I’ve never seduced anyone before.

Before last month, I’d never even considered it.

If someone wanted me, they would tell me. That’s how I thought it worked. There wasn’t any other way.

I thought if anyone showed any interest in me, then I was lucky.

I thought it was him who started it all. I thought I could never want someone, too. And even if I did, I couldn’t do anything about it. I was supposed to be small and willing. I was supposed to encourage and nod. I wasn’t supposed to ask the questions; I was supposed to say yes.

I am slow at feeling. I am slow at thinking, realizing, summarizing, and knowing. My body takes its time. It has always taken its time. And I am grateful for that.

When I feel an emotion, any emotion, it usually begins in some part of my body—my shoulders, my hips, my lower back (so many start in my lower back).

Then my mind sees it and tries to tell me, but I don’t want to listen, so I distract myself with the world. To distract my mind, I use movies, television, books, the internet. To distract my body, I diminish it to a thing that can become better with food and I deprive it from yoga and running and any form of exercise because that’ll slow me down enough to show me my emotions right away.

Basically, I hide. I try to hide from myself.

After a while, after I’m sick of distracting myself, after I’ve been mean enough to my body and drained my mind, that part of my body that’s holding the emotion becomes apparent to me. It speaks up and I, finally, listen.

Since it takes me so long to feel, it takes me a while to be ready for things. In middle school, it took me a long time to speak out loud. My grade was always deducted for an inadequate amount of class participation. Listening, I had down. Talking was harder.

In high school, while others were discovering alcohol, drugs and various body parts, I was just getting used to realizing I had a body at all. I started running and found out what it could do. I didn’t start drinking until sophomore year of college and I’m still getting used to boys, the idea of them, the fact that they exist, and that they are able to listen, too.

Seducing someone, though, that required something else.

That demanded confidence, declaration, volume. Certainty. Power. Fearlessness.

It required being okay with lights-on, nervous nakedness when all I knew was lights-off, shameful guilt.

More than any other stepping stone, my body took time to get used to this idea of having another body to hang out with.

I always felt guilty for wanting something, especially wanting another body, and I would flash back to my Catholic, plaid-skirt wearing days where we were taught to feel guilty for not going to church every Sunday, for going to confession only once every year (it should be once every month), for wearing socks with lace (forbidden), for wanting to hold a boy’s hand during the Our Father (not until marriage!), for dancing slow dances without the Holy Spirit in between us (the nuns were watching).

Guilt was my default. Until last month, on a ferry in the middle of the ocean, it suddenly wasn’t.

Because I had had enough and I was done.

Done with guilt. Done with shame. Done with being the listener. Done with giving all my energy away.

I was so much more, I am so much more than a thing that things happen to.

I am a force. I move mountains. I am love I am the universe I am the beetle I am the trees I am a goddess. I am a woman. A woman who has a body. A woman who feels with her body. A woman who is seducible, but can also seduce.

A woman who finally owns every part of her body and can do whatever the hell she wants with this gorgeous, soft, shining, powerful, singing, breathable gift.

Advice from the sexpert:

Author: Fae Leslie

Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: Google Images for Reuse