This past week I went to a singles mixer that our local radio station was hosting. I didn’t go to necessarily meet guys. I actually wasn’t expecting to really meet anyone worth my time, judging by what I’d heard about their past events. I really just wanted to go to meet the radio show hosts that I absolutely love listening to every morning. So I dragged my non-single sister with me, and lo and behold, I had a fabulous time, I felt more confident and outgoing than I have in a long time, and I did end up meeting someone. And by “meeting someone,” I mean we talked and hung out for a few of hours, he bought me a couple of shots, he got good and drunk and asked if he could kiss me, aaand, I let him… oops. Needless to say, I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere, seeing as he’s 3 years younger than me, is still in college and spends most of his free time drinking, and his facebook page clearly states that he is only looking for friendship and/or random play. But boy, would I love some random play. Unfortunately, my vagina won’t allow it.

Which leads me to believe that maybe my vaginismus is really just my body’s way of protecting me from all of the potential STIs I could have contracted throughout the years during random, drunken encounters. Maybe it’s my body’s way of protecting my heart from getting broken by all these sex-craving jerks who I just can’t resist once I’ve had a few drinks in me. I have a hard time believing it’s the latter, seeing as my tender heart has been broken endless times by jerks who only wanted me for my looks and for nothing else. Like someone on my support group so nicely put it, “Go and find someone who sees you as a person, not sexual gratification.” Maybe that’s what my vagina is trying to tell me.

That still doesn’t stop me from wanting the random play, dammit!

But I diverted from the original intent of this post.

Why did I cry tonight? Because I’m sad that the only thing that’s holding me back from pursuing this guy is the fact that this condition makes me feel so damn insecure. I’m disappointed in myself because I find it pointless to pursue what could be a really fun new fling, only because I feel physically incapable of one.

Sometimes, I like to paint scenarios in my head (I’m a big daydreamer). Tonight, I thought of my friends, who I’m going to be seeing in a few weeks, and I wondered how our conversation would go regarding this guy. They would ask me how it was going, if I’d gone out with him yet, and would start badgering me with “why not”s and “he could be a good time!” And I would get frustrated and cry out, “What’s the point? He’s just gonna go running for the hills when he finds out I can’t have sex! Why can’t you guys stop pretending that I’m just another single girl, and stop glazing over the fact that I’m broken!” And then the tears came.

I also told her about how I still have this phobia of penetration that I just can’t seem to get rid of, and how the thought of anything going in there is still absolutely terrifying. This pretty much convinced her that it was pointless to keep poking me because she doesn’t want to try and insert anything until I’m comfortable with it. But when will I be!? She asked me about what techniques my counselor and I were working with to try and overcome this fear, and I told her about some of the stuff we’ve talked about, but to be honest, it doesn’t feel like we’re really doing anything, besides talking about my freaking emotional closed-offishness. My counselor did tell me that she was looking into some sort of guided imagery stuff but we haven’t done anything with that yet. Hypnosis didn’t seem to work. Apparently I’m not a good candidate for EMDR since I was never abused. So what the hell will work? My specialist did say she was going to try and talk to my counselor about some of the things we seem to be struggling with so that we can come up with a game plan of how I’m going to be moving forward. So maybe hopefully I’ll get somewhere soon? Also, at my next appointment with my specialist (whenever that will be) we’re going to try some external biofeedback so that we can actually see how much those pelvic muscles are tightening up.

So I guess all-in-all, it wasn’t a total waste of an appointment. But still, I was kind of annoyed that I took the afternoon off of work, got on the train, paid $10 to get on said train, and paid my $40 co-pay just so that I could talk to my specialist. *sigh* But nevertheless, I was kind of glad I didn’t have to go through the disappointment of getting poked, feeling a slight twinge of ouch, and freaking out and asking her to stop, and once again feeling like I had gotten nowhere.

My counselor seems to think that my vaginismus is somehow connected to my emotions. My vagina is physically closed-off because I am emotionally closed-off. This could explain why I have so much trouble in relationships. The only relationship I am capable of developing is a physical one, and since I am technically physically unable to develop that type of relationship at the moment… I am confusing even myself. But yes, basically that is why I am still single. Not only because I have trouble letting men “in” physically, but also emotionally. So due to this little problem, not only are we working on having me letting go of my mental block, but we’re also working on opening myself up emotionally. Which is extremely difficult for me. I buckle under pressure. Especially when people are asking me questions I don’t know the answers to. “How do you see yourself ideally?” “What do you need to happen for you to let your guard down?” “What do you think you have to offer in a relationship besides sex?” “What qualities make you you?” Well, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, and I don’t know. Frustration, frustration, frustration.

