I am turning 30 today and I don't feel like I am where society expects me to be or where I wanted to be and yet for the first time in my life, I am happy to be alive.
A few weeks ago I had a chest infection that left me unable to breathe for a few hours. I had experienced this before. I remember the first time it happened, 5 years ago, I was not listening to my body and hurting myself to make everyone else happy. When my chest started closing up, I was still refusing to listen to my body. My mind convinced me that I was being over-dramatic, weak, or imagining things. I had told myself that maybe I had forgotten how to breathe, that if I didn't hyper-fixate on my body gasping for air then maybe I could be able to breathe again. I was waiting for everyone else to tell me whether I should take it seriously enough to go to the hospital or not. Crazy, I know. On the next day, surprised that I had made it through the night without going to the hospital, I finally decided to go to the doctor.
When it happened again recently, I at least knew what to do and to take it seriously. But there was something cathartic about feeling my body fighting to stay alive through the breaths that it was forcing in. How instinctive it was for me to be conscious of my breathing, instead of whatever I was telling myself a few years ago. That signifies so much growth for me.
My 20s have been such a disappointment,but in these past 6 months, I have been feeling positive about the next stage of my life. 30 feels like something clicked in me. On the other hand, though I have tried my best to unlearn ageism, I also find myself grieving my youth despite it not being over.
These past few years have been a period of me being conscious of my body and her needs. My 20s were a disaster because I was not listening to my intuition unless I hit rock bottom, which constantly got me into trouble. As I enter 30 and not feeling quite like a winner in life, it feels very instinctive that I keep my head above the water to not drown from the weight of society's expectations.
These past few years have been a period of reflection, where I started rethinking my identity, future, and relationships. I am a very spiritual person, though I tell myself that I am not a religious fanatic. Spirituality forms a big part of my life but it has also taken over my life in an unhealthy way that distorted how I view myself and those around me. My recent awakening is so closely linked to my sexuality, that feels so counter-intuitive when I've spent my life in spaces that have a heavy emphasis on purity culture and I am committed to these spaces. It's a conflict that I have been experiencing my entire life.
I have never really had good sexual experiences because consent has always been murky and I was guilt-ridden in the end. Not even celibacy-based spiritual spaces could save me from coercion and my dangerous impulse to please or the desperation to feel wanted. I realized that I might be demi-sexual. Despite having a high hormone-driven sex drive, I still value connections above the physical act of sex. I've been celibate for 5 years and I don't think that I like the actual act of sex when I do not feel safe or loved, when it feels like a chore or a demand. It was so important for me to get to know my body better. It was so important for me to be able to say "I am most sensitive in this part of my body" or "I don't think I can only have sex for procreation, I still see sex as an important form of bonding between a loving couple."
Being on a journey to figure out what I like during intimacy has been interesting. Exploring my body without physical sex has been the best experience that I have had in my life. In the past 3 years, I have learned that I am on the spectrum and I have a hormonal disorder that makes me either infertile or makes childbirth difficult. These are just two, of the main events, that forced me to start making decisions based on what is best for me. I have known that I don't fit in the world, I just wish that I didn't waste so much of my time trying to fit in.
Purity culture becomes so entrenched in someone's psyche that one believes that the mere action of speaking about sex is wrong but how do you have a relationship with someone without having a conversation about sex? I found that there is liberation in me realizing the importance of the ability to communicate what I like and do not like, standing firm when I feel uncomfortable, and leaving when my intuition tells me to.
When I first stumbled upon this site two months ago, I was not sure what to expect from the BDSM community and I was such a mess. I didn't take BDSM seriously as a community but my intuition told me that I might actually feel at home here. I was praying that I might get relief from the mental torment that I was putting myself through. I've always wanted to try BDSM and have spoken about it with a long-distance situationship that I had last year but I didn't have the correct information about the community. I am so glad that I can try this in a space where I am empowered with proper information.
Learning about BDSM as a practice has given me so much life and made me believe in relationships again. I love how communication and consent are emphasized in a way that is not done in vanilla relationship advice. Though I give my power away as a sub, I still feel empowered and safer because there is such a wealth of advice and research online.
In a patriarchal world, vanilla relationships feel like one person is giving all their power with little return and another person is just taking. Whether it is the woman who submits to their partner no matter what and doesn't have her emotional and sexual needs heard and met, or the man who treats the woman who doesn't like him like a Princess, sacrificing himself for her approval and the approval of those around him. There are also so many rules in vanilla relationships that seem to contradict the basis of building a relationship like trust, partnership, and communication. It's so confusing.
Of course, online interactions with people are not the same as getting to know someone in person. My experiences of BDSM have mostly been through the imagination and online conversations as I was deciding whether I would like to make this part of my real-life experience one day.
Through my exploration, I am learning that the BDSM community in its entirety is not perfect. It makes sense. That where people from different walks of life come together, there will be a misrepresentation or misunderstanding of an idea or practice. However, I know from exploring different spaces, from religion to political ideologies like feminism, that just because something is practiced imperfectly doesn't always mean it's bad.
I am glad that my intuition led me here to help me deconstruct some ideas that I was struggling to unlearn.
I am 30 and I am learning to be flirty (lol). I have a string of pearls of wisdom that I hope to add to throughout my journey in life.
