Nothing Broken, Nothing to Fix
Nearly a year ago, I signed up for my last resort. After years of reading books, asking for advice, and eventually testing my hormones, I had no answers for how to fix my desire, only a series of stressors that I knew impacted it. Some insights that left me unsure of where to go next—so I have a sensitive brake. So, I need intellectual foreplay. So, I have a praise kink. Now what? I saw it as a problem to be solved. My desire before: acceptable. My desire now: shameful.
But creativity has always been a safe place to land—a sanctuary for my thoughts and feelings and to process my experiences. Surely, channeling this “problem” through a creative lens would be my salve.
I thought this group would Reveal the problem lurking beneath the surface of me, excavate it, cast it aside through steamy vignettes and open discussion about vibrators and blow jobs and hidden fantasies. And I believed that the more I dug into this course, the more I threw myself into the journaling, the storytelling, pushing myself to new depths, the more I could root around and find what was ailing me. The problem, it turns out, is I was treating my desire like it was broken.
I sit here today, and I’m still struggling with that story that I’ve told myself over and over again over the last ten months. It’s a story I’ve never shared openly, but one I’ve held onto the whole time.
I am not whole unless my desire returns.
Each time I’ve shared a story, I’ve hoped it would bring me closer to that version of myself I’ve put on a pedestal while simultaneously feeling shame so intense I can’t look at it directly.
I’ve treated my desire like a setpoint, once established, never fluctuating. I have desire at a certain level in a certain quantity, and anything that diverges is deviance from a baseline I have to scramble and effort my way back to.
And I compounded it by comparing my experiences to others. I was swept up in the tales of new lovers and scintillating experiences—fascinated by polyamory. I even bought a book to read more about it, which I tore into pieces in a cathartic “enough” rage once I realized it wouldn’t fix me either.
My neuroplasticity coach says I do well when I leave myself alone. That I get stuck when I dive too deep into the muck of my psyche, but it’s like I can’t help myself. If I understand, analyze all the angles, and discover all the details, I can wrap it up in a pretty little package, which feels less intimidating. Less unknown. Less amorphous. If I don’t have all the pieces, how can I put them back together again?
How do you fix something without edges? Something you feel little autonomy over, like some thing or someone took it away from you when you were busy doing something else? Something that sneaks in slowly until you wake up one day and realize you don’t want to have sex anymore. That it’s all been too much. Too many disconnected moments. Unfulfilled pleasure. Too many times, I showed up as who I thought I was supposed to be, not who I was or who I am.
And I did it here, too, not consciously. I wrote about fantasies, real ones, but I thought I had to write about them to fit in, to have witnesses to my normalcy. I’m normal. I swear I’m normal.
But maybe I just needed to say to myself that I don’t want to have sex anymore. Only for about 4-5 days per month, when I’m ovulating; the rest of the time, I’m content to go for hikes in the forest in the middle of the city, in awe at the aliveness around me, take the longest hottest showers, inhaling the steam, nearly scalding my flesh, and that sates me. I feel immense pleasure in so many ways. While my desire is a trickle, my pleasure is abundant.
The threshold for my desire changed. I’m putting two and two together. I woke up, I could feel again, and I FELT SO DAMN MUCH. I didn’t need to seek stimulation from one-night stands, hard fucks, or novelty. I felt so good. I felt alive.
I feel so good making a goat milk latte in my Nespresso machine topped with a dusting of cardamom. Sipping the velvety pillow-like foam.
It feels so good to close my eyes and feel the sunshine on my face, like I’m drinking it up through every layer of my skin until it reaches my viscera and warms me from within.
I moan when I take a bite of the mango and passionfruit mille fueille at one of my favorite restaurants. It tastes incredible as my teeth cut through the flaky puff pastry, sinking into the luxurious and tart cream.
I close my eyes and succumb to the soothing scent of 10,000 rose petals infused into my face oil, gently massaged into my temples by fingertips that know so well what I want. I have 1000 orgasms some days, at the mercy of my hands, my eyes, the wind on my skin. I feel it all.
Maybe my desire was never broken. It wasn’t “better” before. It just was. A phase, an era, a moment of wild carelessness I’ll remember fondly when I’m old. It just transitioned into something else now. Something that suits me today. I am deeply, intimately connected to my sensuality. I am full of pleasure, a simmering, exploding, pulsing aliveness that pours out of me every single day. My desire has become something new and different. My desire is a precious resource that I enjoy in rare moments and covet as a deeply authentic part of me.
Nothing broken. Nothing to fix.
Caitlin Knudsen
Writer, researcher, owl enthusiast, pug whisperer, pluviophile, lover of one-on-one conversations. Find me tucked into a forest.
Caitlin wrote this story inside her year participating in Revealed®, a year-long sexual storytelling course facilitated by Katrina.
Want to listen to Katrina and Caitlin chat about who they are as sexual beings and hear Caitlin read her story live? Tune into the 30 minute conversation here. If you are interested in writing and sharing your stories in a community that wants to know you, check out Revealed®.
