By the time you read this, I’ll have been celibate for four years.

I don’t know the exact moment I decided on this course, but I know it was rooted in a need-to-free-my-aura-of-anything-but-my-own-energy (within reason), and of course because I was weighing the spiritual value of celibacy vs. the futility of forced monogamy and its nemesis, Freelove.

At first it was painful. My subconscious mind rebelled fiercely, leaving me all too sensitive to my chaste state, and ever conscious of the need to keep my eyes from wandering below the belts of others. The hyper-sensitivy would come and go, sometimes becoming blissfully absent, and other times, waking me in the middle of the night. It’s amazing how turbulent the unconscious mind can become the moment it realizes it can’t have something. Tell yourself you can’t have orange juice for a week and heed your reactions, even if you rarely drink OJ. This same trick has been played on people for various marketing, socio-conditioning purposes historically because of the power in it.

Figuring sublimation was a wise course — I threw myself into my writing, pouring at least 9 interactive fantasy books for multicultural youth during the first year, another 3 multicultural fantasy books a year later, and more short lit over the next two years, some of which still need editing beyond their current states of course. It did the trick for awhile — helping me fulfill a needed purpose while avoiding straying from my path, as well as proving to be a great satisfying escape for someone who had completed but not published any previous projects. But even after all of the feverish typing, editing and re-editing, the problem that likely prompted my abstinence from sexual intimacy still seems to remain.

To my great concern, i’m beginning to think that I may be using abstinence to avoid intimacy altogether. I still have a fear of marriage and commitment. I am still unsure whether or not I want a partner or friend with benefits. The confusion has not receded. It is just as thick as it was in the Winter of 2004, and I am unsure if I am totally convinced that the interpretations of certain religious or spiritual leaders who seem to frown on sexual intimacy before marriage, are valid. Afterall, if sexual intimacy is beautiful and respectful between two consenting partners, is that not balanced, and possibly more balanced than two people who get married not because they love one another, but because they are afraid they are sinning if they don’t do things “properly”? It’s zen koans likes these that lead me to think I could be celibate forever, if the key to my chastity belt lays in solving such a riddle.

So what’s a girl to do? Wait? Or explore?

Seemingly, the answer I’ve sought has not been found in either choice previously. So the more I consider this, and especially when I lay off of the heavy analysis, I receive bursts of revelation that remind me of one simple truth: Intimacy is natural. And it is, isn’t it? We’re on the planet as a direct result of it. If we believe life is a gift, how is sexuality not so easily categorized as the same?

The solution may simply be in remembering to appreciate the sacral chakra (the zone of femininity and intimacy), rather than repress it in the tradition of a patriarchal era rife with inconsistencies, expression-freezing-fear and numbing disconnection, when the one thing humanity needs is to cast away the fear of intimacy, while relearning unity, and the willingness to share oneself with others (albeit with clothing on when not with a partner, friends with benefits, or participating in a freelove fest).

Words by Purple Zoe