THE MAZE | HINDSIGHT | TEENAGERS

What I Wish I Knew Before Losing My Virginity

Too young to have a clue and thought I knew it all

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Of all the things I could write about on the subject ‘What I Wish I Knew’… before I left high school… before that blind date… before losing half my body weight… before that first line of cocaine… before I met the drug dealer… before I took that job… before I moved across the country… and a million other befores, I pick the one thing that still vibrates from some deep place of shame above all others.

This remnant of shame is like a microscopic hole in the sinew of my DNA, formed after the womb. I sometimes wonder if we could strip back the layers, remove the damage gathered over decades, what we’d be left with? Are our molecules reshaped from our trauma? I bet shame has the power to do that.

If it did, I’d be a superhero.

I’ve come to learn there are two types of shame. The kind inflicted by the actions and words of others and the kind we inflict on ourselves by our choices.

Losing my virginity at age thirteen is probably the first real shame I inflicted on myself. I chose it. It wasn’t taken from me. That would come later, on the…