Growing up I never lived in a stable home. From the age of 1 to 6 I was in and out of foster care homes. After that I was adopted by my grandparents where I was surrounded by prostitutes and drug addicts because my new home turned out to be a drug house. Living in this sort of environment, I was left wanting one thing… to fit in with the rest.
During elementary school I never had a boyfriend. While all the other girls were talking about their boyfriends or who they kicked it to, all I could do was listen. Everyone knew I had never had a boyfriend and no boys liked me because of it. Pretty ridiculous I know. So what was a girl who was feeling pressured, but was too scared to kiss a boy to do? LIE.
When I got into high school it was the same story as in elementary school. All the girls had already kissed and dated but I still hadn’t, BUT here I was in a new school where no one knew anything about me so I did it. When my new friend Giselle had finished talking about how she had kicked it to this guy, she looked at me and asked me the question that I was dreading to answer, “Have you kissed a guy?” I took that opportunity to make myself into someone who would fit in and told her “Yeah, of course I have.”
As the school year went by I saw that girls were doing a lot more then just kissing guys. I’ve always been the type of person to have a lot of respect for myself and my body, but as I went into my sophomore year I began to feel left out. I found myself loosing my self confidence because I didn’t have what everyone said I should have… a boyfriend. I began to think that I shouldn’t save sex for marriage and I began to doubt my own will power. I would always talk about how I didn’t think I would be able to wait for marriage and I just didn’t see the point anymore. “I’ll have more experience and my honeymoon will be a lot better,” is what I often to tell my self and others. STD’s and pregnancy weren’t even on my mind anymore. I just wanted so badly to fit in, but thank GOD that I didn’t end up fitting in!
Looking back on my life; my unstable homes and seeing my family members prostitute, I knew that it was all wrong and I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. No, I wasn’t planning to go around prostituting, but I didn’t want to be anything like a prostitute in the sense of giving myself to just anyone because I deserve just ONE. The RIGHT one.
Around the end of my junior year I got over the whole “trying to be like everybody else” thing and I guess you could say that’s when I officially became abstinent. I saw how much more respect people gave me because of the decision I decided to make and because of the respect I had for myself. My virginity is something so special that I can only have once and I am so happy that I am going to be able to give it to my future husband and be able to say “I waited for you.” Forget about all that crap about having experience. If I don’t get it right the first time I have the rest of my life to get it right with my TRUE love who is willing to commit to me the rest of his life.