I like to say that I’m not a bad looking female. Sexy, even. I have a pretty face and large breasts. I didn’t always have these attributes. When I hit puberty I had moderate sized breasts, a larger built body, and my face was torn up from acne. Somewhere around age 16, I seemed to grow out of it and into a beautiful woman. I’m thankful for that in some ways. In others, it has caused me problems. The main place for these problems has been in the work force. I’ve been sexually harassed or discriminated against at pretty much every place I’ve ever worked.

It started at my first job. I was just coming to terms with no longer being in my awkward stages in the looks department. Perhaps I strutted a little more than I did before. Maybe I twirled my hair or giggled a little extra. Maybe I didn’t do anything at all, other than be a female.

I had a male coworker who was about two or three years older than me. We used to work the same shifts and got to be friends. He knew I had a boyfriend but still flirted with me in a casual way. Then it escalated. It turned into asking what we were doing sexually. What did I like to do in bed? Was I kinky or sensual? Did I like it rough? Now, I’m not one that minds talking about sex, but something was a red flag. I’d never had a job before, but somehow figured that my usual potty mouth wasn’t the most appropriate in the work place. I giggled and answered a few of the questions, because I’m honest and a sexually open person.

It got worse. We were working together late one night and ended up in a room alone. He pulled me aside and backed me into a corner. He told me how he wanted me to go down on him, and how he knew I’d be good at it. He told me my boyfriend would never know, it would be our secret. I ducked from underneath him and ran out to where the rest of the employees were, short of breath and shaken. I pretended like nothing happened. I was young and clueless. I thought I deserved it for ever answering any of the questions in the first place. I quit a few days after, and never told a soul why.

A few jobs down the line, I was hired by a man who hated females but had an Affirmative Action quota to meet. He had hired a male manager, to oversee our department, who was much like he was – misogynistic. Everything was fine for a while, and then the same things started to happen. This time it started with long, eery stares. Every time I would walk by he would undress me with his eyes in a very obvious way. He would flirt with me. I would, after learning from my last mistakes, nicely say I had a boyfriend, but thank you for the compliment. He always wanted to hug me for a job well done. Pretty sure that’s not par for the course in the working world. I’m not a hugger to begin with, but unable to figure a way out of someone reaching their arms around you, I stood there and got hugged. His hands would linger, and he would press himself up against my chest.

Then the questions started again. What did I do with my boyfriend? What did I like? I’m not sure why these questions are so popular, but undoubtedly if I’m in a sexual harassment situation this is always part of it. They always want to know about my sex life. Not in the same way as a friend wants to know, but in that creepy way, where you know they’re storing it their head for use in a masturbation session later.

This time, I went to upper management. I was sick of being a sex object everywhere I worked, and sick of being undressed by the eyes of every male coworker in a five mile radius. I was sick of it all, and decided it was time to do something. Upper management, made up of a woman hater and a regular male, apologized profusely. It was a large corporation, and I’m sure the thought of a 19 year old girl suing over a 30 year old manager sexually harassing her was the last thing they wanted. What happened, you ask? Well, the manager that was harassing me was forced to apologize and cease the behavior or be terminated. I was told to come to them directly if anything happened again.

Personally, I don’t find that to be satisfactory. Luckily, he did stop after that, and quit shortly thereafter. What if he hadn’t? What if he retaliated and raped me in the parking lot after work? What if it had gotten worse, and I was forced to once again go before management with this situation? Women should not be put in such a place to have to face someone who has harassed them after the fact. If I could provide multiple witnesses, which I could, why is there a second chance for such behavior? Why give a sexual deviant the chance to make my work life miserable more so than has already been done?

One time, I was not hired for a job because of my looks. It was an all male company that did repairs for electronics. It was a small, family company, so Affirmative Action didn’t really apply. I was in desperate need of a job, and I had a male friend that worked there, so I figured he could get me in. They needed someone to do some filing and such, and while that’s not my normal line of work, I figured I would manage to do well enough at it to make it until something opened up in my field. I was told I couldn’t work there. When I asked why, I was told my looks would be a distraction to the male employees. They wouldn’t do any work, he said. Then he told me what would end up happening is that they would make lewd comments to me all day. Not only would I have likely been sexually harassed, but potentially harassed by not one male, but a group of them. Normally, I don’t like being discriminated against based on my gender or looks. After all the times I’ve been put through the wringer with sexual harassment, I’ve got to say I was pretty happy this guy was upfront and honest with me. It saved me what would have been yet another notch under my belt of uncomfortable work environments.

When I share these stories, I’m often told I should have sucked it up. I was being too weak or sensitive, apparently. Oddly enough, it’s my male friends that tell me these things. My female friends are more sympathetic, but not by a lot. Those that have been in similar situations feel my pain. Those that have not, seem almost jealous. It’s like we went to a bar and the attractive guy hit on me instead of her. Let me tell you, it’s not like that. Yes, I may not always say the most appropriate things. Yes, I’m sexually open and honest. Yes, I look and dress a certain way. That doesn’t give you the right to touch me, or assume that my love of sex means I want to have sex with every guy with a pulse.

