Funny thought..my marriages (2- I was married at 16 for about an hour) were not without sex. I am sad to say I should have won an Oscar. Sex more of a gift to the one I was with than a shared experience, and when the gift became a duty, I felt I was violating myself. I want to be able to trust again.
My second marriage was to a man with a secret, sordid life and we spent almost all of our time together. We worked together, raised our children together, had what I thought was a good thing. The level to which I was deceived was beyond anything I had ever heard of. I did not have a peer group.
My time was spent watching the twin towers fall over and over again in a documentary made by two brothers about the disaster. Life lost, and reality skewed to the breaking point and beyond in the time it took to have a cigarette and a coffee. Please do not misunderstand. I do not equate my loss with the victims'. It was the similar dynamic i found solace in.
My Mother remembers that to this day and still shudders remembering me in shock, fetal positoned, shaking crying and unable to eat anything that wasn't forced on me for 2 months. I realized why they called it a "Nervous breakdown". I felt the fusebox that was my nervous system short-circuiting and arcing electricity throughout my body. I was experiencing severe tremors 24/7 and lost 19 pounds in two months.
That was a long time ago now, and I am still under reconstruction. The horrendous reverberations that quaked through my world were like aftershocks, a few points lower but still toppling the already weakened infrastructure of my family. But I am still here! I did not choose for those things to happen to me. I did not position myself for this level of stress nor was I groomed for it but it's here, and I am still lovable, just untouchable. It's like being a ghost who wants the companionship of a whole person.