Out of body, experienced
August debrief on out-of-body experiences, celibacy, finding vulnerability sexy, and the practice of sensuality.
The end of summer feels like a Monday back-to-school traffic. The moment of sonder strucks you, as you can feel the bustling and the energy in each car, each of them have their own lives, their own thoughts, and hope. That’s August.
This august, I never cancelled any of my plans just in case he’d call. And as that song goes, wanting was enough —for me it’s no longer and it will never be enough.
Summer’s end is my New Year's day. You can feel the growing pains in the wind, and it tastes like salt and brushes on you roughly like sand.
This August, I am over it.
Recently, I’ve sat on Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan which is a story about complex relationships of a woman in her twenties with men, and with herself. She found herself stuck in a relationship that doesn’t satiate her sexual and emotional desires, but attends to her need for attention just about enough as she ought she deserves. As being insatiable goes, she seeks out what she wants elsewhere and she does it obsessively.
Acts of Desperation perfectly described my relationship with sex and self-esteem.
She described sex as the only act where we could only truly feel out-of-body experiences. For her, he is the most beautiful man to exist and the act of sex is an act of devotion —a worship, a prayer.
I’ve only had that once, after a big bottle of red, crying like a toddler about how I’m a bad person.
I was on the toilet seat and hugging the bottle going on about my tantrums. I looked funny —crazy. He sat next to me. He held me and looked at me lovingly in spite of how deranged I must've looked. His pupils were dilated and eyes sore, he was crying with me. I was naked, for the first time in my life. My pain, insecurities, the ugly-crying, and this desire to be accepted being vocalized for the first time, to someone I was falling deeply inlove with. I was truly naked.
That night, I felt like my soul left my body, that was such a high.
Maybe it was the wine?
Ever since, I long to recreate that feeling, but alas, I failed.
The countless failure made me feel bored, worse, it made me feel numb. My dissociation poisoned the one thing that is my heaven on earth. It didn’t feel bad, it just felt like a vacuum of nothingness. I prefer feeling bad than nothing.
That’s when I realized that vulnerability is what makes it
It’s what makes the experience out-of-body, at least for me. When two people are courageous enough to be vulnerable and strip themselves naked to show the other their flaws and pain —they create a safe space. Whatever fantasy can be wished, and it will happen shamelessly. The act becomes a wavelength vibrating with high and low frequencies. Unafraid to go slow because true intimacy burns steadily yet fiercely.
There's something so intimate and unholy about being truly naked. Clothes off, soul barest. To be craved the way you always dreamt to be, without judgement. There’s something animalistic about it, like claws gripping, salivating for skin. It feels heavenly to know that even the ugliest parts of your soul is being worshipped. The security in knowing you can be everything you are that others would shame you for. There's something so addictive about being sinful and filled with shame but in the moment, you do not care. In that moment, your devotion lays to another soul. There’s something so delectable about experiencing the extremes —the roughness and the gentleness of it. It’s a high.
I could live in that reverie forever.
Notes on Celibacy
Trending girl literature and media such as Fleabag, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Acts of Desperation, and well The Woman Destroyed has a common ground. It tackles the deeply misogynistic and patriarchal system that created the illusion that little girls can only find true love romantically. So we hunt down that true love, in different bodies, in coping mechanisms that deem equally fit for x unresolved trauma. That little girl chases her prince charming in hopes to save herself, anyone that provides crumb of attention can suffice.
We sleep for a year, neglect our friends, be filled with envy and self hate, project it, sleep with someone's boyfriend, cheat, write about our pain in our journals, and beg for more pain to validate the monster we’re becoming —all in the hopes for true love and happy ending.
But we don't become better when we’re drowning, and we won't be overnight.
All that heavily marketed happy ending is just overhyped male validation, I find it ridiculous that I spent my girlhood and my early twenties chasing it. Maybe I became jaded, but all these lit works taught me that true love exists around me and I just have to look up. It taught me about the beauty my friends and family have, and the time I have now which I can spend focused on nurturing them than chasing someone who makes me feel small and rejected. The validation we chased seems so minute compared to the validation we get once we decenter the idea that happy ending resides in finding our soulmates. If we truly as women want to heal, we have to decenter men.
The more I wake up to this cruel realization, the more I dissect past relationships. None of them felt real. None of them saw me as a human being. I admit, I wasn't the best too.
I already have a traumatic past that made me particular with who, what, and how I choose to be intimate with anyone. In the beginning of it, hyper sexuality was my coping mechanism but as I began to heal and occasionally dissociate even at “healthy” relationships —the more I lose interest in that type of validation.
