Girl Parts
This post is probably TMI and NSFW. It's probably also pretty gross and likely merits a variety of trigger warnings.
You have been warned.
I have serious health issues and I was sexually abused as a child. I have been friends with other people for whom both those facts were true.
From what I gather, the Bible suggests that the hymen is some kind of punishment for being a girl. The theory is that it's supposed to hurt to lose your virginity because having sex is bad, so God designed it that way. Original sin and all that.
Or at least my exposuse to Christian culture over the years suggests this is a common attitude, though perhaps it's not per se in the Bible. (I'm certainly no biblical scholar.)
However, someone without such baggage once suggested to me that the hymen is probably a means to keep stuff out of a dark, moist place in order to protect one's health. Prior to sexual maturity, there is no need to have access to the female reproductive tract, so nature has designed a protective covering for it that is readily removed when the time is right. (A "gift from God" if you wish to frame it that way, not a punishment.)
That makes sense to me. For that and other reasons, I have come to believe that being sexually abused as a child actively causes health problems, in part because it exposes children -- who have immature immune systems -- to germs under circumstances that are problematic at the best of times.
STDs tend to be serious infections that you can't contract casually. Exchanging bodily fluids causes real problems even for "normal, healthy adults" and a child who is being exposed to such may well also be getting hurt in the process, introducing open wounds for germs to enter.
Additionally, germs from an adult with a more developed immune system are likely more virulent. So I think it's likely that the human race generally strongly frowns on childhood sexual abuse because on some level we recognize that it causes great harm to the health of children of a sort that can essentially maim them for life and also can spread health issues to others due to the fact that it actively breeds serious infections in some portion of the human population.
If you do not have CF or some condition that involves serious amounts of infection, you may not need to be celibate to resolve your health issues. But for me, celibacy has proven to be a best practice for a lot of years and not solely for purposes of germ control but also to simply let my girl parts heal up after a lifetime of issues that likely are rooted in not just CF but also the fact that I was molested and raped as a little girl.
In my late teens/early adulthood, I had chronic and severe vaginal yeast infections for more than two years. This was resolved during my first pregnancy due in part to me making dietary changes to cope with throwing up for eight months but likely also due to the injection of pregnancy hormones into my system, among other other things.
Yeast feeds on die-off, so unsurprisingly some people with CF are on prescription drugs to combat chronic, severe yeast issues. A former registered nurse who studied a lot of alternative medicine and helped save my life and set me on the road to health once told me that vaginal yeast infections begin as yeast overgrowth in the gut.
Even after my chronic, severe vaginal yeast infections ended, I used to have frequent vaginal yeast infections. I no longer seem to get them. I can't remember the last time I had one.
What other people think of as acne, I have come to think of as drainage points. The body needs some means to get rid of bad stuff and it has myriad ways to do that and one of them is to just collect it up in one place locally and create a local drainage system to resolve a local crisis of some sort.
As noted elsewhere, women with CF are prone to vaginal dryness and I no longer seem to have this issue. At least, not like I did. I have no idea how it compares to OTHER WOMEN, but I do know how it compares to my historic norm.
That vaginal dryness is a form of compromised immune system. It means that sexual activity is higher risk for women with CF because we lack sufficient amounts of the protective coating that helps keep germs out of our reproductive tract.
Getting healthier has actually changed the physical shape of my girl parts. As they have healed up, I have gone through periods of time where I had drainage points in my girl parts as old problems got resolved.
I was very glad to be celibate during those periods. Those past drainage points were often fairly painful and sometimes took days or weeks to fully resolve, so it would have been highly problematic to be in a sexual relationship at such times.
This post is being written because somewhat to my surprise I drained a surprisingly large amount of sebum from my girl parts in the shower yesterday.
Somewhat to my surprise in part because I haven't been in pain and draining it did not hurt, so if nothing else the sheer size of the bump caught me off guard. But not entirely to my surprise and I will return to that point later.
Sebum is a means for the body to sequester toxic garbage. This suggests to me that something old has come out of my system.
The lack of pain suggests this did not involve infection. I have experienced this before. In the fall of the year about two to three years ago, I drained a decade-old sebaceous cyst on my back near my spine between my shoulder blades. I am still having fallout from that but it wasn't particularly painful nor hot to the touch at the time this happened because it wasn't infected.
I became suicidal after being raped at the age of twelve and remained suicidal until I drained the sebaceous cyst on my back roughly two or three years ago. After draining that cyst, I was generally much more functional and was shocked how much of a difference that made to my overall functionality but was even more struck by the fact that I stopped being suicidal.
If I'm having an especially rough day, my decades-long suicidal tendencies come back but it's like a verbal tick. I think and say things that sound suicidal but I'm not really at risk of killing myself.
These days, such events are generally a sign I need to eat, drink and get some sleep. I'm simply at the end of my rope physically and it typically is readily resolved with a bit of self care.
Anyway, "crud runs downhill," so people with serious, chronic health issues often have, for example, feet issues. One of my remaining big issues is that I have chronic belly bloat and girl parts are "downhill" from the belly, which is no doubt part of why yeast overgrowth in the gut eventually leads to vaginal yeast infections.
For various reasons, my belly has shrunk some in recent months and this fact also fosters drainage points at times, which is part of why the large drainage point in my girl parts yesterday was not entirely surprising: I have actually been expecting to see such in my girl parts sometime soon because of how much my belly has shrunk in recent months.
My problems are not fully resolved, but the large drainage point that got drained with essentially no pain yesterday in the shower is a milestone I have been actively looking forward to. Probably the majority of or worst of my health drama involving my girl parts is finally behind me.
