Category Archives: sexual health

May 17, 2013 · 10:23 am

The first time I had an abortion, even though I never thought I would

Noah is 6 years old. He is my only son. But being pregnant with him was not the first time that I have been pregnant. The first time I was pregnant I was 22 years old. I had an abortion.

I was not forced to have one. The pregnancy was not as a result of a sexual assault. I chose to have an abortion. And I live with that EVERY day of my life.

Not too long ago Celeste from Reluctant Mom posted the following question on her blog: 

When do you get to a point where you stop paying for the mistakes you’ve made in the past? Is that the point where you forgive yourself or when you stop seeking forgiveness from others?

I have been wanting to write about my experience since I read that, but for many reasons decided against it. And then the blog challenge, sort of, word was ‘First’. 

I’m not sure where to begin with what I want to say. Why did I initially decide not to write about it? Because it is still a very controversial issue. Because probably half the readers, if not more, clicked to another site when they read ‘I chose to have an abortion’. I can understand this. I used to feel the same way.

My mother was very young when she fell pregnant with me and she was put under a lot of pressure to have an abortion (not by my father). Fortunately, she’s a feisty thing. But that stuck with me and I remember being passionately anti-abortion my whole life. There was an incident in primary school where they showed a video about teenage pregnancies and abortions that sent me running from the classroom in tears. And I remember many late night, heated debates at Rhodes with close friends about the Right to Life versus the Right to Choose. I nearly lost friends so strongly did I feel about the issue.

And then 3 years into a relationship, living in Johannesburg, I learnt that I was pregnant. Years and years, a lifetime, of feeling one way instantly dispelled and the ONLY thing I could fathom was that I could not have a baby.

My boyfriend at the time diplomatically offered that he would agree to any decision that I chose to make but to be fair, in the end, even after my entire family had found out and tried to dissuade me from what I had decided, even when my little sister called me, crying, from a bus stop on her way to a hockey tour, I could not be convinced to not go ahead with my decision.

All I could think, all I could feel, was ‘No’. I can’t have a baby. I’m not ready to have a baby. ‘No.’ I was completely overwhelmed. My mind froze in fear.  I was paralysed with numbness. Nothing would have changed my mind.

The thing about willingly doing something that you’ve inherently believed to be wrong for your entire life, is that some very serious conflict occurs in your psyche.

I was not alright for a very long time. I was haunted by nightmares. I drank way too much. I did many, many things I should never have done. I could not forgive myself. And for many years I could not talk about it because I feared that others would not be able to forgive me.

The thing is that even if you are a liberal individual, claiming all women have the right to make these decisions for themselves, many of you are thinking to yourselves, ‘But I wouldn’t do it.’ 

One of my repeated life lessons is that I never know when I will be brave. Or when I will falter. I never know when I will be fierce and courageous or when I will give way. I have often learnt that I do not know myself as well as I think I do. That I continue to grow and learn about myself and other people and about how to be good.

We all have our own journey to make. But it doesn’t need to be so lonely. A large part of my twenties was spent in anguish. And isn’t it so that a large part of healing is being able to share and talk about what you feel. In the shadows of the controversy the fact is that a lot more women are having abortions. Once I started speaking about it I was amazed to find that I had several friends who had terminated their pregnancies. But no one really talks about it because they are afraid of what others will think of them.

If women were encouraged to speak more openly about their experiences then other women who are facing the same decision might be better informed as to what the repercussions of their choices are. Good or bad.

I respect a woman’s right to choose.What I want that woman to know is this: There is seldom a day that goes by that I do not remember my first pregnancy. That expected date of birth is embedded in me for all time.

I think we can only heal when we have forgiven ourselves. It may be comforting to know that others do not blame or condemn you but when we are with ourselves we must face our demons alone.

But even if I could go back and do it all again I wouldn’t change a thing. Because everything that has happened since then has been part of my journey, the make up of who I am and of how I continue to grow. And it has led me to my greatest first of all. Noah.