The more I dissect this recent disinterest, the more I find myself indifferent. I find the validation boring. Lusting off me on a Wednesday morning? Get off me, is being lustful all you are? Boring.
Recently, I couldn't find a bone in my body that wants intimacy. It’s frustrating to always feel everything at extremes, either it's obsessive or nothing; my mood controls me or i don't care; it’s a pure ecstasy or week-long lows —I’m yet to find the balance.
However, I am still a romantic. I still daydream about a warm kitchen that smells like brown butter, I daydream dancing to Marvin Gaye with my friends and my mom, I daydream of my dad always asking for seconds when I cook. I daydream of being spun around like a little girl and laughing with my person, if God gave me the luck to find him or her in this lifetime.
Majority of the men I’ve come across would put importance in sex when it comes to their relationships and growing up, I would bite the bullet to secure the attention I need. How naive of me? My latest break up made me realize that sex doesn't make or break a relationship, so is good chemistry with another casual stranger. I find myself dissociating most of the time because I can't stomach how these men that claim they want and love me and worship me and scream on top of their lungs how they want to marry me or how amazing I am —would make me feel that small? I couldn't stomach being lied to. I couldn't stomach how they can call their exes crazy knowing that’s my future too. I couldn't stomach that I no longer like them the more I know them.
Character is what makes the relationship. Not compatibility of personalities, not sexual chemistry, not religion, not values. Character is how someone consistently shows up in this world. Personalities, values, and attraction changes.
As a girl, growing up —you’ll see how being lusted after is the most disgusting thing ever and they will always get away with it thinking they gave you a compliment. Not only is it insulting, it is soul-shattering to find out that you’re never on the same wavelength. You’re madly in-love with the idea of them and all they are is a horny 5’9 gremlin with an emotional intelligence of a toddler.
They discount our beauty as if we’re objects knowing we’re so much more. There’s so much inside a girl, it’s a bag full of trinkets, it’s sparkly and genius at the same time, we make layered jokes that flies over your balding head, we have fun hobbies we share with our girls, we actually compliment each other above our looks, we think and ponder so much, we act like our mothers, we love with so much depth, and we’re capable.
Practicing celibacy made things feel real. The rose-colored lenses were nowhere to be found. I found myself in dates where values may not align, but I genuinely enjoyed the time, and actually feel as if I’m getting to know someone for who they truly are. It became easier to say my boundaries out loud and practicing it because I’m not drowning in somebody's dick sand, living, obsessing. I found myself investing in communities and friendships. I prioritize making time for the life I want to build. It became easier to have more control, the dopamine and serotonin flows in my body without the fear of withdrawals. For the first time, I don't feel used nor do I have to beg. That’s because I made sure to care about my community, I have enough attention I needed, and this time, it feels real.
God forbid women to live sensually
The system placed sensuality into a bad light by discounting the art of it into sex and viewing it through the male gaze. Sensuality reframed into something shameful and degrading. Just like women, sensuality is so much more yet devalued.
Sensuality is feeling all of your senses. Your sense of touch, of smell, of taste, of sight, of hearing.
Sensual practices like dancing, eating, and bathing are objectified through the male gaze. Tell someone you did pole dancing, and they get all disgustingly excited and say “you can dance on my pole” —what a joke, their ballsacks land on the ground more than that joke. While some would categorize a sensual woman as a bad woman, podcast bros would even say “low-value” —what a loser thing to say. Women have always been condemned to unapologetically enjoy the pleasures of life may it be sexual or not. If you enjoy sex, you’re a slut, if you’re not, you're a boring prude. You can never win in this world, so I say fuck it. Shaming sensuality is as old as the Salem witch trials of condemning women to be as wild and free as their hearts desire.
For me, practicing sensuality is just enjoying the sweet nothings of life. There’s an ironic high you can get from it. Whether I’m eating juicy peaches, basking in the sun, kissing someone, or dancing on a pole. It’s enjoying the juicy moment and taking notes through all my senses.
An older-sister list to practice sensuality in a healthy and lovingly way:
Dance
Wear that flowy dress
Do your make up singing to Lana Del Rey
Cheap wine, expensive cheese, splurge on the berries, savor it.
Go to a grocery store or a farmers market, and smell, feel, taste the fresh produce. Cook for yourself.
Spray on a perfume to relive a memory.
Draw yourself a bath.
Go outdoors, hike a mountain, swim in the ocean, feel the wind, the current, soak in the views.
Play and you know what I mean <3 Have a great sleep after that x
Take artsy nudes!
Take your breathing seriously during workouts, mind-muscle connection!
Be physically affectionate (I used to hate giving hugs, but I love it now)
feel.