I wish I didn’t confess my sexual ‘sin’.

 I remember being taught to confess my sins, yet when I did it always bit me in the nyash. So I became deceitful and when the truth came out, I used to lie or water it down. Otherwise I’d experience condemnation.

I can’t believe I was suicidal because I liked sex. Upon reflection I wasn’t enacting a holy ideal, though I was aiming towards love. 

They say God and faith is an antidote to sin yet I feel that Christianity made me sick.  

I remember losing my virginity at 14, whilst my parents were away at a funeral in Ireland. I didn’t plan to. I was all alone and believed a guy, that I had only spoke to once on Snapchat, when he said he loved me. 

Of course he didn’t. He said to me sweet nothings and got back with his ex after using me.

I resent the fact that I was so naive. But perhaps, the seeds of low-self esteem where starting to sprout in the form of sexual curiosity.

After I lost my virginity, I changed completely. I told no one besides my two non-religious friends. They comforted me but besides that I had to carry on this act of being ‘pure’. My sister asked me why I’d turned so cold and she supported me.

It felt like the world had ended. The biggest commandment was to save sex for marriage and I failed.

So once I knew I was too far gone, I became hyper sexual. 

I remember being at a business conference which was hosted in the Zimbabwean community, and there was a girl I now admire boasting about the fact she was a virgin.

Everyone applauded her and simultaneously I felt like scum of the earth. I hated her for years because of the same I felt. 

When I went off to university, my sexual trauma became apparent. I became less sheltered and more self-aware. 

I started to dig out all the incidents of sexual abuse that I’d experienced in my adolescence and my hyper sexuality began to make sense.

I still kept my sexual conduct a secret as I sought to heal. I tried so many times to set boundaries and avoid temptation but i feel as though the formula provided to me by faith was insufficient.

I tried in my single life to overcome ‘lust’. I prayed for deliverance, had chaperones, prayed to remove the heart blockage, spent time away from my fiancé and the list goes on.

Nothing worked. I guess you could say my heart was never to be ‘sexually pure’.

What I hate the most is how my sex life directly affected the way I was treated in some of the most significant times of my life. 

After having trusted people through the notion that I’d confess my sins and be healed they used it against me. 

One pastor refused to marry us and said that if we don’t go without sex for 6 months our marriage would fail. Others passively tried to get us to break up. I mean people even suggested that I’d return to a place I wouldn’t feel safe, just so I wouldn’t have sex with my fiancé. 

Til this day some people advocate that me and my fiancé should suffer the consequences of us not being married and struggle with housing ( which is mad because we literally have a baby).

All I can say is that we can all be a bunch of hypocrites and we should fucking check ourselves lest we digress from the love we claim to offer.