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December 11, 2012 · 2:24 pm

The first time I had sex with a boy

Image from pinterest.com

Image from pinterest.com

I was 14 and everything seemed wrong and hypocritical, and also it was at that stage where you feel you’re the first to ever experience it.

Social compression and boredom forced me into what my parents would have called ‘rebellion’ and I was amazed, as Lucy must have been in Narnia, to find a microcosm of disillusioned deracialized children from alternative schools, who accepted me, allowed me to feel part of some broader adolescent experience. I pantomimed appreciation for third-rate metal bands, learned to smoke pot and read Catcher in the Rye.

It was a time of blurry-faced young people molten in alchoholic fumes, and hitching rides with truckers at night in order to find some stranger’s party.

I met this Cyril (age 17) in one of these dreamy nighttime sprawls. He had an archaic name and a face like an angel, a young steam-punk Narcissus trawling the darkened suburbs with the grace of a gazelle. I was in love with him the minute I saw him, and I never ever believed he could love me back. In the way of adolescents, we ensnared one another with Myspace and sexual innuendos. One night we got to sleep over in the same house, and, in the middle of the night we both jolted up and started kissing. I could not believe I was holding someone so liquid and golden in my arms. I hadn’t kissed many boys then.

When I started going out with this Boy, my two worlds fused: the daytime one, in which I was a nerd at a private school, with my secret nighttime self. Cyril in the daylight, in my parents’ eyes, was this scruffly youth with broken sneakers and a sullen demeanor. He was allowed to sleep over but emphatically in different rooms.

So began a ritual of sneaking into the spare room at night, where we would undress one another, suck and kiss each other’s bodies until our mouths were numb with a slightly sour taste. I gave my first hand job, blowjob and so on. I was slightly alarmed at penises and even more so when he tried to put it in me. I was small and sexually premature, despite being hell bent on rebellion.

So began a bad time. I was convinced something was wrong with my body, and the pain was excruciating. I would clutch his throat to stop him breathing so loud, and I would try separate myself from my experience and focus on the dark passage where my family lay sleeping.

Image from imgfave.com

Image from imgfave.com

Because of the creaking bed, I made him try take me on the floor. I remember how it felt to be flattened between the wooden floorboards and his body. The feeling of that dull fleshy instrument against some unspecified region in my vagina, shoveling unsuccessfully into me.

In the daytime, my mother started coming down on me. In a terrible voice, she told me she was not an idiot; she noticed ‘all the tissues in the bin’. That was all she said about it, but our mutual discomfort slapped us both in the face. She thought I was giving hand jobs. The truth made me want to cry. Cyril continued to sleep over and so the ritual of trying to lose my virginity continued, even in the face of mine and my mother’s red-faced shame.

Not only had my contradictions fused, the once binary parts of my life began to interchange. Now me and Cyril tried to lose my virginity in the bright afternoon. At night, as I lay next to his sleeping body, watching the clock for when I should tiptoe back to my room, I felt young and little and wanted badly to be a child again.

Image from pinterest.com

Image from pinterest.com

I was staving off penetration like it was death, but I began to tell myself that both were inevitable, and I must release my body to him. That afternoon something was different. He put on the condom and moved into me with fluidity we had never experienced, and I could feel myself permeable to him. My overriding feeling was triumph, that I was not an anomaly. Once it was over I held the condom, still warm from my body, and contemplated the semen inside.

That night we went to ‘The Fountain’. A damning movie to lose one’s virginity to if ever there was one. I have since re-watched the movie and have felt tired and disappointed.

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July 10, 2012 · 5:30 pm

The first time I used a moon cup

I bought it at the Wellness warehouse and it came in a nice white box with silver sparkles on. There were no sizes, so I assumed that these would all be reasonable and fit most vaginas. Walking out of the shop I felt excited about a life soon to be free of tampons and their associated leaks, stupid cotton strings in hospital colours, and the expense of paying R8 per day to bleed.

