Introduction (TMI)

Originally posted on AVEN; I was directed here. I hope this doesn't violate the rules.

This post comes with a warning: Contains content that may offend some people. I hope this doesn’t rack up warning points on my account. That being said:

Sexuality has always fascinated and disgusted me. I went to Catholic school for 12 years. My high school was a single-sex Jesuit school in Detroit. I fell in love with an upperclassman. He looked like a fallen angel. I thought I was gay, was put in therapy, diagnosed with type 1 bipolar disorder one year later. When I graduated, I visited two monasteries with the intention of becoming a monk. It didn’t work out. A few years later I entered into the Franciscan Candidacy Program but was rejected because of my psychiatric condition. I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 25, and when she asked how it was, I said that I felt as though God was going to smite me with sulfur rain and lightning. That relationship lasted three years and was very rocky. She once told our housemates that we were going to go back to our flat to ‘not have sex.’

My second relationship was with a girl I met on OKCupid. She was a Christian and was very sexual. We went camping once and in our tent at night I read her Dr. Seuss’ Sleep Book. What a fool I was. She wanted to have sex. I had no interest. I wasn’t aware that I had no interest at the time. At the time I was going to an ‘interdenominational’ church, which I found out means fundamentalist, at least in this case, and due to the manic episode I was experiencing at the time, I became militantly devout. This was very convenient, because sex had to wait until marriage. The relationship ended after three weeks.

My third relationship was also with a girl from OKC. She was troubled. She suffered from Borderline Personality disorder and was also a cutter. It was impossible for me to understand or cope with this, being that I am not a cutter myself. I just didn’t understand, and when she called me at 3 am one night to tell me that she had cut her thigh 64 times I didn’t know how to respond. She also had two pet rats in her basement room in a cage, and I am terrified of rats. We had sex every night for the six weeks we were together. I enjoyed it. To put it crudely, I have a thing for ‘boobs and butts, hips and lips.’ This has been the source of great confusion regarding my orientation recently. When I tried oral sex for the first time I was absolutely disgusted. I refused to perform it on my first two girlfriends. I’m repulsed by human genitalia in general. I have been able to satisfy my partners using my hands, but there’s no desire involved. This could be due to the fact that I’ve never been aesthetically attracted to my girlfriends. I also wonder about my low libido being a result of the medications I take for bipolar disorder, combined with the years of Catholic repression and guilt.

Sex is an art for me, or a science experiment, where I try to manipulate my partner’s reactions to the sensations I am able to create. But sex every night was a chore. She dumped me for someone else, someone who would choke her and punch her in the face during sex, as she liked it. When she proposed the idea to me I was deeply disturbed, but thought we could make it work, somehow. I was deeply hurt by her rejection for this reason.

I take pleasure in one-on-one conversation, and in making art in any form. I believe my purpose is to be a creator. I believe everyone’s purpose is to create. I interpret ‘In His Image’ as meaning that we as humans share in the ability of divine creation, whether it be through a painting, a song, a poem, or cleaning a toilet. We are all artists of life.

For me, everything is an act of creation. For me, Destruction and Creation are a false dichotomy, much like Yin and Yang, Good and Evil, Beginning and End, Male and Female. When Eve took the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she broke the unity of Paradise and released all the pairs of false opposites into the world. I personally take this story as metaphor, as mythology, but just because something is a myth doesn’t mean it’s not ‘true.’

Does ‘everything happen for a reason?’ I can’t say for sure. Due to recent experiences, I have begun to see patterns, on a cosmic scale, and I can only say that everything that has happened in my own life has made me a stronger person. I like Nature. I like Zen. I like No Mind. My writing mentor once said in an interview that ‘God is a language I don’t yet speak.’ I like that too. To me, atheism is just as presumptuous as theism. All’s I know is that I don’t know, Agnosticism. But I’m starting to feel something stirring in my gut, on an instinctual level, that is bringing me back from the depths. I feel alive, and I fully embrace Life, in both its beauty and its ugliness. Another false dichotomy.

I know my position on sex is contradictory, and I’m okay with that. Due to my medical condition, some days I feel militantly asexual, other days I feel gray. I'm trying to find a place where I fit in, and I'm hoping this is it.

Apologies to any religious or non-religious folks this post might have offended.

Welcome here
Your story is interesting and bring up many interrogations in my mind, because I don't think I understand well how you feel about sex. I mean, you seem to be quite asexual but when you had sex everyday with a girlfriend, you said you enjoyed it. But did you enjoy sex in itself, or was it "the reactions you were able to induce in your partner" (or both) ?
Do you think you're "able" (sorry if it's clumsy) to be aesthetically attracted by someone ? Because maybe you would feel differently if you were attracted by the partner ? And since you said you thought to be gay, could it be that you're maybe gay or at least bi, and maybe something in between, like "heterosexual homoromantic" ?

I don't mean to deny the possibility of being asexual or gray or what, nor find causes and explanations or anything, but it's just that I wonder how it works for you. I guess the religious education and the culpability induced by that doesn't help to be ok with oneself, and it can blur or hide lots of things, which can be internalized and all :/

All good questions for which I don't yet have answers.

I guess you have many things to discover yet, isn't that exciting ? ^^
Hope you'll feel good here.