I remember being 10, hearing someone say the word “condom” for the first time (I was sheltered and raised in the wilderness for the first 20 years of my life and not allowed to go to school) and I was demanding to know what the word meant and my family just literally ignored me until I gave up asking.
They never gave me the talk, never talked about relationships, didn’t even ask me if I had questions, just completely ignored it as an issue.
Since all the reading material and television shows were curated and we weren’t allowed to watch anything remotely controversial, I have no idea how they expected me to learn the facts about one of the most important factors in our lives, sex and relationships.
I did eventually manage to sneak enough knowledge through occasional visits to bookstores and magazine racks that I was eventually able to piece it together. But there was so, so much else I was never equipped for. You would think that I would have grown up to a disastrous life and… you would be right.
I remember being 10, hearing someone say the word “condom” for the first time (I was sheltered and raised in the wilderness for the first 20 years of my life and not allowed to go to school) and I was demanding to know what the word meant and my family just literally ignored me until I gave up asking.
They never gave me the talk, never talked about relationships, didn’t even ask me if I had questions, just completely ignored it as an issue.
Since all the reading material and television shows were curated and we weren’t allowed to watch anything remotely controversial, I have no idea how they expected me to learn the facts about one of the most important factors in our lives, sex and relationships.
I did eventually manage to sneak enough knowledge through occasional visits to bookstores and magazine racks that I was eventually able to piece it together. But there was so, so much else I was never equipped for. You would think that I would have grown up to a disastrous life and… you would be right.