As you read this letter from the future, I know you’re probably wondering two things: 1. Did they ever get around to making an Arrested Development movie? and 2. Am I ever going to start having sex?

You’re self-conscious about the virginity thing. You’re at an age now where your friends are starting to explore and experiment, where every slumber party is now an opportunity to compare notes or play another rousing game of “Never Have I Ever.” You’re pretending that such games are beneath you, that you can’t take them seriously. “Never have I ever fucked a goat,” you’ll say on your turn, secretly hoping that nobody else sitting around the circle has noticed you’ve barely touched your Smirnoff Ice that somebody’s older sister acquired for the party. (That’s another thing we’ll talk about on a different day.)

You spend a lot of time in your own head. You always have. Your parents will tell you stories of you waking up in the middle of the night in kindergarten, sobbing hysterically because you just became aware of your own mortality. You will spend the rest of your childhood and preteen years obsessively comparing yourself to others, wondering where and how you’ve failed as a human. You will become paralyzed during social interactions, which will lead to an infinitesimal loop: your anxiety makes it hard to socialize with others, which in turn makes you more anxious about how hard it is to socialize with others. Years later, an incident will take you to the emergency room (don’t worry, you’re fine), and you’ll leave with a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder and a medical prescription. The doctors will tell you how many people live with anxiety, how common it is, and that will make you feel a little bit better, but it still won’t get to the root of the problem.

You’re growing up in a liberal Canadian city during an era when Degrassi: The Next Generation is airing the abortion episode that was banned in the States. Your parents are cool with letting your older sister date. Your high school has a strong sex-ed program where you’re learning that it’s okay to want sex. Your health teachers educate you about contraceptive methods. The teen magazines you consume voraciously are all run by third-wavers who challenge the word “slut.” Your friends talk openly about their experiences. You agree with these things on a political level. You are sex positive, you budding feminist you. You believe people should do what they want with their bodies. And yet, this ironically makes you feel guiltier that you aren’t doing what you want with yours. Everywhere you look, it seems, people are doin’ it — and you’re still a virgin. (Even your fictional nerd friends have betrayed you. The sixth Harry Potter book just came out, and he’s getting more action than you.) With every passing day, week, month that you go without having sex, your anxiety grows and you wonder if there is something inherently wrong with you.

And then you’ll start to question what it even means to lose one’s virginity. You’ve been told that you stop being a virgin once you have sex. But what is sex? Is it penetrative intercourse when a penis enters a vagina? That’s kind of heterocentric, now that you think about it (heterocentric is one of those fancy words you learn in university, which you will attend all four years a virgin). Maybe it’s an umbrella term, referring to any kind of intimate sexual activity with another person.

Using this broader definition of sex, you start to question your own virginity status. There was that time you were out with that boy, and you were having so much fun that you didn’t realize how late it was.

“Stay at my place,” he says, “I live right up the street. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” And you believe him. It’s fine… until he crawls on top of you in the middle of the night. “Let me,” he says, and you say, “No,” and he says, “Let me,” and you say, “No,” and he says, “Let me,” and you say, “Fine, do whatever you want,” and he starts by sliding his fingers deep into you while you lay there with your face in your hands, drunk and trembling with anxiety, hoping that he can just do what he needs to do and be done with it so you can go to sleep. Finally, you realize that an expensive cab would be better than whatever this situation is, so you push him off and run out the door in a fluid motion like you’re Indiana Jones. You arrive home at 3 a.m. but you won’t fall asleep for a few more hours, wondering if you should’ve let him go ahead with what he wanted to do, so at least you wouldn’t be a virgin anymore.

There was another time, with a guy who actually was nice. You invite him over. You initiate the makeout. You bring him to the bedroom. You start undressing first. “This is it,” you think, “this is when you finally get it over with.” (The fact that you think of sex as “getting it over with” should tell you all you need to know.) And then you lie on your back and he starts to enter you and even though he is very nice and even though you thought you wanted this, you start to PANIC and hyperventilate and he gets up and gets you a glass of water before even getting dressed (bless him) and you are considerate enough to wait until he leaves before you start spewing your guts out while hunched over the toilet, feeling the opposite of sexy. Later you will go over to your best friend’s and say, “I think I lost my just-the-tip virginity today,” and she will say “Congratulations?”

You’ll learn that sex isn’t something you should do because you feel obligated to do it, even if you want it in theory. And your anxiety isn’t something you can just get over even if you really, really wish you could.

You will also learn that you are still capable of being a sexual being without necessarily having sex with others. Tired of feeling perpetually horny but not able to do anything about it without hyperventilating, you’ll buy a vibrator. And another. And another. (Look, kid, save yourself the trouble and just get the goddamn Hitachi magic wand. They’re worth it, I promise.) You will get really, really good at making yourself come. You will begin to view your body not as a burden or as a source of shame, but as a potential for pleasure.

You’ll start being matter-of-fact about never having had sex (stop using the word “virginity”). You’ll feel more comfortable with yourself when you’re around open-minded people who don’t judge you. You flirt more. You give your number to strangers. You kiss boys you barely know, and some that you do. Most importantly, you do these things because you want to; because you feel like it. (And it will feel good.)

Ultimately, you will start having sex. I know, I know, I should have told you this right away to alleviate some of the tension, but I wanted you to know all that other stuff first. Your first time — and I mean your actual first time, not your just-the-tip first time — will be with somebody you’ve known less than a day but who you feel immensely comfortable around, and you can be honest with about your lack of experience. You’ll say, “I might be awkward,” and he’ll say, “Oh, you’ll definitely be awkward, but that’s ok, because I’m really good,” and you’ll say, “But that’s the best part! You could be terrible and I’ll have nothing else to compare it to.” And you’ll have sex with him, and it will be a lot of fun (but not as fun as the sex you’ve had with yourself, let’s be real).

I hate to break it to you, but the anxiety won’t necessarily go away. Sometimes you’ll be able to have a hot one-night stand and feel totally fine about it, other times you’ll get nervous and panic with somebody you’ve been with plenty of times before. It’s ok. Some days you will be horny as hell and other days you will just not feel like it. It’s ok. Sex is different every time, but you’re still the same person. You’ve grown a lot, but it wasn’t the sex that changed you.

You were probably hoping for some tangible advice that would get you laid sooner, right? But honestly, you don’t need me to tell you what to do — you just need someone to tell you that it’s ok.

It’s ok to have these anxieties about sex. It’s ok that you follow a different timeline than everybody else. It’s even ok that you sometimes feel bad about these things, because you’re human and sometimes we can’t help it. Your experiences are yours and yours alone. You aren’t a freak. You aren’t a loser. You aren’t even technically a virgin, despite what I said before, because virginity as a concept is dumb and impossible to define. You are fine. You will be fine.

What else can I tell you while I’m here? Start taking care of your skin now — you’ll thank me later. Oh, and they are bringing Arrested Development back for another season. It won’t be as good as the original run, but it’ll be ok.

I love you,
Anna

Click the response button below to write a letter to your younger self. Tag it with “LetsTalkAboutSexEd.” For more about why we think this is an important conversation and what Bright hopes will come out of it, read this.