You have been warned.
I have serious health issues and I was sexually abused as a child. I have been friends with other people for whom both those facts were true.
From what I gather, the Bible suggests that the hymen is some kind of punishment for being a girl. The theory is that it's supposed to hurt to lose your virginity because having sex is bad, so God designed it that way. Original sin and all that.
Or at least my exposuse to Christian culture over the years suggests this is a common attitude, though perhaps it's not per se in the Bible. (I'm certainly no biblical scholar.)
However, someone without such baggage once suggested to me that the hymen is probably a means to keep stuff out of a dark, moist place in order to protect one's health. Prior to sexual maturity, there is no need to have access to the female reproductive tract, so nature has designed a protective covering for it that is readily removed when the time is right. (A "gift from God" if you wish to frame it that way, not a punishment.)
That makes sense to me. For that and other reasons, I have come to believe that being sexually abused as a child actively causes health problems, in part because it exposes children -- who have immature immune systems -- to germs under circumstances that are problematic at the best of times.
STDs tend to be serious infections that you can't contract casually. Exchanging bodily fluids causes real problems even for "normal, healthy adults" and a child who is being exposed to such may well also be getting hurt in the process, introducing open wounds for germs to enter.
Additionally, germs from an adult with a more developed immune system are likely more virulent. So I think it's likely that the human race generally strongly frowns on childhood sexual abuse because on some level we recognize that it causes great harm to the health of children of a sort that can essentially maim them for life and also can spread health issues to others due to the fact that it actively breeds serious infections in some portion of the human population.
If you do not have CF or some condition that involves serious amounts of infection, you may not need to be celibate to resolve your health issues. But for me, celibacy has proven to be a best practice for a lot of years and not solely for purposes of germ control but also to simply let my girl parts heal up after a lifetime of issues that likely are rooted in not just CF but also the fact that I was molested and raped as a little girl.
In my late teens/early adulthood, I had chronic and severe vaginal yeast infections for more than two years. This was resolved during my first pregnancy due in part to me making dietary changes to cope with throwing up for eight months but likely also due to the injection of pregnancy hormones into my system, among other other things.
Yeast feeds on die-off, so unsurprisingly some people with CF are on prescription drugs to combat chronic, severe yeast issues. A former registered nurse who studied a lot of alternative medicine and helped save my life and set me on the road to health once told me that vaginal yeast infections begin as yeast overgrowth in the gut.
Even after my chronic, severe vaginal yeast infections ended, I used to have frequent vaginal yeast infections. I no longer seem to get them. I can't remember the last time I had one.
What other people think of as acne, I have come to think of as drainage points. The body needs some means to get rid of bad stuff and it has myriad ways to do that and one of them is to just collect it up in one place locally and create a local drainage system to resolve a local crisis of some sort.
As noted elsewhere, women with CF are prone to vaginal dryness and I no longer seem to have this issue. At least, not like I did. I have no idea how it compares to OTHER WOMEN, but I do know how it compares to my historic norm.
That vaginal dryness is a form of compromised immune system. It means that sexual activity is higher risk for women with CF because we lack sufficient amounts of the protective coating that helps keep germs out of our reproductive tract.
Getting healthier has actually changed the physical shape of my girl parts. As they have healed up, I have gone through periods of time where I had drainage points in my girl parts as old problems got resolved.
I was very glad to be celibate during those periods. Those past drainage points were often fairly painful and sometimes took days or weeks to fully resolve, so it would have been highly problematic to be in a sexual relationship at such times.
This post is being written because somewhat to my surprise I drained a surprisingly large amount of sebum from my girl parts in the shower yesterday.
Somewhat to my surprise in part because I haven't been in pain and draining it did not hurt, so if nothing else the sheer size of the bump caught me off guard. But not entirely to my surprise and I will return to that point later.
Sebum is a means for the body to sequester toxic garbage. This suggests to me that something old has come out of my system.
The lack of pain suggests this did not involve infection. I have experienced this before. In the fall of the year about two to three years ago, I drained a decade-old sebaceous cyst on my back near my spine between my shoulder blades. I am still having fallout from that but it wasn't particularly painful nor hot to the touch at the time this happened because it wasn't infected.
I became suicidal after being raped at the age of twelve and remained suicidal until I drained the sebaceous cyst on my back roughly two or three years ago. After draining that cyst, I was generally much more functional and was shocked how much of a difference that made to my overall functionality but was even more struck by the fact that I stopped being suicidal.
If I'm having an especially rough day, my decades-long suicidal tendencies come back but it's like a verbal tick. I think and say things that sound suicidal but I'm not really at risk of killing myself.
These days, such events are generally a sign I need to eat, drink and get some sleep. I'm simply at the end of my rope physically and it typically is readily resolved with a bit of self care.
Anyway, "crud runs downhill," so people with serious, chronic health issues often have, for example, feet issues. One of my remaining big issues is that I have chronic belly bloat and girl parts are "downhill" from the belly, which is no doubt part of why yeast overgrowth in the gut eventually leads to vaginal yeast infections.
For various reasons, my belly has shrunk some in recent months and this fact also fosters drainage points at times, which is part of why the large drainage point in my girl parts yesterday was not entirely surprising: I have actually been expecting to see such in my girl parts sometime soon because of how much my belly has shrunk in recent months.
My problems are not fully resolved, but the large drainage point that got drained with essentially no pain yesterday in the shower is a milestone I have been actively looking forward to. Probably the majority of or worst of my health drama involving my girl parts is finally behind me.
