Let's talk about sex.

Hi, ladies. Let's talk.

Look, I know that more than a few of you had really bad experiences the first time you had sex. Some of you were maybe pressured to do it before you were ready--maybe by your friends or boyfriend--and some of you just wanted it over with already. Some of you even wanted it for the wrong reasons.

Sex is a very emotionally charged act, especially since you're usually naked when it happens, and you often feel vulnerable both before and after, and that first time can be sort of odd and painful and, as I heard once, can make you have that embarrassing feeling like you just wet the bed.

Even after that first time, sex can be dirty and sticky and be had for the wrong reasons, or can be an unbalanced act where one partner is more invested than the other and everyone ends up feeling it was less than desirable. Sometimes, hindsight can make good sex seem bad, especially after a really bad break-up. Especially if that was your "first."

But let me just tell you; that experience? That's part of you now. Your virginity? You didn't "give" it "away." You absorbed it. Your hymen is yours, it will remain yours, and it will always be yours. The guy you were with? He doesn't retain any part of you, except that lingering feeling that he lost a really good thing when he lost you.

Your sex is what you make of it, whether you want FWB or a committed relationship or a polyamorous commune. It is your body, and no one owns it but you. Your pleasure is yours to be had, and shared if you wish. Own your body. Own your sex. Own whatever area of your life, whether you are proud of it or not. It is yours to cherish and learn from. Don't be embarrassed by any of it.

Finally, do not, under any circumstances, write a book about the way you wish you would have lost it, and create a guy to lose it to who is in no way resembling of any man alive. You are better than that. You are human, and so is the guy you had sex with at the first. Also, that guy you're imagining? He will never exist, and you don't want him to, either. Don't be EL James and Stephenie Meyer and Kathleen Woodiwiss and all of those other authors who create really outlandish men and the virgins they seduce.

Just be you.