So I promised myself a WickedWednesday if I got all my paperwork done. Well, I didn’t, but it was stop or
die. So here I am! Forgive any errors – I am flying by the seat of my frilly
knickers today.

This week’s prompt is ‘Believe in
Yourself’ – boy, do I need a bit of that. I think I suffer as most creatives do
with the passion for making and sharing but the creeping crushing horror that
maybe my stuff is just pants.

So, I was pondering something that
happened long, long ago…

I have always, and I mean for as
long as I have existed on this world as me, been able to come. Of course there
was a time when I couldn’t put a name to it, but I could always do it. It was
usually accompanied by extremely visual fantasies. Anyhoo – whilst I never felt
weird about doing it, I never mentioned it to anyone, even my mum, who was
always very open about sexuality and ‘the birds and the bees’. It wasn’t until
I was older that I heard words like ‘masturbate’ and ‘wank’ associated with my
actions – euuww. These words did NOT sound like the lovely comforting, sensual
thing that I did. They sounded icky and sordid or something. And besides, the
terms seemed only to apply to boys.

When we were told in sex education
that boys masturbated loads and thought about sex every seven minutes I almost
snorted out loud – only every seventh minute? How dull for them, I thought, and
waited until the teacher brought up the girls’ sex thought stats. None. Nada.
Zip.

So I realised that either I was
the only girl in the world doing this orgasm thing, or people were being very
strange.

Months or maybe years later, during
a camp – some sort of high school or guide camp, we were all snuggled
and giggling in the girls’ dorm late at night when one of the girls said, “Hey do any of you
wank?”

I was thrilled! But because she
used one of the euuwww words, I momentarily hesitated before jumping up
excitedly. And I must say, at the time, I was glad I did because there was one
of those hideous awkward silences that just fill the room. You could breathe in
the horror.

“Euww, what are you on about, you
perv?” was the first reply, whereby everyone thereafter wrinkled their noses
and ridiculed the poor girl. To my shame, I simply kept quiet, hiding in my
sleeping bag and blushing to the roots of my soul. So it was true. Most girls
did not do it. And if they did they were pervs.

When I think back to this moment
in my life, I feel so sad for all of us in that room. We had an opportunity to
be open about something amazing and not make each other feel shit about having
normal sexual feelings. We could have normalised, been honest and created a
bond. We were certainly not too young to be discussing our own bodies and how
wonderful they are. What I feel most bad about is not seeking out that girl
later and confiding in her. I just left her thinking she was alone in her
pervdom.

Now, in adulthood, I put the blame
for this firmly with the sexual education of the time. Though, I’m saddened to
say that from what I hear from mothers of girls, not much has changed.

So what has this to do with ‘Believe
in Yourself’? Well, I let other people make me feel like I was wrong. That masturbation
was wrong, that sexual feelings for yourself is wrong. I’m sure it put me on a
path of not believing in many other aspects of my life too, not just sexual. So
here I am, telling that other girl, “I do it too! And probably so do they – and
hooray for us all!”

Phew! I’m glad I got that off my
chest.

I have grown up trying to be as sex positive as I can be through all my
erotic endeavours. I just wish I’d believed in myself a little sooner… and I could always do with believing a little more…

Happy Wicked Wednesday! Click the links for more, more, more!