Besides that philosophical opening-up-to-people crap, we’re also working on letting my mind accept the pain so that I don’t freak out whenever something touches my vag. Basically, vaginal penetration is never going to be pain-free for me, so I have to deal with the pain. Apparently. That alone is extremely frustrating and makes me want to fucking scream. WHY is it always gonna be painful!? WHY do I have to accept that it hurts?! Isn’t the first rule of curing vaginismus to not allow yourself to feel any pain? This only reinforces the clamping down of the muscles right? So why in God’s name do I have to allow myself to hurt? What is the point of “curing” this, then?

So right about now, I am feeling extremely shitty about myself, and I just want to curl up under the covers and cry. Other women with vaginismus and VVS are able to deal with pain. They go to doctors and suck it up and deal with the physical therapy, they deal with exams, with dilators, the whole nine. They say, “oh it hurt quite a bit, but there’s some progress!” Me, no. I feel the Q-tip or the tampon applicator touching my tender parts and I cringe and I stop and occasionally burst into tears. I don’t have the strength that these other women have. I don’t have what it takes to cure this. So it seems really cruel that God (if he in fact exists) gave me this affliction.

I swear, I’ve been feeling really positive for the past few weeks about all this. I even changed my blog layout to reflect my new positive attitude that I’m supposed to be embracing. I’m not sure what happened today, but all that positivity has been thrown out the window. Maybe it’ll be back tomorrow.

Going off on a tangent here…

If I hear one more time “my husband and I have never been able to have sex”, I think I’m going to scream. Does this… affliction, for lack of a better word… not affect anyone else but married women?! Am I the only vaginismus sufferer who’s single, and completely unattached? Can websites like vaginismus.com please acknowledge that there are sufferers who don’t have a partner? I feel like many of the things I’ve read on this issue mention how crucial partner involvement is in order to successfully cure this condition. Gee thanks, so because I don’t have a partner to help me along in this, I’ll never be cured. It seems that even in my small community of sufferers who feel so isolated from the rest of normal society, I feel even more isolated for being utterly alone in this. And yes, I know that there are single women who suffer from vaginismus too, but honestly, I feel like it’s a tiny, tiny percentage. I just find it kind of bizarre that there are so many women who aren’t able to have sex who have gotten married. I hope no one takes this the wrong way; I realize that there are people who choose to wait until marriage and all that, it’s just not very common in the society I belong to. I also realize that sex isn’t the most important, nor is it the only part of a relationship, but from my experience, sex is normally introduced very early on in the dating world. Most women my age, including all of my friends, are having sex within a couple of months, if not weeks, of dating someone new. I’ve never come across a dating situation where a guy wasn’t trying to get in my pants within the first few weeks of dating. I just can’t imagine having to tell a guy that I can’t do it just yet, and having him stick around. With all this in mind, I just find it kind of odd that it seems that so many of my fellow sufferers are in unconsummated marriages, when I don’t know of a single guy who would marry a girl he’s never had sex with.

Just today, I was having dinner with one of my close friends who’s familiar with my problem. We were talking about my dating life (or lack thereof) and she suggested that she set me up with one of her boyfriend’s friends. As I was starting to think, Yeah, why not? she said, “Ehh, he probably wouldn’t be OK with your situation though.” Right. Because he’s a normal 20-something year old guy with a healthy sex drive, so why would he want to date some girl he can’t put his penis in? She did add that “he’s kind of a jerk” but what 20-something year old isn’t? Regardless, a nice guy is still going to want to have sex.

But whatever. Enough with my negativity. I have griped on and on about this being-single-and-broken crap, and that wasn’t the point of my post. I forget what the original intent of this post was, but I’ll have to leave that for another time because right now I am tired and my sinus headache is returning.

I’ve been going through a series of ups-and-downs since I last updated, but at this moment I feel like I’ve hit a new low. But let me try and backtrack to my appointment of May 19th. I don’t know if I mentioned it on the last post, but I finally made another appointment with my pelvic pain specialist, since my panic attack at the last attempt back in January.

Overall, I was feeling pretty good about the appointment. I was actually looking forward to being physically examined, which was a nice change from all the talking and analyzing I was going through with my counselor. I had a little bit of anxiety, but I was very happily surprised, and proud, to find that I was able to control it pretty well. I even got stuck in some crazy stress-inducing lunch-hour city traffic on the way over there, but I managed to keep my cool. Once again, my NP was lovely, and sympathetic, and very comforting. She tried the Q-tip test again, and this time, I didn’t panic when the Q-tip touched me. I was able to breathe through it and tell her when I felt pain and when I didn’t. Turns out I did feel pain when she touched the opening, although to this day I’m still having trouble deciphering whether the pain was 100% there, or whether my anxiety is playing a part. The whole thing took about 2 seconds, because she stopped the second I told her I felt pain. Although we didn’t get very far, she seemed really pleased that I didn’t panic and told me how well I did and how far I’ve come in such a short time. We talked about my vag a little and she reassured me that mine looked very normal, which was one of my fears. Although she did say that, at this point, she thinks I may have a mild case of vulvar vestibulitis. If we could do a full-on exam, she would know for sure, but alas my anxiety won’t let me. She put me back on the Elavil (generic name: amitriptyline) that my gyno had put me on previously and also gave me a cream (a special mixture of Estrace) to apply nightly. She also gave me a prescription for Ativan to take before my appointments and before attempts at insertion. I left the appointment feeling elated, thinking how wonderful it was to finally be doing something about this as opposed to just talking about my failed attempts at insertion and overanalyzing my fears with my counselor. I also thought that the medications were surely going to work, and that the next time I went to see my NP, a miracle would occur, and she would be able to insert the Q-tip with no pain or panic.

