Unfortunately, I must admit that much of my personal feelings of value, especially in my earlier life, has been based on my attractiveness and how desired I have been by men. This started as a child for me. Although I only have snap shots of memory, I had some early childhood sexual abuse that has impacted me so profoundly in ways I hadn’t even pondered or imagined until the last decade.
First, I have often been attracted to men that are inappropriately aggressive, emotionally unavailable or damaged. This traces back as early as I can remember. It’s more than choosing the wrong kind of guys or liking bad boys, it’s about only feeling value when someone finds me sexually desirable. Often, these men looked for no other value in me, but this response, although base, harmful, and demeaning, felt like love. My earliest conscious memory of this is at about eleven. Although my experience is simple objectification, it has felt like some of the only times I was actually wanted, valued, or noticed. It’s odd that it is actually the exact opposite of reality, but I have found my value early and often in the terrible sexualization of cave men.
As I have worked on healing, my own growth, purpose and integrity, and as I’ve analyzed my experiences and why I am the way I am, I’m disappointed and disheartened in our culture around the sexualization of young girls, but even more so in myself. I have enjoyed the attention I received even when I knew better. I felt so little validation or worth from anyone else, before I learned that my validation must come from myself, so being sexualized felt like I mattered. I was unique. I stood out from the crowd. This experience has also left me feeling alone, misunderstood and numb. My personality being an intense one, only was acknowledged or appreciated by the objectifying, sexualizing, prudish yet perverted and until recently, accepted culture of many American men.
I grieve that I have, in my own way, contributed to this. I’m sad at what has often felt good, even though I knew in my soul it was wrong. This feeling, is exactly what childhood sexual abuse did to map out my own value, my objectification of myself, and my seeking validation that came straight from toxic masculinity. Even what has turned me on or registered in my memory as important moments has been tainted by the use of my body for the gratification of others….and very rarely myself.
The misuse of me is obviously not love, nor does it look anything like it. And to my dismay, my experience is fairly common. I have worked hard to stop energetically inviting broken, damaged or toxic men into my orbit. To my credit, I work to learn from each individual mistake and apply what I’ve learned to better myself and balance my tiny place in the universe. I work to help others where I can and grow as a whole myself, not just as an aging woman, that those old, gross thoughts would tell me is losing her marketability, but as an interconnected being that has purpose and worth, whether I turn someone on or not.
I have had very few experiences in which I felt a soul connection to someone and also been turned on by them. (This is in no way to minimize the beautiful, decent, impactful great men that I’ve known and loved!) I’ve worked a lot on this one. My only marriage was an asexual one. Getting married at 18 was not only stupid, but this marriage severely damaged my self-esteem because the one man that was supposed to want me didn’t. It made me feel a kind of desperation I cannot properly describe. It increased my obsessiveness with becoming ‘sexier’, skinnier, whatever. My unhealthy relationships with food, self-harm and exercise only intensified and most of my adult life has felt primally defined by sexual depravation. I now believe I chose that because I had a bad introduction into my own sexuality, and, at the time I had a frightening stalker, and my ex’s lack of attraction to me felt safer. Not makings of a good life partner match, but for survival purposes, it obviously worked out.
Doing so much work on myself in the past ten years, energetically, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, has made me more aware…more exhausted, but more aware. Now I’m trying to integrate a healthier sexual self into that puzzle too. I have been inviting different souls into my energetic space. I’m finding depth, honesty, worth, value, connection. I haven’t figured out all of the integration that I need to do to allow these more evolved qualities to be sexy to me, but I have, very intentionally, blocked out, both figuratively and quite literally what is so not sexy. Most certainly, toxic masculinity is unsexy. Lack of integrity, dishonesty, manipulation, infidelity, objectification, abuse, all soooo unsexy. It feels like the disgusting uncle that has been the dark, shadowy secret, and I’m willing to step away from mine into a bright, cleansing light.
Owning my own sadness, my guilt, my inadvertent contribution to a yucky culture, my self-doubt, my hyper-critical views of myself, my mistakes, my losses, have all been part of my willingness to put down my secrets and not allow my unhealthy thinking to define me anymore.
Yes, I still want to be sexy. Ideally I will someday have this crap figured out, and in demonstrating grace for my own crooked path, hopefully I may be able to help someone else. As I move to a different plane of awareness, I hope to find my best, most integrated self, and help fight the culture of toxic masculinity in my own little way. In doing this, ironically, I may become my sexiest version of me.
Mad Child, Angry Mama 
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