I've been struggling a lot lately with anxiety, and it sucks. There's very little positive to be found in crying uncontrollably for an hour and not being able to explain it to your boyfriend, or in being so petrified in class that you can't even follow the lecture.

The one positive thing that came out of it: I finally "finished" a creative non-fiction piece I've been working on for a while. (I put "finished" in quotes because, as writers out there know, a piece is never completely finished.) The piece deals with issues regarding sex, abuse, relationships (familial and romantic), and rape. Writing it gave me the really awesome chance to consider the roots of my anxiety -- the relationships between my current-day experiences and the things in my past, why certain things are triggers, etc.

But the most vast realization I had? I am happier now than I have ever been before, and I am happy for all the right reasons. I am in an amazing graduate program, studying issues about which I am truly passionate. I have a few amazing forever-friends, as well as a few really great new friends. I have a supportive mother and sister, and things with my dad have improved. I also have the greatest, most supportive boyfriend who moved across the country to live with me, and who daily reminds me that he loves me -- both through his words and through his actions.

So why do I still feel anxious? Why is it that some days, I can't even hold the tears back? Why do I wake up from nightmares at 2 a.m. and need to write a letter I'll never send.

I don't have good answers. I mean, I have diagnosed OCD and general anxiety, so that gives a medical explanation, I suppose. But I can't logically explain it. Some days, I just feel like as amazing as everything is, there is no way it can go anywhere but down. Some days, I just feel like I'm not worth it.

Update: Virginity Rhetoric Ruined My Marriage

A few months ago, I wrote a post talking about the negative effects Christian virginity rhetoric had on my marriage. While many people have thanked me for sharing my experience in this post, the post has also caused some hurt and contention; this was never my intention.

In an effort to create a pointed and brief post exploring the harms of Christian virginity rhetoric, I left out a lot of details. While I spoke briefly of breaking up with my ex in a "moment of clarity" and then asking him back out of fear, I failed to mention the multitude of other reasons I decided to give our relationship another go.

The result, unfortunately, was a post that made it sound like the only reason I asked for another chance was fear of being considered "sloppy seconds." The fact is, it really wasn't that simple. I hope this post will begin to rectify my former oversimplification. To achieve that and provide appropriate detail, this will be a long one, folks.

This engagement photo was taken only months after we broke up and got back together. I don't think there's any denying from the look on my face that I was completely, head-over-heels, in love.

My freshman year of college, the year I broke up with my ex and subsequently asked for him back, I was assigned to write a letter to my future self, which was then collected by my professor. He passed the letters back a week or so before graduation last month.

Reading my letter gave me some fresh perspective on that freshman-year breakup, as it was written only a couple of weeks before the incident occurred. In the letter, I talk about the struggles I was experiencing with my relationship. I talk about having two pulls on my heart:

the romantic pull
This was the voice inside me that reminded me every moment of every day that I was 100% in love and 100% devoted to my ex. It told me:

• He was the one. 
• Sure, we may have had issues, but love would pull us through.
• We would grow up together. We would grow into our relationship. We would grow because of the relationship.
• I couldn't imagine my life without him.

the logical pull

This was the voice inside me that told me that told me staying with my ex -- getting engaged, getting married -- wasn't the right thing to do. It told me:

• Our values were too disparate for us to make it work.
• Just as easily as we could grow together, we could also grow apart.
• I needed someone with a stronger sense of responsibility, and he needed someone with more of a free spirit.
• Maybe we would be happier apart, or as friends.

I let the logical pull win momentarily. I decided to end things. What ensued was a couple weeks of Hell, majorly because I was still in love with him with every fiber of my being. 

Being emotionally distant from him hurt my heart. I cried myself to sleep every night, I had to ask for extensions on a bunch of assignments because I couldn't focus, and I felt constantly nauseated. A part of me was being taken away. He had become a part of me. The romantic pull was screaming for me to ask him back. It was screaming that breaking up was the wrong decision.

The romantic pull also made me wonder if I was just scared. I had just started college. There were a lot of changes happening. Maybe I was just scared things wouldn't work out, so I was preemptively and prematurely ending them? (Breaking up out of fear of the unknown, of course, would be wrong.)

Then, as I spoke about in my previous post, I started to feel fear caused by many years of virginity rhetoric. One lesson we were taught in Sunday school is that every time you have sex, you give a piece of yourself away. Eventually, it was taught, you would have given away all of your pieces. Then, there would be nothing left of you. You would be an empty shell.

I thought that is where I was. I thought I was empty.

Meanwhile, the logical pull was still grabbing at me, constantly telling me breaking up was absolutely the right thing to do. We would both be happier in the long run.

At this point, we could say the logical pull had 45% of me. The romantic had another 45%. The fear had 10%. When added together, the romantic pull and the fear won. I asked him back. And I never looked back (until he left in October). 

I want to clear some things up:

• Fear was not the only reason I asked my ex back in 2010. It wasn't even the primary reason. The foremost thing that brought us back together was love. I loved him. He loved me. Fear only helped me to justify letting romance win over logic.
• I just talked to my ex last night about this, and he apparently had been experiencing some of the same pulls, but without the fear. I think it's safe to say we were both struggling with logic versus romance.
• I'm not sure what I would have done if I hadn't been experiencing these fears. It's very possible I would have asked him back anyway. I simply don't know.
• I hold fast to my commitments, sometimes to a fault. Given this tendency of mine, I held fast to my commitment to my ex as soon as I asked him back. Never again did I consider leaving him. Never again did my fear of being "sloppy seconds" affect how I viewed our relationship.

Virginity Rhetoric Ruined My Marriage, Too

I recently read this article about how pre-marital sexual "purity" ruined this writer's marriage. The author, Jessica Ciencin Henriquez, talks about how she didn't recognize that she and her significant other were not sexually compatible until after they got married. Because they hadn't had sex, Henriquez didn't recognize the lack of passion in her relationship.

In Henriquez's story, sex became an experience to endure rather than one to enjoy -- she writes about making grocery lists in her head while having intercourse.

My sexual story is similar to Henriquez's in many ways. I didn't save myself for marriage (sorry Mom and Dad!), but I did save myself for commitment. By the time we had sex (my first time), my ex and I had decided that we would someday be married.

At one point in my freshman year of college, I had a moment of clarity. I suddenly saw that we had grown apart. I broke up with him. I cared about him -- LOVED him even -- but I knew it wouldn't work.

Via

I remember realizing a few days into that break up that I wasn't a virgin. "No one will ever love me again," I cried to my best friend. "Good men only want virgins. They don't want to compete with your previous partners."

My very wise friend tried to tell me that it wasn't true. But I firmly believed in this lesson that I had been taught at summer camp in fourth grade, at youth group when I was 13, and in Sunday school my last year of high school. Men don't want other guy's sloppy seconds.

So I bucked up, swallowed my pride, and asked for him back. A few months later, we were engaged. A couple years later, we were married.

Today, I'm not only not a virgin, but I am also a divorcee. And I am here to tell you that I am still desired. Men still ask me on dates. Good men still want to pursue relationships with me. In fact, I'm in a relationship with a very sweet guy right now.

Oh, and I am no one's sloppy seconds.

Christian virginity rhetoric does more harm than good. The "sloppy seconds" argument didn't scare me out of having sex before marriage. Instead, the rhetoric scared me away from leaving a relationship that should have ended years before it did. Instead, the rhetoric made me believe that I was somehow unworthy of a healthy relationship.