The author is pictured at age 12, around the time that all the chastity drama began in her family. Photo Courtesy Of.Victoria Waddle My first sexual intercourse, just before I started college, was unplanned.
It would have been largely forgettable if we’d used birth control. Looking back, it’s hard to admit to my own foolishness. I’d had the same boyfriend for 18 months.
While our Catholic upbringings were a factor in this long period of chastity, my unpreparedness was also due to my mother’s admonition that a girl using birth control is sinning by anticipating sex. Advertisement Five years before, my parents relentlessly belittled my older sisters after finding out that they were sexually active. Our household exploded in screaming and lectures on the “type of girl no decent man wanted.
” Drawers were regularly searched. “I’d feel better if you weren’t using birth control and got pregnant,” our mother yelled. “At least your intentions would be good.
” Advertisement My sisters gave our mother’s advice all the consideration it deserved, but as a slowly maturing 12 year old, I took it seriously. Desperately wanting to please my parents, I took their words as a viable ethical position. By the time I was 17, my parents’ dysfunctional marriage had become a vicious, albeit silent, war.
My philandering father often stayed out all night. My mother lost so much weight that her co-workers thought she had cancer. Yet she would stand in the doorway when Mitch dro.
