The 36-Year-Old Virgin

by Sarah

Tales of a 36-Year-Old Virgin is a series of incredibly moving posts on BlogHer by a woman calling herself Always Beginning the World (click that link to see all five installments).

ABW describes how, during her first OBGYN exam, the doctor told her that her vagina was “unusually small.” So little, in fact, that she couldn’t have sex, use tampons or even receive a pap smear. ABW went through life “isolated on my own little island, in an icy ocean called celibacy.”

More than twenty years later ABW found out that the doctors she consulted as a young woman were wrong: there was nothing wrong with her vagina. (What were those doctors thinking??) Instead, she had an unusually thick hymen, which, when removed, left her perfectly capable of doing the deed.

In the next four posts — all terrific and worth reading — ABW describes additional ways she was cut off from people (being late to talk as a child and developing enormous breasts at a young age), and finally meeting Lo, the man who made her want to reconnect with the world.

From her fifth post: “I did believe the doctors when they said it was impossible.  I’m sure I used it as an excuse, a crutch, and a reason to set myself apart.” After meeting Lo, “I decided that regardless of what I had ever been told, I was going to find a way to be a full person.” And she did.

Some of the stuff in these posts seems almost too powerful and well-written to be true. But even if it’s fiction the posts are still worth reading – the emotions are real, and the lesson that “the power to change things for myself was in me all along” is one we can all learn from.