. I told myself that’s why people probably think I don’t belong here. I believe my constant discomfort everywhere I go stems from my inability to let go of whatever I am feeling.

This whole entire semester I’ve been letting go. Letting go of anger, depression, hobbies… anything that could stop me from focusing on getting my degree. When I do “feel my feelings”, I tell myself it’s the paranoia talking. Worrying about which friend cares enough, or how much someone has wronged me has done nothing but make me spiral. I don’t talk enough about my feelings, I shove them down like I have since I was 3. I never let the people around me know how much I wanted to die everyday in elementary school and that it’s a feeling that has never left me. The abuse of my adoptive aunt stays with me today because of the moments she told me I deserved whatever pain was coming to me, pain that I ignore.

I don’t exactly love to talk about my childhood, but there was also a time when I was in therapy after my mother’s death. I vaguely remember the hours after school between 6PM and 8PM where I would sit in a room playing with toys, refusing to acknowledge my therapist who had eagerly wanted to talk to me. 

My relationship with therapy has never been an easy one. On one hand, my family’s culture has led to internalized feelings about therapy that I can’t ignore. On the other, I know it’s important for me to address the issues that hinder me. Is paying someone to talk to about my feelings really worth it if that was not an accessible resource to my ancestors? They had to overcome so much worse than me.

I think that comes down to the responsibility of our generation. Most of us have dealt with overbearing parents, ones that project onto us, and haven’t acknowledged any of their own trauma. At the end of the day, we are the only ones that can solve our problems… therapy is just a way to do that.

by

Upward Spiraling Out of My Body Dysmorphia

Image by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

trigger warnings: body dysmorphia, suicide, mentions of disordered eating, illness

If you remember what your body looks like, I think you’re one of the lucky ones. If you don’t, then I’m not so glad this is what we have in common. Coming from an older West Indian family, my body was always a discussion. No matter how many soccer practices I showed up to, salads I ate, nor how well I did in P.E. class, whenever an aunt approached me it was always “You’ve gotten bigger!” Even throughout my adulthood my body has gotten bigger. I know I’m big, but I wish they knew that I didn’t need to be reminded every second of my life.  

I think it’s important to note that I wasn’t always fat, but I still struggled with food and dieting at a young age. Having to deal with cholesterol issues during elementary school was the start of my long, relentless relationship with food. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office with my uncle, his eyes glazed over, listening to every word my pediatrician said. My relationship with food not only originates in this moment, but also with my family’s history of heart disease, diabetes, and many other debilitating diseases. By the time I reached high school, my uncle had a coronary angioplasty, stent insertion, triple bypass heart surgery, and several other surgeries for various kinds of cancer. He never wanted me to suffer like he did.  

For as long as I can remember, my uncle micro-managed everything that graced my plate. There were even times we fought at the dinner table so he could see whatever takeout I’d brought home. The stress of bringing home any form of food that he would scrutinize started to transfer into other aspects of my life. In middle school I discovered how uncomfortable it made me feel to eat in public spaces. In high school I even went as far as to become the library aide so I could escape the daunting task of consuming food in the adolescent-filled cafeteria and tried my best to retreat back to the library every lunch break. The library was my safe haven, a place of structure for the moments where I felt the most vulnerable. This is still a habit I have today, I always look for security.

It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I started my first romantic relationship. He was beautiful, smart, and even had a piercing on one ear that was the jackpot of my teenage girl fantasies. Being with him was the first time someone told me I was pretty. For someone that had only dreamed of having a boyfriend, that meant the world to me. I naively thought that feeling would last forever. As the pandemic raged on, and quarantine forced us into our isolated nests, there became an evident strain on our relationship. Still, we continued to stay with each other. I never noticed when his demeanor changed or that I couldn’t fit into half of my jeans anymore, or even that I was getting bigger than him. I made a huge mistake. You know that horrible mistake people make when they get lost in a relationship because they already have constant bodily validation? Yeah, that one. I gained the “happy weight”, I let myself go. People hate happy weight because being fat makes you feel empty and alone after a relationship. Nobody thinks that you’re attractive anymore and it feels like now there’s this huge responsibility that you have to get back to when you were skinnier. I fucked up.

Coming out of that relationship I became extremely depressed. I moved back in with my family, back to a space I never felt secure in. Endless nights spent scrolling through Tinder, a space where your body is always being perceived, felt completely invalidating. I was a completely different person. And I didn’t feel that way because I had loved and learned valuable lessons about navigating relationships, but it was because I was fat. Everytime I looked into the mirror, a devil appeared on my shoulder pointing out every flaw on my now monstrous body. It’s like my ego had turned against me. 

I didn’t want to live in my body anymore. I thought I was nothing without the comfort of another person telling me I was good enough. I can’t say that I never feel that way today, but I’ve worked on it. I’m not about to go on a spiel about how much it matters to love yourself, nor about how self-love is a journey and not a destination… but would love really be worth it if it meant that I had to be skinny, athletic, or fit any of the aesthetic qualities guys on dating apps wanted? Probably not. But I want to be better, because I know that the moments in between these feelings of doubt and despair are much more important than these superficial views of my body. Though, how I never saw myself changing is still a phenomena to me.

In the end, I’m still trying to upward spiral out of this feeling called body dysmorphia.