Dear vaginismus,
I don’t even know where to start this letter.
When I think of you, I feel a lot, and it’s quite difficult to describe the complexity of emotions that comes with knowing you personally. So usually, to protect myself from experiencing you or thinking of what you have done to me, I shut down my feelings. I forget for a little while that you ever existed in my life.
Today however, I allow them to flow freely in hope of letting them move through and out of my system in soft acceptance.
It’s a paradox mix of anger, frustration, love, gratitude, impatience and sheer desperation. But, most importantly, the nagging feeling of inferiority as a woman. There’s something frightening and paralyzing about the fact that you as a woman cannot have children as long as you have this condition, that you are not even able to carry out the seemingly most basic act in human history that everybody in your ancestral line could: having sex.
I spent hours talking myself down and calling myself a hopeless cripple, filling myself up to the brink with feelings of shame, guilt and self-hatred.
Thinking that I will never be ‘normal’ in a relationship, that I will always carry with me the handicap of not being able to handle penetration. The feeling of not being whole, of not being able to satisfy a man. Of not even being worthy of being in a relationship before I’ve gotten rid of you.
And because of you, I have subconsciously chosen partners that I secretly knew it would never work out with, or that I have accepted poor behaviour in relationships because I thought I deserved it due to my inability to truly give pleasure to my partner.
Despite all the pain, you changed me forever, and I mean that in the best way possible.
This letter is not going to be a letter to an enemy, it’s a letter to a friend and protector that I truly am so grateful for.
If I learned one thing during my vaginismus healing journey in particular, it is that your body is never against you, in fact, it always tries to protect you from something you might just not be properly aware of what it is. Every symptom of your body is a cry for attention from your consciousness. A request to change something in your life or mindset. And if you try to just ‘get rid of it’ as quickly as possible, like many people do, it usually only gets worse.
And a bit about me..
I have always been the uncomplicated, sociable, down to earth girl everyone liked and no one seemed to have a problem with. I tried to please everyone, wore different masks in different social situations in order to belong, but deep down I never really knew what I wanted in life or who I was when no one was watching.
I made superficial friends in every school I went to, constantly wrote perfect grades and put a lot of performance pressure on me all the time.
I fell for every guy that showed interest in me, however badly we matched. And despite all these signs of my utterly low self esteem and hope to be chosen, I somehow managed to cover it all up behind a facade of shining performance, social hobbies and full appointment calendars, so that neither my social environment nor me could ever come to the conclusion that anything was wrong.
It is an irritating fact that humans most likely don’t change until they are truly forced to, and so it was not until you actively showed up in my life that I decided to question some beliefs about myself and how I show up in the world.
I finally had a reason to really look down on me and take care of myself before anyone else. I realised that I had to choose myself and stand up for myself, to speak up about you, however hard that seemed.
I felt the need to de-taboo the topic of pleasurable sex and self-discovery, and educated myself about the pelvic floor and vaginal orgasms. I learned that not every couple that doesn’t struggle with vaginismus automatically has ‘great sex’. And I learned to draw consequences and boundaries because of you.
I need a partner who is interested in my personal healing journey, who accepts me for who i am and who i was, and who is willing to take things slowly and gives me a safe space to develop my own sexuality in a sensual way. I refuse to date a man who talks me down because of you or who is unable to be patient with me, because I know that I deserve better. So in a way, you made me realise how poorly i was treating myself and motivated me to be kinder to myself and heal my nervous system in order to attract healthier, safer relationships.
You made me expand my consciousness about the fact that I have always prioritised other people’s needs instead of my own, that I have this inner need for approval and validation from my environment and that I would even go beyond my bodily comfort in order to please people.
I’m still working on all these aspects, and even though you are technically gone due to a mix of sexual therapy and pelvic physio, I still feel like I need to give some extra attention to the spiritual and psychological aspects that you wanted to give me inputs about.
Setting proper boundaries, defining my self worth, what it means to be vulnerable and to be a woman, all this has not worked itself out yet, but I’m in the middle of this beautiful process.
You have been my gateway to getting to know myself on a so much deeper level, to developing radical self-acceptance and to finally understanding in my heart that I am the most important person in my life and that I should finally act like it.
From getting panic attacks whilst trying to put in a regular tampon to inserting a dilator size 7 without pain, I’ve come a long way in my journey. I would consider myself mostly healed, and I’m so looking forward to have the most amazing penetrative sex with a supportive future partner.
I’m super proud of me, and I’m super proud of you. We will always have a bit of a love-hate-relationship, I will probably switch from ‘thanks for the lessons’ and ‘why me?!’ another hundred or so times. But that’s okay.
I just want you to know that I am now at a point where I fully accept you as being a valuable part of me that offers me ways to grow that I could never have imagined.
Life’s not always black and white, and it’s full of paradoxes. You taught me that the greatest pain is oftentimes just your biggest blessing in a coverup, and for that I will forever be grateful.
With all my love and compassion,
– Margreth (22 years old, Switzerland)
