Page 27 of Confessions of a Virgin on a Dating App
I crossed my elbows in front of my body and plopped my head in the center, trying not to scream. When I decided to turn to the internet for a diagnosis, I expected some physical abnormality that could be treated. Even just beingscaredwas an acceptable answer.
But this was my worst nightmare. My entire childhood had been entwined in religion, from home to church groups at my Catholic private school. I’d grown up thinking I needed to be a virgin, a good girl, a pure little flower for my future Christian husband. Sex before marriage was a sin; a dirty, repulsive, immoral act. Back then, even just thinking the wordsexfelt profane. I had fled that mindset five years ago,but maybe it still had a faint hold on me. Maybe my mind really was holding me back.
I remembered the night Tyler pressured me into having sex. Maybe that was why it hurt so much. Because my brain was screaming at me that sex before marriage was wrong, and no matter how much I wanted to believe otherwise, there was no fighting my upbringing. My subconscious wanted me to stay pure. But the sad, sick irony was that not having sex was what caused men to leave me. Beingpurewas ruining my life.
That night with Tyler changed everything, destroying the only world I knew.
And he got to walk away without consequences.
My hands were shaking, and tears brimmed in the corners of my eyes, threatening to spill like an overfilled water glass. I needed to punch something; take my anger out on the world around me so it didn’t consume me whole.
No. Stop it.
I lowered my trembling fists.Get ahold of yourself. Hitting your belongings isn’t going to make you feel better.
And Cassidy would hear it. She would know something was wrong.
Instead, I sat down on my bed, gripping the edges of my comforter until my knuckles turned white. I was broken. Truly, horrifically broken. I’d known this for years, but I’d always kept it at bay by avoiding relationships. But now that I wanted one, I had to face the truth. For the first time in my life, I’d been brave enough to research my condition.
So, stop the pity party,I told myself, and do something about it.
But what could I do? I had two days until my beach trip with Tristan; not nearly enough time to undo five years of sexualtrauma.
I stood up and walked toward my desk, picking up my phone. I unlocked it, and the article about vaginismus flashed white on the screen, blinding my eyes and reminding me why I was so upset in the first place.
I scrolled to the bottom of the page, under treatment options. Much of it involved mental health treatment, something that wouldn’t fix me before Saturday. But another solution caught my eye.
Pelvic physical therapy.
There was one in Orlando, about thirty minutes from my townhouse. I looked up their phone number and their hours. It was 5:45 p.m. —I had fifteen minutes until they closed.
With sweaty palms and a tensed throat, I made the call.
I was tired of being broken. And I was finally going to do something about it.
Chapter 8
Iwalked into the waiting room the following evening with the same sweaty palms and locked-up throat.
I was lucky. They had a last-minute cancellation on Friday at 5 p.m. I was excited to finally receive treatment, but I also dreaded the poking and prodding I’d have to endure over the next hour. I could already feel my pelvic region tensing up, like a clamshell about to be pried open.
I slipped out of work a few minutes early and arrived just in time to complete a pile of paperwork. Once I got to the form outlining my sexual history, I gulped. Even five years after fleeing my religious household, discussing my sex life still made me squirm. And they wanted to knoweverything.
As I filled out the form, painfully outlining that I was an involuntary virgin in desperate need of help, I peered around the waiting room at my fellow patients. I noticed two of them were pregnant, and one carried a baby about six months old on her hip. That’s when I realized the mainreasons why people did pelvic physical therapy—for pregnancy and postpartum.
I shuddered, my vagina clamping down even further. I was far,faraway from ever having to fathom that reality. I couldn’t even get a tampon in there, much less push out an eight-pound baby.
They’re cute, though. I smiled as the baby gazed at me with giant unblinking eyes. I waved, and he broke into a huge, toothless grin.
I finished the mound of paperwork, laying it face-down on the clipboard as I walked up to the front desk. I didn’t want my sexual history to be on display for all to see, but I knew that the medical assistants would be rifling through it anyway. The receptionist was on the phone as I handed her the clipboard, and she took it without a word, barely glancing at its contents.
Alright.I settled back into my seat.So far, so good. You can do this.
You know you still have to tell the therapist all about your sex life, right?
Ugh. Shut up.
My eyes darted around the room as I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair. I didn’t know what was worse; that I had to describe my sexual history to a doctor, or the fact that I hardly had one to begin with.
