Reclamation

My journey with my sexuality is ongoing and has been affected by many factors and lived experiences. I come from a family that was riddled with poverty and substance use. When I was a small child, my mom married a man she met through an ad in PennySaver named Alex. The life we began to build was decent enough, but by no means anything extravagant. We went from a lower class lifestyle to a lower middle class lifestyle, due largely in part to the mere relocation from our small, gang-infested neighborhood of 1990s Cudahy, to Winnetka in the San Fernando Valley. After about four years of marriage, my mom and Alex decided to divorce, during which time my mom spiraled into a world of alcoholism and chaos. My sister and I eventually ended up living with our ex-step dad Alex because of our mom’s instability, and he quickly began to take a particular interest in me, asserting himself as the “cool dad” and a “best friend” to me. At the time, I was a pubescent 11-year-old girl who was beginning to take an interest in all things punk rock and rebellion, through which Alex found a gateway to relate to me and create this image of himself he wanted me to perceive and gravitate toward. 

After years of using drugs and alcohol with and navigating an unhealthy and almost obsessive codependent relationship with Alex, I learned that he had been drugging me, sexually abusing me, and recording these instances, adding up to dozens of videos over the course of almost seven years. A whirlwind of things happened at this time, resulting in his arrest and conviction for which he remains in prison to this day, to the best of my knowledge. Prior to my awareness of the circumstances surrounding the abuse, I had declared myself a lesbian and had spent my early teens developing an image of myself that comfortably aligned with this sexuality, but after I learned of the abuse, something in me was altered. I don’t have an explanation for why it happened, but very shortly after I learned of the abuse, at eighteen years old, I suddenly found myself noticing boys in a way I had never before noticed them, and I quickly realized that it was an attraction. Over the years I have come to believe that although I wasn’t consciously aware of the trauma my body had been subjected to, I had been subconsciously and physically aware, and perhaps my lack of attraction to men was a sort of subconscious act of self-protection that I was able to let go of once I learned what my body had involuntarily underwent.

It was a difficult and strange transition from lesbianism to bisexuality, and it took me a few years to learn how to navigate the heterosexual dating world as a young woman who had never really been in touch with her femininity previously. I found myself falling for guys and getting my heart broken frequently, not understanding the dynamic of the complicated mind games that were a hallmark of young male-female relationships compared to that of sensitive and emotionally intense female-female relationships. This was the first time I ever discovered how powerful sex was, and although it wasn’t getting me the loving relationships I wanted, it was satisfying a craving for some semblance of emotional stimulation, though oftentimes more heart wrenching and devastating than anything else.

As I approached my early twenties, I found myself becoming quickly consumed by a heavy heroin addiction which quickly devoured every facet of my being, resulting in 8 years of chronic homelessness and a lifestyle that I still cannot believe I survived through. A couple of years into my addiction, I discovered a lucrative commodity to sustain my addiction—my body. I began to utilize my body as a tool to obtain what I needed through sex work, and completely ceased to use sex for pleasure eventually. During this time, sex became something that was solely used as a means of acquirement, and the resulting rapes from such a lifestyle added to my disdain for intercourse. 

I got into a relationship with a man with whom I began to have sex for pleasure again, however this relationship was incredibly abusive and toxic, and was fueled through rampant drug use and sex and was not healthy in any sense of the word. I became pregnant for the first time in my life, something I had previously thought to be impossible, and this was a dramatic turning point for me. After 8 years of active addiction, I decided to turn my life around and get the help I needed so that I could finally find a purpose in my life—motherhood. 

I have now been clean for almost 5 years and am a mother to the coolest, brightest, most sensitive and beautiful individual I have ever had the pleasure of knowing—my son, Chief. His biological father is still in active addiction somewhere and I am a full time honors student at Cal State LA in my junior year, majoring in psychology. I have built a life beyond my wildest dreams and it only gets better with each passing day. 

A year and a half ago, I met an incredible man with whom I have built the healthiest and happiest relationship I have ever known, and he loves and supports both Chief and I through everything. I have never been happier, and yet, I have recently begun to experience something that I believe is a result of my sexual trauma and distorted perception of sex which I was perhaps never in a safe mental space to allow to manifest or be vulnerable about until now. I have been experiencing periods where I want very limited to no sexual physical touch. I have never had the chance to process all the sexual trauma I have experienced, and I think my mind and body are finally giving me signs that the time has come for me to finally confront these issues. I have begun to seek therapy and am in the process of getting the help I need to address these difficulties. I never really allowed myself to think too deeply about how all of my experiences have affected me as a whole, and I am realizing now that my complex sexual journey that began so long ago still has much more evolving to do, so that I can finally finish healing and take ownership of my body for once and for all.