Vachon Imagined

People enter celibacy to abstain from sex.

I understand the concept. I really do.

But I’m in menopauseville, where half the time the words “check, please” are sitting on the tip of my tongue and the very last end of my nerve.

I’m 51 years old, which apparently means I can simultaneously have the hormones of a zit-faced 15-year-old boy and the joints of someone who has been personally betrayed by every flight of stairs I’ve ever encountered.

And somewhere in this hormonal carnival, I am still looking for my husband.

Who is hiding in his man cave.

I know you’re in there.

I can see your feet.

He’s sitting in the dark like a gazelle hiding from a predator, except I’m the predator and the prey is apparently a man who has made the tactical error of marrying a woman who refuses to give up the hunt.

I walk past the doorway.

Nothing.

I walk back.

Still nothing.

The lights are off.

He’s holding his breath.

My feet cross the safety zone.

He exhales.

And I think:

You can’t hide forever, sucka.

I. Will. Find. You.

That’s the funny thing about sex.

When you’re younger, you think you have forever.

Then one day you’re standing in the bathroom examining your face under lighting that should honestly be illegal, wondering when your boobs became landing gear for an airplane on its last victory run, while searching for Rogaine in bulk and negotiating with the hairs on your chinny-chin-chin.

And those hairs have the nerve to answer back:

Girl, you should have been more of a slut when you still had it.

So abstaining from sex while I still have some za-za-zoom isn’t exactly the spiritual discipline I’m signing up for.

But I will tell you what I am learning to abstain from.

Today, a man screamed at me because he thought I had jumped ahead of him in line.

There was a time I would have instinctively turned around and said, to a man three times my size, “Who in God Almighty’s name do you think you’re talking to, fuckface?”

Because I can be punchy like that.

And if you catch me on a day when these hot flashes are roaring through me like a volcano that has finally had enough of everybody’s shit, well… you just might have deserved it.

And man, oh man, am I glad my husband wasn’t there for this little episode.

Because had he been there, that man would have had a completely different problem.

I might be punchy, but my husband has his own particular relationship with anyone who thinks screaming at his wife is a reasonable way to spend an afternoon.

That would not have gone well.

For the man.

So there I was, alone, feeling that familiar little fire building inside me—the desire to answer, defend myself, make him feel stupid, give him exactly what he had just given me.

And then something different happened.

I abstained.

Not from desire.

From becoming its reaction.

Because celibacy isn’t just about sex.

It’s what happens when anger comes through you and you don’t hand it back.

It’s what happens when someone hurts you and you feel the magnificent human desire to hurt them back—and don’t.

It’s what happens when you have the perfect sentence that will absolutely destroy someone, and for once you realize you don’t have to say it.

It’s what happens when your child pushes the exact button you forgot you had, and instead you breathe.

It’s what happens when you have power and don’t need to use it simply because you have it.

It’s what happens when you want attention, revenge, validation, another argument—and you can feel the wanting without immediately becoming the person who does the thing.

Desire isn’t the enemy.

Suppression isn’t the answer.

Desire is life moving.

We feel it brewing inside us all the time.

A writer feels it and puts it on paper.

An angry person feels it and can choose not to put it on another person.

A grieving person feels it and sometimes simply lets it move through.

A lover feels it.

A mother feels it.

A human being feels it.

The question isn’t whether desire exists.

The question is whether every desire gets to become an instruction.

Because it doesn’t.

There is a space between feeling something and becoming it.

That space is where celibacy really lives.

Not in pretending you don’t want.

Not in becoming less alive.

Not in locking yourself in a room and turning off the lights.

Celibacy is learning that we can let life move through us without having to send it back out in the exact form in which it arrived.

Someone gives you anger.

You don’t have to give them anger.

Someone gives you humiliation.

You don’t have to give them humiliation.

Someone gives you fear.

You don’t have to become afraid.

Someone gives you desire.

You don’t have to immediately act.

You can meet it.

Feel it.

Know it.

And send it back out differently.

That isn’t suppression.

That’s presence.

And this is what getting older is giving me, not less life, but a little more space between what I feel and what I do.

Which is probably good.

Because menopauseville has enough surprises already.

So no, I may not be abstaining from sex.

Not while I’m still wandering the house looking for my husband like a hormonal bloodhound.

But I am learning to abstain from becoming every feeling that passes through me.

Even with a lot of za-za-zoom still left in the tank.