It isn’t often that I get to send a message back in time. Such an opportunity was given me recently when I was invited, as part of an Annex Teen Clinic video project, to include a message to my teenage self. Since the Annex is a sexual health clinic for young people, I thought it should have something to do with sex.
I’m not sure if the Annex will use what I wrote. But I did enjoy being able to send my teenage self a message in a bottle. I got to ignore the limits of time and say to myself something I wish I had heard in my teen years. I might not have understood it. But I would have had something to carry forward as I got older, and maybe someday understand before I met my older self.
“In my bones, I felt it, but I needed someone to say it: “Do not succumb to the belief that sensation is enough.”
I wish someone had explained to me how sex can be a way to be awake, to develop deep awareness. When I can wake up, sex offers an intense awareness of myself and someone else.
Things can be really good when I can be fully present in that awake awareness. Good for me, good for another.”