For a long time, I felt like I deserved this harassment because of my clothes and the way I talked. As I’ve aged, I’ve learned that this is not the case. No matter what I look like, no matter how short my skirt may be on a Saturday night, no matter how foul my mouth is, I do not deserve harassment. I deserve to have a work environment as peaceful as everyone else.

If you find yourself in these situations, I urge you to speak up. Those that do this will continue to do so unless there are consequences. It’s not easy to go to HR or a manager and talk about it, but if you don’t, there’s no reason to assume the harassment will suddenly stop. In all the times it’s happened to me, the only thing that makes it stop is me quitting or making a report. You have the right to a safe work place. Make your voice heard to get one, and make sure management takes the right actions to make it stop.

Parenting is difficult. Even if you don’t have kids, a trip to the grocery store, and a look around at all the parents tugging screaming children away from the toy aisles should tell you that it’s no cake walk. A normal child will wear you down, but a child with an illness or disability will turn you grey before you know it. That parent turning grey by 35 was my mom.

If you read my last article, “It’s Real. Let’s Talk About It” you’ll know I have Bipolar I and was diagnosed at a young age. Basically, this means I have really bad mood swings that go from mania (periods of elation often accompanied by hallucinations, spending sprees, or impulse actions – aka “generally nuts”) to depression, with some normal periods in between. There were two extra added bonuses for my mom and me. One was that my Bipolar was early onset, meaning I was struck with it at a young age. The second was that one of my symptoms was hyper-sexuality.

So you have this four year old girl. She’s running around, saying dirty things, touching herself, and trying to get the adult male next door to show her his penis. It’s cute when it lasts for a few seconds, and it’s just a quick phase. Kids are kids, after all. They’re bound to be curious. What do you do when it doesn’t stop? When it becomes obsessive and dangerous? When it becomes
inappropriate behavior?

Some parents might have yelled. Some may have hit. I bet most would cry, at least when their kid went to sleep at night. My mom, well, she’s sexually open. She just figured I was an extraordinarily curious child and rolled with the punches. A product of the “free love” generation to the last, I suppose.

At first, she just spent time teaching me the proper names for things. That way, if I was going to ask the guy next door to pull down his pants, at least I’d know what to call the thing I wanted to see. I’m sure that wasn’t her real reason, but that’s what I used the knowledge for. She tried to teach me that these things were special and private for people who love each other. I decided I loved everyone. She tried to explain that love wasn’t what I thought it was. Alas, a young child can’t grasp such concepts.

Figuring I was bound to get in trouble if she didn’t do something, she sat me down and had the dreaded birds and bees talk with me. I’m sure most parents don’t like having this conversation, but when you have to have it with your very young child because there’s an immediate need to do so, I can’t imagine that makes the process any easier. She bought books that broke down in simple language what everything was, and why it was there. Mostly, this fueled my fire. “So that’s how it works,” I thought. If I was curious before, well, a cat had nothing on me after that.

My mom, bless her, didn’t even bat an eye. She apologized to her friends and the neighbors as if I’d simply spilt juice on their carpet. “Don’t mind her! She’s a kid!” They had kids, too. Their children weren’t trying to grope my mom, I noticed. They weren’t interested in kissing me back, either. Somehow, I think my mom was a little naive.

When I finally started therapy at around age six or seven, my mom didn’t even feel the need to mention these things to the therapist. She genuinely thought they were run of the mill kid things. Therapists don’t want to ask if your six year old has been trying to have sex with people, and mine apparently didn’t know that kids weren’t supposed to do such things, so it never got brought up. In fact, I never discussed sex at all with a therapist until I was 13, one finally pressed me on the topic. I’ve never been very forthcoming with my therapists about much of anything.

My dad, well, he wasn’t around much, in case your wondering why he hasn’t been mentioned. He was an alcoholic and workaholic, and we never saw him except on a rare Saturday night when he was trashed. He was physically and verbally abusive, so I’m glad he was too busy or trashed to notice my eccentricities. I’m sure I would have been beaten up one side and down another if he knew the things that came from my mouth. He didn’t really make friends with anyone for them to rat me out. My mom, again thinking I was a normal kid, probably didn’t even think to mention it or thought better of the idea.

I’ve come to the conclusion over time that my mom must have one very serious sexual appetite not to have thought twice about a child as young as I doing and saying what I did. She was never around kids before she had me, so I assume she only had her own life to go on. I figure she remembers being sexually curious, but didn’t remember exactly when it started for her and just assumed that I was a very, very early bloomer. Had I been one of three normal children, my behaviors might not have flown so under the radar.

Perhaps I would have been in some toddler mental institution somewhere. Perhaps they would have made me a test subject. More likely, CPS would have been called on the assumption that there was some type of sexual trauma and a big can of worms with my physically abusive dad would have been opened. I might have been temporarily taken from the one person that was my rock in childhood. I’m sure everything would have worked out, but any more trauma in my already horrible childhood probably wouldn’t have been a good thing. I count myself blessed that my mother handled me as well as she did.

