Virginity Lost. Paradise Lost.

The forgiveness that was never mine, an epic letter.

Dear Bishop-

When I came to you at seventeen, a few months after losing my virginity, my soul was wracked with guilt for the choice I made. My mouth vomited the details you asked for, leaving an acrid aftertaste. The places. The number of times. As if that made any difference. As if it determined the severity of my punishment or to what extent I had disappointed God. After the necessary confession and repentance, it would not jeopardize my entrance to Paradise and the Celestial Kingdom, or so you claimed. I mean this sin was next to murder. You didn’t press hard, but you pressed enough to make me feel the pressure. Pressure that always seemed to be exerting itself on my soul. Pressure that pushed me into a place where I was never enough.

Looking back, I wonder if I ever indeed had the freedom to make a choice that night my virginity was lost. Acquiescing to men’s hopes and desires for me was what I was trained to do. No one ever taught me to say “No.” I was only taught to say “Yes.” To covenant and never question. To be obedient. It seemed like it was all part of God’s plan. And to be frank, God always seemed to be more worried about my virginity being lost, rather than my heart and soul feeling lost. A part of me never felt truly whole, despite God’s admonition that He would fill me with His spirit. That a husband would fill the empty void in me, both literally and figuratively. Throughout my girlhood I found myself searching for pieces that would complete me, pieces that were essential for my salvation. Pieces in the shape of men.¹

Wholeness always meant men. You taught me to worship a male God. To constantly strive for his love and attention. You taught me that I’d be complete when I bound myself to a man and became a wife. You taught me that Celestial glory was only mine through marriage. You taught me to repel men with my modesty but also attract men in a confusing game of God ordained cat and mouse. You taught me that my life centered on catering and pleasing men. My very salvation reliant on my unwavering faith in and obedience to men.

So, is it any wonder that in those tender teenage years, when I struggled with my identity, when I struggled with my body, when I ached for wholeness, I would turn to men? I knew no other solution. You had already stolen my Mother at birth and left me with no female deity. You left me in a motherless nest to fend for myself.² You taught me to distrust my own thoughts and replace them with the philosophies of prophets mingled with scripture. You taught me to choke down my discomfort. To silence my voice. To ignore my own wisdom. To pretend that female wisdom was just too sacred to entertain. To disappear like a Heavenly Mother, acknowledged as an afterthought in the eternal pyramid scheme centered on men. And I often felt like God’s afterthought.

So, in some ways I wonder if my virginity was ever mine to lose? Afterall, female virginity is all part of God’s plan, owned and guided by Him. It always has been. Virgins sacrificed or given as prizes to faithful men who take what God rightfully allots them, both on earth and in the afterlife. My worth always fully dependent on what man claimed my womb as his own, because I would never own myself. And if I never owned myself, how could I ever have the agency God preached?

And so, I wonder about that evening I came in to ask you for forgiveness, Dear Bishop. Was it really me that needed to ask for forgiveness? To be cleansed of a decision that I was conditioned to make since birth? To beg for God’s mercy that someday a different man would still find me valuable and make me whole? To listen to your guidance that sex would only diminish my worth before marriage and then magically, after marriage, it would suddenly make me complete? It was all so confusing.

And so, after following all the guidance and direction that you and other men gave me: Following programs designed by men. Praying to a male God. Singing songs about following polygamous prophets. Aligning my whole existence and goals on a pattern designed by men. Longing for their acceptance. Jockeying for their gaze. Slapping their grabbing hands until I was exhausted. Playing their games, by their rules, in the hopes I would earn more power. After all of that, I wonder if it was really me that should have sat in that chair sobbing and ashamed that fateful night.

Because in many ways, I imagine it was YOU that should have asked ME for forgiveness that night. Your body wracked with guilt. Your soul coming face to face with the awful sins of the patriarchy. Your arms folded in prayer with hands desperately trying to scrub your skin clean of all it’s vile filthiness. Your voice proclaiming: “My God, what have we done?”

But instead, that fateful night, I heard my own voice lament what I had done. I had committed the sin. I was apologizing to you and to God. Me, a young teenage girl, a small and weak cog in the bigger and stronger patriarchal machine. A girl whom the system spent years grooming to say “yes,” but then was unfairly punished with exestential guilt and shame when she failed to say “no.”

Still struggling with wholeness-

Stephenie

Photo by Anastasia Pivnenko on Unsplash

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