I just finished reading this book, title above, by Sara Zarr. It's about a girl who has sex at 13 and while there are next to no details of the act, the aftermath becomes her own personal pergatory for years.
In one scene, her best-her only-girl friend asks her advice about sex. She blows the actual advice, but thinks to herself about what she could have done:
I’d tell her about sex; the good stuff, like how it could be warm and exciting-it took you away-and the not-so-good things, like, how once you showed someone that part of yourself, you had to trust them one thousand percent and anything could happen. Someone you though you knew could change and suddenly not want you, suddenly decide you made a better story than a girlfriend. Or how sometimes you might think you wanted to do it and then halfway through or afterward realize no, you just wanted the company, really; you wanted someone to choose you , and the sex part itself was like a trade-off, something you felt like you had to give to get the other part. I’d tell her all that and help her decide.
The thing that 'got' me the most in the story was how she was having sex with this guy she did not even like that much because no one else in her life was paying any attention, and he was.
That was profound to read, I feel like while I still would have been a horny idiot teen and would have still handed my virginity to the first boy who looked at me twice, reading that would have hit home and maybe it would have been in time to keep my self esteem from being so damaged. Or not, I can't say now. I can say, I will be paying attention to my own daughter. This may be close to my story, but it does not have to be anything like hers.
