Wherein I talk about my vulva.

My cunt is in an interesting place right now. 

Oh, heads up. A handful of you patrons are my lovely friends and studiomates In Real Life, so consider this your warning that I’m gunna talk about my junk. Turn back while you still can. 

So, my cunt. 

A handful of months ago I was diagnosed with both PTSD and a brain that is not neurotypical, and I’ve been working really hard to get on top of my shit about it. Doing the talking bit with my therapist, to learn new ways to process and cope with the world. Doing the medication bit with my psychiatrist, to get my brain chemicals balanced out. 

At times its felt hopeless, like why even bother when my skull is holding an incurable wasteland inside it? But every now and then I’d feel a tiny pearl of relief rise up out of the muck. And then another. And another. 

Baby steps of progress. 

For my brain, anyway. 

I imagine that there’s a giant scale inside me, that classic kind you see Lady Justice holding with the two dishes suspended on either side of a beam. On the one side is my mind and on the other is my body. The more pearls of relief that fall into the dish for my mental health, the fewer pearls of pleasure there are on the opposite dish for my body. 

Listen, what I’m trying to say is that my cunt is closed for business right now. 

Which is fine! It’s ok. I know people’s desire for sex goes in phases, that’s normal. Periodically Matt and I will agree to take a break from sex for a set period of time, like a week, just to reset our bodies and take away the pressure of feeling like we have to perform. 

This time it’s chemical, though. It’s my medication, not a natural phase. While I wasn’t a *daily* masturbator (Perish the thought!), I was a much more moderate every-other-day kinda girl, and now that pleasant background thrum of desire is just… not there. And in the few times when I’ve decided to give myself an orgasm, just to make sure my bits still work (use it or lose it!), things feel different. My responses feels different. My cunt feels different. Like trying to feel a massage underneath a thick winter blanket. My pleasure has gone into hibernation. 

Matt’s fine about it, he’s lovely and patient and supportive. If it were just a phase for the two of us to adapt around, that’d be one thing. But when a significant part of your job involves putting things against and in your genitals and reporting back to thousands of strangers on how pleasurable it was or not, well, you can see how this new bodily development complicates things. 

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’m not especially distressed. Not yet, anyway. 

At some point in the future I fundamentally believe I will have both a mind that is reasonably balanced and body that desires pleasure again. 

Some day I’m going to feel whole.