My last entry was short. It was as long as I could emotionally handle.
What I can say for John now is that he honestly did as well as he could for a 19 year old guy. What could I expect? He really did care about me with his whole heart, and I recognize that now. But then, I thought he was just thinking about that one part of him. In retrospect, I think it was more.
Counseling
I spent hours and hours in counseling. I was the one who initiated it. My mom says that she didn't think I would complete college had I not opted for it.
In counseling, we talked about all sorts of topics. We spent much time talking about relationships and what was normal and natural. I remember some statements she made including that 98% of my friends are having sex, 2% that don't are likely due to religion or some other reason. That was a surprise to me.
I was raised in a religious household. We went to church every Sunday, no excuses unless we were out of town. I was also raised under the guise that sex is only for married people, so I had planned to keep it that way. I didn't talk about sex with anyone either, cause it's something that was never discussed in my home. Dad and mom inadvertently put in my mind (and I later heard my sister's too) that sex is dirty. I had a very skewed view of sex before I found out about this diagnosis and it really made thinking about it all much more complicated than it needed to be.
I was supposed to be having sex?! This is something that rolled around and around in my head. I didn't know what to think. Many other thoughts rolled around in my head (and some still do). Why do so many teens just have the ability to so easily have sex and I have to make my own vagina to do it? Why me? I am responsible. Why do these teens have the ability to have kids and I can't? Is it normal to have sex as a teenager? Can I get on some sort of a board where people who want to have kids need to petition to me and explain how they are qualified to be parents financially, emotionally, etc? Can I become a nun (wait, that came later)? Do relationships revolve around sex? What should the focal point be?
I was very private with who I told. I explained it to my very close college girlfriends, but I was very quiet overall. I made my mom hush hush. I remember mom telling me when she told my grandparents I couldn't have kids, one of them cried. I think they were just sad about the option, that it wasn't there. That was and still is one of my biggest complaints about this condition. It takes away the options that I never would be able to decide on, and I didn't and still do not like that. I talked about all of this in counseling.
Needless to say, I was "mildly" depressed. I had some low, low days. This affected my friendships and my relationships with men. Sometimes I got mad (and still do) about men and their animalistic desires. I am a person!
From counseling, I took away some coping skills for my depression. One, exercise. Two, eat right. Three, do not isolate myself from people. I held on to those like a lifeline.
I ended up seeing the school's psychiatrist, which was one of the biggest mistakes I made. She prescribed to me Prozac, which I took for about a month, until my blood pressure was 80/40. Then I took another drug that I can't remember the name of anymore. I had the worst headache in my life. Needless to say, the other depression advice was much better, and that I stayed with for the long run.
Home
I went home that summer after Freshman year, only to fall back on old habits, and the depression nearly swallowed me. More to come on that...
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