A story that always stuck with me was from an ex sex-addict named Erica Garza, who wrote about her life in a book called Getting Off. As a child of immigrants she had no felt sense of belonging, no sense of being accepted. Looking outward for someone to model herself to, she idolized sitcom families on TV like Full House, Growing Pains. She carried that with her as a young woman who learned to offset the psychological pain with physical pleasure, to offset the not-belonging with its closest counterfeit — being wanted. Being desired became her identity. She only knew acceptance through proximity to another’s hunger. And so she spent the majority of her young life compelled toward sex — to accept all sexual attention, to compulsively act it out, to not feel whole without it. Not because she genuinely desired it but because her identity was fractured, and being desired allowed her, if only for a second, to feel connected.
Then one night — she was in her late twenties — she and a partner decided to take ecstasy. She’d always been too scared to try it but this time agreed.
“Some time after taking it, I remember sinking back into his couch and feeling something I had not felt in years. A complete and utter sense of peace… It was like looking through a window and seeing this whole new beautiful world where pleasure existed without my need to do anything. Just breathing was satisfying enough.”
Instead of feeling compelled to go toward another person, instead of feeling like somebody else was needed to complete something, instead of feeling a gap of hollowness that compelled her, for once — maybe for the first time — she felt utterly fulfilled in simply ‘being’. The thought of seeking more suddenly didn’t make sense. She knew herself beyond a proximity to others wants.
That window didn’t stay open. She crashed hours later. But she’d seen something that night. A door opened. She got a glimpse of something. Herself without that gaping whole in her chest. And over the years that followed she learned to find that place again, sober, on her own through yoga and meditation.
That stuck with me because that’s our problem. We use sex to self-soothe, to off-set neuroses, to feel accepted, to connect, even to bring us salvation. It can do none of those things. It’s salt-water to the thirsty. We are being called to something deeper within ourselves. Our shame won’t get us there, our moral outrage won’t guide us there, mere book knowledge won’t take us there. Only knowing that source within ourselves. To drink from it, bathe in it, suffuse ourselves with it, stay with it. Erica stumbled upon something that we all have access to — our natural state.