Image from the Menstrual Cups Galore pinterest boardI got to the bus stop, and excitedly opened the box. Inside were some instructions and the moon cup. It was about the size of an egg cup. Big I thought, but I figured if a penis could fit inside, so could this silicone cup. And it would so that I could completely boycott bleached cotton plugs up my vagina.

It told me I had to boil the cup, which was made of silicone, before use, and after my period finished. Then I had to place it in the bag provided. I looked in the box again. No bag. Someone must have opened the box and taken it out. And touched my mooncup.

The last bus home was just arriving but it was either go back now and swap the cup, or wait another month to use it. I grumpily got up and walked past my ride home back into the store.

The security guard wanted me to explain. “I just bought this, and its supposed to come with a bag, but when I opened it the bag was gone. So I want to swap it for one with a bag.” “But what is it?” He asked. I began to blush, damning myself for blushing. “It’s a moon cup” I said with as much defiance as possible, and stormed past him into the shop.

I began opening all the other boxes and found that they too had had their bags removed. A syndicate carrying their treasures in small bags? At the back of the shelf was a last box, still sealed. I opened it and it contained a pretty blue and green bag. I made the exchange at the till and rushed down to the train station to catch the next one home.

At home, and ready to get going, I boiled my silicone cup in my egg pot for the required 5 minutes, and then one more minute for luck. I went to the bathroom, instructions in one hand, silicone cup in the other.

I sat down. The instructions told me to fold the circular cup in half until it made a sort of smiley face. I did so. It still looked huge. Then, I had to insert it using almost my whole hand, and when it was in far enough, release it. When it opened inside, I should feel if it had made a circular seal. The tiny silicone tip (which replaced the string you’d normally have on a tampon) was only short, and wouldn’t stick out much. The guide recommended lube to help you get it in the first time. I dutifully lubed up the rim of the cup.

First try: I squeezed the cup hard to fold it, the silicone not as bendy as I would have hoped. As I lowered it down and was about to get to putting it in, it unfolded and jumped out of my lubed fingers and into the air. I reached up and caught it before it fell down.

Second try: I squeezed it harder this time, using two fingers to keep it in the smiley face that would then unfold. I used two fingers to put it in, and held my other hand beneath it in case it fell in the loo. It went in. But, it wasn’t unfolding. I had to reach in and twist it slightly according to the booklet, so I spent about five minutes rummaging around my vagina, trying to hold onto the tiny silicone ‘string’ long enough to twist it. Finally it turned and I felt a little suction. Pleased with myself and with fingers covered in lube and blood I stood to wash my hands. Immediately I felt that tiny silicone string begin to stab the side wall of my vagina.

Now, I was feeling quite deflated at this stage. What was supposed to be my liberation from the boringness of tampons, had taken up a sizeable amount of my time and was stabbing me. This was not what I had expected. I walked around for a while, but then couldn’t take it any more.

So I decided to take it out. The instructions said put your finger in and press lightly against the side whilst turning the almost non-existent silicone string. Yes. That’s right. Put your whole hand inside your vagina to take this bugger out.

I sat back on the loo, after washing my hands for what felt like the gazillionth time that day. I put one finger in, and tried to manuovre it as I was supposed to. No joy. Two went in. When I got a grip on the silicone string, I forgot all about the twisting in my delight, and pulled. ERROR!

I felt like I was vacuuming out my brain. I’m convinced that some of my womb moved a little further down by body so strong was the suction from the moon cup. After recovering my senses and screaming ‘fuck fuck fuck’ into my clenched fist I took a deep breath. Relax, I told myself. Relax and breathe.

I tried again, two fingers and twists and succesfully heard a ‘pop’ sound from my vagina. The seal had broken. I was free. Inside my mooncup was about one drop of dark red blood.

I cooked the mooncup again, and put it safely in its cutesy blue and green bag. I have never been as happy to have a tampon in me as I was that day.

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