Well, this is why I’m so hesitant to be optimistic about anything, because when things don’t fulfill my expectations, my whole world seems to come crashing down. After my second appointment this past Tuesday, I couldn’t even remember that elated feeling from the May appointment. We didn’t really get any further than the last appointment, even though I took an Ativan beforehand, which definitely helped to slow my beating heart. She started out by putting pressure with her fingers on the inside of my thighs and around my buttocks. Then she took the Q-tip and put pressure on different parts of my labia. Although that didn’t hurt at all, I started feeling a little panicky. Then, the second she touched the Q-tip to the opening and I felt the tenderness, I started feeling all those panicky feelings of “no-oh-my-god-i-can’t-do-this-stop-it-hurts-i-wanna-jump-off-this-table-i-don’t-wanna-do-this-anymore-forget-that-i-have-a-vagina!!” I tried to keep breathing through it, but I just couldn’t get those thoughts out of my head and I wanted more than anything to curl up into a ball. As much as I want to just GET OVER THIS, I couldn’t bring myself to keep my legs open and keep going. I wanted out. She sensed this, so we stopped. She told me that it seemed like the cream mixture I was using wasn’t working as well as we hoped, since it seemed I was just as tender as I had been the month before, so she wanted to try something else. This time she gave me a mixture of estrogen and testosterone and a numbing agent that I was to apply twice daily. She also gave me some lidocaine gel, which she wants me to use the next time I try to insert my tampon applicator (my ghetto cheap version of dilator #1). I’m supposed to see her again in 6 weeks, with the hopes that there’s some improvement, and that we’ll actually get to some insertion the next time. Just the thought makes me cringe.

Needless to say, I left the building feeling extremely disappointed in myself and more hopeless than I have felt in a very long time. I’ve pretty much been crying ever since, and I just can’t bring myself to feel positive or to even try anything remotely close to insertion. I feel like I’ve backtracked a million steps and I don’t know what to do to keep going.

And then vaginismus rears its ugly head. In the back of my mind, I’m constantly thinking about what will happen if this goes somewhere. What’s gonna go through his mind when I have to push his hand away from the “happy place” (ha, how ironic) the first time he tries? How long will be it until he tries? What’s gonna happen when I have to push his hand away for the hundredth time? What am I gonna say when he asks me what’s wrong? Then the dreaded question. “You’re a virgin, aren’t you? How come?” How would I possibly even begin to tell him what’s wrong? I know this is completely fucked up, but in a way, I feel like I would almost be deceiving him if I get involved with him. When a guy gets involved with a girl that he likes, he’s expecting that, sooner or later, he’s going to have sex with this girl. He’s not expecting the girl to be sexually dysfunctional. It’s like going to Home Depot to buy a lawn mower, finding one that you really like, only to bring it home and realize that it does a shitty-ass job of cutting the grass. It wouldn’t be fair if you couldn’t go back to the store to return it, would it?

*Sigh*

In other news, I may or may not have started talking to a boy. It’s way too early to tell whether or not this is something I should worry about, but nonetheless, I have a lot to ponder on that subject. But I’m gonna have to leave that for another night.

Q: How long is too long to wait to do the deed?

Beecher: Three dates.

Brendan: For someone I really liked, I’d wait months.

Joe: To tell you the truth, I haven’t had to wait any longer than three or four dates, so I don’t really know. But I’d have a very hard time waiting as long as Brendan.

Great. Wonderful. So no matter what, even if I do happen to meet a genuine, incredibly nice, wonderful man, he’s not gonna wanna wait longer than 3 or 4 dates to have sex. If I’m really lucky, maybe he’ll wait around for a couple of months. So, OK, a couple of months pass, still no sex. He’s gone. Why does that sound so familiar? Oh that’s right, CAUSE IT’S ALREADY HAPPENED TO ME! And I have no fucking reason to be angry and pessimistic?!?! Well, here’s a big “Fuck You” to your optimism and your positive thinking. If I wanna be fucking angry at my condition, I have every fucking right to be.