I had been intimate before, but I had never gone so far as to actually lose my virginity. The boy who I allowed to take it I had known from high school. He had graduated a year before me, and we had texted back and forth for a while- the majority of the conversations dealt with sex. We had planned to do so about 6 months before, but he backed out saying that he was still in love with his ex.

I was home for winter break after my first semester of college. He was very experienced, and he also knew that it was my first time. We had texted throughout the break and finally found a day when we were both free: December 31st. The plan was to meet around 10:00 pm, but he ended up pushing it back to 12:00 am- just into the New Year. I asked my parents to borrow the car, stating my intent was to go to my female friend’s house to celebrate, and drove to his parent’s house.

I had been instructed to enter through the basement as to not wake his parents. He met me as I was about to knock on the door. After less than a minute of kissing he stripped me down, and we began- not without a mention of my stretch marks first (the result of a very stressful senior year of high school), which made me more uncomfortable than I already was. The action itself was not very pleasurable for me and just seemed very awkward. After about 5 minutes he stopped- saying he heard something. He slid out and said he thought it was his parents and instructed me to leave. I complied.

I had told my parents I would be out for a few hours and had no excuse to return early, so I drove to an empty parking lot and proceeded to cry my eyes out. Everything about it seemed wrong. I believed that after seeing my body he was no longer aroused and asked me to leave for that reason, and that he had lied about hearing a noise. To me it felt like I had ruined the entire year of 2014 within the first hour. Not wanting to sit in a parking lot for 2 hours wallowing in my thoughts, I texted my best friend and asked if I could go to her house but not specifying why. She agreed and I spent the rest of the night catching up with her.

My virginity felt like a burden to me and, while glad that I can claim that I’ve had sex before, I wish that I had waited: anything would have been better than the real story. I have told one person, but none of my family or close friends know. I felt like trash afterwards, like he had used me and chose to throw me away when I was not good enough. It definitely negatively affected my self-esteem.