Our theme for the month of June is “sex and the church.” To read posts from our first pass at this theme, check out our June 2018 archives.
I actively fear my own body.
How did I come to understand this, you might ask?
It was ninth grade sex ed class. We were all ushered into a large classroom, where a teacher paged through a detailed slide show on the symptoms of sexually transmitted infections. About 1.5 minutes into the presentation, I started sweating and losing vision. This was closely followed by a sense of impending doom and a loss of the ability to use my arms that continued for the rest of the slideshow.
In my ignorance, I told this story as a party trick for years. Hearing people laugh at my sense of doom was a lot easier than trying to figure out the cause. It was years before I came to recognize this episode as what it was: a panic attack.
While the state of Michigan was attempting to scare me into using a condom, my brain was festering in the shame that had been piled onto my sexuality for years by the church functions I had attended. I had developed an ill-formed idea that my body was something to be feared. It was an article of temptation. Here, finally, in my ninth grade curriculum was concrete evidence that my body was an instrument of destruction. Improper use of it could lead to unbearable pain for both me and anyone I came in contact with.
Not that I had even held a boy’s hand at this point.
To this day, the largest trigger for my anxiety is my own body. Just a few summers ago, I tried to sit through someone’s birth story, and I ended up laying flat in the dirt barely able to see. The other night I had to put my head down in a restaurant because someone described Kegel exercises in detail. Deep in the recesses of my brain, my body is something to be feared at all costs. It is something that can not only destroy itself, but destroy others in the process.
As far as I can tell, this anxiety is rooted in the purity culture that I was raised in. I was inundated with messages of keeping various parts of my body out of sight and out of mind. I was soaked in the message that my body must be kept pure. My obsession with that unattainable purity led me to fear the only vessel I was given to experience this world.
*Upcoming Buffy the Vampire Slayer Spoiler*
When I watched the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where she loses her virginity, I was mesmerized. As a brief synopsis for those of you tragically unfamiliar with the show, she loses it to a vampire under a very specific curse. Unknowingly, her choice triggers the curse, turning him into a soulless killing machine. As I hunched over my MacBook, I was transfixed by this episode that played out my greatest fears. Buffy’s body had actually become a weapon that brought about pain and suffering to those around her.
But the redemption.
In the closing scene, Buffy is in her driveway, crying to her forty-year-old mentor about her mistake. When Giles looks her in the eyes and says that it is absolutely not her fault, I lost it. Sobbing. The fact that this secular 90s TV show had done a better job of addressing my fears than any youth group event I had ever attended nearly ripped my heart in half.
I don’t know what solution I am proposing here. All I know is, it feels that an institution that is supposed to celebrate our bodies as temples for God should not be creating grown women who are afraid of their own flesh and bones.
I wish that some GEMS leader had looked at me like Giles looked at Buffy and assured me that my body was not the enemy. Instead, I try to tell myself every single day the same thing.
My body is not the enemy. My body is not a danger. My body is not to be feared.
Until I believe this message, I must occasionally excuse myself from a conversation to prop my body against the wall. Eventually my vision will return, and I will be capable of using my arms again.
Susannah currently lives in New Jersey and works as a 7th grade ELA teacher in East Harlem. When she is not teaching or writing, she can be found exploring independent bookstores, going backpacking, and trying to roller-skate on all the cool trails in the city. She is also recently experienced in the art of citrus skunk repellent (I know you’re impressed).
Boy, do I feel this! It took me until my mid-20s to trust my body enough to listen to signals like headaches, stomach-aches, breathlessness, etc, and understand what my body was trying to tell me. Even something as banal as “you have a headache because you’re dehydrated, drink some water” was a revelation at that point. I ignored my IBS and mild depression and anxiety symptoms all the way through grad school because I assumed my body was lying to me.
My late 20s and now-early 30s have been a journey in listening, understanding, trusting, and being kinder to this meat suit of mine. To be 100% honest, leaving Christianity helped a lot. Even though I loved my church, I’d been getting IBS flare-ups on Sunday mornings for YEARS before I finally admitted that I wasn’t a believer anymore and left.
Those physical manifestations are all too familiar. So sorry you had to go through that too, but really glad to hear its much better now!
Thanks for writing this—so many people will identify with you. Buy the book called “Come As You Are” by Emily Nagoski. It’s evidence-based, supportive, and full of helpful information.
Thank you for writing this. I think this purity message of fear has been installed in a lot of women, but reading you describe it so viscerally makes it hit much closer to home.
Thank you for sharing the important story. And love the Buffy reference!!
My private Christian school didn’t even provide sex education to its students. So I ended up learning on my own or with partners far in the future. I definitely still get a minor panic attack in any intimate situation due to this puritan message. Maybe one day all of the churches will learn to teach people love instead of fear and control.