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Patience. 

I recently started watching Big Mouth, a show that blends humor with sex education for young adults, and people like me. I wish such a show had existed when I was in high school or maybe even younger. Since I’ve started watching this show, I’ve started to recall memories of my own experiences with masturbation as a kid, much like Missy and her glowworm. I REALLY enjoyed it, rubbing up against dolls, wadded blankets, pillows between my legs—anything that would get the job done.

There was a family video that captures a moment when someone walked in on my adolescent exploration. They didn’t linger, and the video moved on, but I remember feeling embarrassed. I knew the direction that scene could have taken if they stayed, exposing my private act. No one ever discussed it; we just let the video play and moved on. Looking back, the embarrassment I felt then was unnecessary; what I truly needed was an open conversation to comprehend my feelings and my body and what was normal.

My first sexual experiences with other people included kissing and foreplay with female friends – a step-cousin and a neighborhood girlfriend. We were just fooling around, playing adults. And again, we must have known it was a private experience, because we didn’t talk about it outside of our rooms. Still, these hidden encounters felt exciting and potentially normal.

My sexual journey took a confusing turn as I developed into a young woman. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize I could have an orgasm with another person. I wanted to like sex, and I had normal consensual high school experiences, but my first sexual encounters in high school didn’t match the pleasure of my solo escapades.

It took side-by-side masturbation with a partner, followed by an unconventional interview with a musician, to truly understand the connection—masturbation and appropriate foreplay before sex brings a unique intensity. This is important. I dare say the foreplay is as important or more important than the sex. Don’t.Rush.It.

As I’ve shared in earlier posts, there have been encounters that were less than desirable, even straying into the realm of the unethical. My journey through sex wasn’t all liberating; it unraveled threads of sadness, confusion, anger, and discomfort. My lack of assertion and courage compounded these issues as I navigated relationships. Living authentically has become crucial for my personal well-being.

Sex transformed into a multifaceted language, a tool, a transaction—something I both cherished and loathed about myself and humanity. And, in recognizing this, I acknowledge that I’m not alone in this dance. However, the journey to become a better version of ourselves isn’t a swift, instantaneous decision; it requires discipline, transparency, and open communication.

I watched an Inside Pixar episode that delved into the making of the film “Onward” by Dan Scanlon. Scanlon’s process involved laying out various aspects of his life as potential movie plot ideas on notecards. Before stepping away for the night, he flipped over some of the notecards to obscure their contents. Later, in an illuminating moment, he realized that the very things he sought to conceal were the ones he needed to confront—forming the essence of the story. When he returned to the office, he embraced this revelation, creating a movie about the father he never got to know and the brother who became a father figure. The moral, I believe, is that when we attempt to hide something, it’s an invitation to explore it more deeply.

Perhaps our entire existence commences with a personal story that gradually evolves into a universal narrative. We are in a perpetual state of discovering our family, our place in the world, and our latent potential.

With this perspective, I embrace the idea that no topic is off-limits. When a lingering thought transforms into a blog post, I commit to hitting publish—contributing to a collective exploration of our shared human experience.