Big, beautiful, black and addicted?! Pt. 2

See, this article gets it. It article describes the ideas behind who or what is perceived as a sexual addict. Successful Americans who exhibit a high out of control sex drive are more apt to be labelled addicted to sex. A minority, especially a black woman, is often seen as hypersexual. Increased sexual activity, or hypersexuality, is a facet of many disorders such a manic depression, sexual addiction, some personality disorders, and some victims of child sexual abuse will exhibit hypersexual traits during puberty and beyond.

Let's see. I grapple with manic depression, a personality disorder (none of your business :P), and I was the victim of child sexual abuse. I don't want to lay the blame solely on those factors, but I think they are contributing causes for my addiction. As I meet more sexual addicts, I often meet people from different walks of life who have the same or similar life stories. Sexual abuse, abandonment as a child, mental problems, other addictions.

This part especially drove home the point I have been trying to make, and I could identify myself in it:

"Generally, a sexual addict gains little pleasure from sexual activity and is unable to form a bond with his or her partner. The actions of a hyper-sexual often lead to feelings of guilt, embarrassment and shame. The sexual addict overlooks the risks and consequences, be it financial, health, social or emotional.
Hyper-sexuality can be a result of adrenal gland abnormalities or disease, bipolar disorder sometimes referred to as manic depressive disorder and often associated with juvenile hyper-sexuality, puberty, frontal lobe trauma; it has also been observed in the elderly suffering from dementia."

I derive little sexual pleasure from my acting out, this week notwithstanding. In fact, I sometimes experience pain or injury as a result. I don't feel very empowered with my ass up in the air and my face on the ground. After the experience is over, I freak out about the consequences. When I'm riding the moment to hell, nothing affects me. Afterwards I have to pick up all the pieces and try to prevent it from happening again.

I will write on this more later, but I thought this was a great find for others like me out there experiencing this. We hide ashamed, feeling guilty and hurting inside. If more people came out about their struggles, maybe people would have more understanding for us. Sometimes I doubt it though. Sexual addiction, especially among poor black women is still seen as a moral issue and not as a mental health one. Public opinion says that we just need to control ourselves. Stop having babies. Lose weight. Hide behind (marry) a man. Control our unbridled sexuality. Just Disappear.

Big, beautiful, black and addicted?!

When most people think about sexual addiction, they're thinking about a man. A white male in his 20's or 30's. Middle class. Educated. Married. They're not thinking about a person of color, poor, or female. There are words for what we are and it has nothing to do with addiction. Immoral. Licentious. Promiscuous. Nonwhites, the poor and women are never allowed to have reasons for their failings. Instead our shortcomings are supposed to be hard coded into our DNA and reinforced through "negative" cultural practices and standards. Bullshit.

I don't know why I'm like this. I know that many things have combined to make me this way. Experiences, choices and luck have all mixed together to make me the way that I am. To many people, it seems incongruous that a person like me could not only be addicted to sex, but actually have it that often. I often fight the assumptions from others that a big woman is desperate, promiscuous and has few options. I have options and I exercise them regularly.

I've been approached and approach. While my preference as of late is young and athletic, I have had sex with chubby and skinny men as well. I've been sought out, desired, stalked and maybe loved. Even at my dustiest and most broken, I've had options and someone sniffing at me. Even if I really didn't want them to lol.

Lately it amazes me the number of men who are searching for a bigger woman, especially one of color or older. Men who are pretty desirable and who you would expect to find on the arm of an equally attractive girl. As I have said before, I know I'm not pretty. But I have sex appeal in buckets. My body drips sex and I send out feelers towards men that they can understand.

Most of my life, I've felt inadequate. I was scarred from the time I spent enrolled at a private school. Most of the children were the offspring of multigenerational mixed race parents. Parents like mine. Only problem was I took more after the African side of the family than the more "exotic" sides. If students weren't light, bright and damn near white, they had money or were smart. That's the only way you got in there. I was smart. One boy in particular made my time a daily hell. His personal nickname for me was 'Blackie' which he used to describe my copper colored skin. The boy was almost coal colored. When I called him on it, he let me know that it was ok for men to be so dark, but that it was wrong for a woman to be so black.

I remember being made to feel inadequate for my skin color and hair. There was a boy in our class who showed an interest in me above and beyond that of the other girls. You'd be surprised how much a pair of C cup breasts will influence a fourth grade boy! We were caught kissing, and only I was punished by our teacher. She beat it into me that I was nasty, promiscuous and that I sullying that poor mulatto boy with my whorish behavior. Little wonder I withdrew even more into myself. This was the first positive thing that had happened to me since my rape that year, and that teacher made me feel so dirty about it. I think part of it was that she knew about the rape and felt it had tainted me somehow.

At home, my mother never made me feel inadequate about my color. She had plenty of fodder with my weight and hair. I was always 10-15 lbs overweight, and she made sure I knew that she was much smaller at my age. I can remember growing out of my favorite pair of yellow pants and feeling like shit because I was too fat to fit them anymore. I was 8 and already hated my body. Eventually I stopped eating except for dinner and a snack. Soon I would binge, purge and starve my body in an effort to slim it.

My hair is mostly nappy with a looser texture towards the back, unlike her curly and wavy mane. I would ask why mine had to be so ugly and she would explain to me that we had different fathers. That my grandfather had given her that, and mine had cursed me with this. She made sure I understood that I shouldn't make a baby with a man who had nappy hair. And I knew how important it was to maintain the racial composition of our family. So I coveted mainly mixed looking guys who resembled my grandfathers and stayed away from darker men who could give me babies with nappy hair and dark skin. To this day if you asked me, I would say that my skin color looks closest to Alek Wek, even though my skin is much, much lighter than that. It's how I perceive myself.

By the time I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was using my body to gain attention and  make money. I think my addictions stem from my need to control uncomfortable emotions, situations and thoughts. Instead of thinking about my rapes, I could snort, smoke and fuck myself into numbness. Sometimes it worked. I'm going to end it there, but I will try to write more in depth with issues of addiction on this blog. Sometimes people have these preconceived ideas of how a group of people will behave. My purpose for this blog, along with telling my story, is to shatter that mindset. Addicts are people.