Losing your Virginity: Comedy or Tragedy?

What you are about to read is one of my assignments for my Creative Writing 101 class.  I went back & forth about whether or not to post about losing my virginity.  Here’s my conclusions:

1.  We all know I’m not a virgin.  I’ve been married 10 years & have 2 beautiful boys, so it’s no secret that I “lost” it.  🙂

2.  I’ve been publicly speaking to High School & College youth groups, InterVarsity chapters & even InterVarsity staff conferences on the issues surrounding sex, losing one’s virginity, sexual abuse & so forth for years.  Since 1996.  So, I’m used to talking about this very openly.

3.  My assignment this week was to write something regarding a “shameful incident” in my life.  Honestly, it took me about 3.2 seconds to decide it would be about losing my virginity.  I can’t think of anything else in my life that I’ve ever been more ashamed of.

I was 15.  Just a teensy, tiny little girl.  I think I was about 5 feet 4 inches tall & weighed no more than 105 pounds.  I was just a little girl.

I couldn’t process it at all.  All I felt was intense, mind-numbing shame and guilt.  And then more guilt, and then more shame.  The fact that I was sexually active in the 9th grade was a brutal part of going to a private Baptist School.  Christian youth sub-culture is dreadful for the sexually active.  You may as well have killed someone to receive the same lack of grace.

Anyway, point is: I regret very much those years of my life.  Therein lies the tragedy.  It wasn’t just that I lost my virginity, or social standing but that I thought God would never forgive me and in that I lost myself and any joy life held for me.  I thought I had over-sinned my limit.

So, yes I am going to share a bit of a personal piece.  This is also something I had planned to share in my memoir -eventually, right?- but not quite in this way.  I was limited to length & perspective unlike how I will write about it in the book.

I hope you won’t be too shell shocked.  It’s tastefully done.  When I read it to the hubster,  he strongly encouraged me to lose some parts –which I did!

We’ve all lost our virginity at some point.  Hopefully for you it would be considered comedy as opposed to tragedy.  If your feeling brave, leave either word in the comments and I’ll add up how many comedies vs. tragedies! 🙂

Here’s the piece –don’t worry, no graphic details– about one of the greatest losses & tragedies of my life…

Watching

My life had changed that night.  Jordan knew it.  I knew it.  Yet neither could believe it.  Neither Jordan, nor I could believe what had taken place.

When Jordan said he never thought I was “like that,” I played dumb.  “Like what”? I said.

I’d hoped he would let me off the hook by offering up some explanation like a gentle, older Auntie would do.  Something about how I must have been so confused or how I didn’t know my own worth.  Something about how he understood how tired I had grown of constantly saying no to daily attempts to get at my naked flesh.  Or, maybe how he understood how scared I must have been to lose the boy I had fell madly in love with.

But Jordan said none of those things.  With all the insight a 9^th grader can muster he stuck the knife in my back and turned it: “I can’t believe you let him fuck you.” Ending with his final thought I stood and watched him walk away.  He’d solidified all that I suspected was true.  I was 15 and I was worthless.

I had looked out the window and watched it happen.  I watched and wondered when it was supposed to start feeling good.  This was certainly not like the movies where the windows fog up due to unbridled passion.  Movies, where the woman’s hand print -visible outside the car- slides down the foggy window, Lord only knows what euphoria she felt.  Whatever she was experiencing, I was not.

I watched my face in the window because there was nowhere else to look as I considered the sensation –or lack thereof- of losing my virginity.  In this instance, unlike many times to come after this, it did not hurt.  What did hurt was the loss of my apparent value to save myself for marriage.

Long before it happened, I’d watched my friends beam with pride as they announced my virginity.  It set me apart.  By doing nothing, I made guys proud, girls jealous all while enjoying a heightened sense of ego. But now that was gone.

It was gone to a cliché’: that awful truth that I lost my virginity in a car.  Not even in the back seat, but all scrunched up on the passenger side.   As I watched my face in the reflection I saw someone who was afraid to lose everything.

I saw someone who couldn’t handle rejection.

I watched myself make an unholy inner vow that I would never allow his abandonment of me.  He was all I had.  He would rescue me from a life of misery, this much I was certain.  If sex was the price of my future happiness, I was willing to pay.

I watch her now.  She got it right.

Eventually.

By: Grace Biskie