If you ask her now if anything was different about me as a child, she’ll probably just tell you I’m a little dramatic. That’s how my mom sees Bipolar now – one big disorder summed up by “drama queen.” She still won’t say I was weird sexually, though she will tell you she wishes I had waited until I was older to have sex (I was raped at 13, but chose to have sex by my own will at the same age). She’ll tell you she thinks I’m a little on the kinky side, but will say it with a big smile on her face like she’s super proud of her daughter with the BDSM collection and hoard of sex toys. She’ll call me for directions to the sex store and tell her friends about how I help her pick out toys. She beams about it like I graduated medical school or something. Like I said, I’m pretty sure my mom has a voracious sexual appetite.

I’m pretty sure the way she handled things made it better for me. I know I felt less sexually shamed, at least by her. While the outside world made me feel like a child pervert, my mom made me feel safe and normal. She sometimes taught me things that peaked my curiosity more, but it’s better to know than to end up in a bad situation and not know what you’re in. She did what she knew how to do, and she did it lovingly. My mom has always done that – the best she can with as much love as she has in her heart. Though she will never read this, I hope she knows how thankful I am. And I hope her story (as this one is hers, not mine) may help the parent of a child like me get through a tough time. Yes, you can laugh it off. Yes, you can love your child no matter how strange the sexual acts may be. Yes, you can be an integral part of making them feel less like a pariah. Most of all, yes, you can get through this.

[box]Support #WAD2011! @EdenFantasys is donating $1 to @ASCNYC for every retweet! Support ASC and 20 years of positive change![/box]

It’s not a topic anyone wants to talk about. In fact, a quick Google search produced only one good resource for parents dealing with a situation like mine. I was a child with a disease that sometimes manifested itself with hyper-sexuality. No one really knows what it looks like, what it means. I thought it was time to shed some light on a closeted subject.

Wait. Let me back up. I have Bipolar I. Bipolar is a mental disorder that’s characterized by two opposing swings of the moods. A person with Bipolar will have periods where their mood is normal like anyone else. Then there will be periods of depression and periods of mania. Most people know what depression is. Mania is what most people would think of as downright “crazy.” At least that’s how I feel. Grandiose ideas, wild shopping sprees, hallucinations. Everyone has their own special flavor of Bipolar, and no two people will present exactly the same symptoms, even during the same side of the swing.

On top of having this lovely disease, I have what’s called the early onset version of it. That means it came about when I was a child. Most people aren’t born Bipolar. It happens in early adulthood, even sometimes late adulthood. Me? I came out of the womb nuts.

Childhood Bipolar looks a little different than adult Bipolar because often children will rapid cycle, meaning there may not be “normal” periods for more than a few hours at a time. It also means the depressive and manic periods can swing back and forth from hour to hour, even minute to minute. Sometimes it’s all one big mixed blur. It becomes very difficult to diagnose in a child, and there’s still a lot of research going on about it.

If you read about childhood Bipolar, you may come across a list of symptoms. One of these will be “hyper-sexuality.” You’ll notice no one goes into what the heck this means exactly, just that it exists. Of course, no one goes into it because no one wants to talk about a five year old having sexual urges that they actually act out on. So let me go into it for you, or at least what it was for me.

In my mind, I like to imagine what a normal person’s life must look like. I imagine most people have a first memory of Christmas, or a birthday, or a picnic with family. For me, it was trying to figure out how to masturbate in my parent’s bed when I was around four. I remember waking my parents up, and them asking what I was doing. I didn’t tell them. Maybe I lacked the verbal skills, or maybe I was smart enough to know I probably wasn’t supposed to be doing that.

At five, I was a bit more social with my sexuality. I would ask the neighbor’s dad what his penis looked like. Could he take off his pants and show me? I would rub myself up against my friends, trying to kiss them. I tried to figure out what it was that sex was. You’d be surprised at how few boys and girls at age five are interested in kissing. They hated me. They thought I was weird. I suppose, looking back, they were right.

I drew pictures of naked people. I apparently blocked some of this out. I didn’t know until I was older when my mom pulled out drawings I had done. I was in Pre-K. I had just learned to draw, and I used my new-found talents to make porn.

I stalked the boys at my school. They called me boy crazy. That was an understatement. There were times mothers came to school and told me to please stop harassing their sons. Teachers had talks with me. I ran after them. I groped them. I told them I’d do whatever they wanted, I’d make them happy. I guess it’s good I was saying these things to boys my own age and not pedophiles, or I’d have been in a heap of trouble.

By six or seven, I learned inserting things felt good, too. I was running to the bathroom every few minutes to try something new. I was insatiable.

My decidedly overt sexuality continued. I was the slutty kid, if that can exist. My mouth was foul. I talked about sex all the time. I wanted it, but no one was interested at a young age. When I learned terminology, I was unstoppable. I read about sex online. I racked up phone sex bills at my grandparent’s house when I stayed over. I stole porn from friend’s parents.

I had done all of this before age 13.

My mom, if you ask, will tell you I was a normal kid. You’ll note I’m an only child, and most of her friends don’t have children to compare to. When I looked at other children, I knew I was different. They were content to play with Hot Wheels and Barbie. Maybe they’d play “show me yours” every now and again, but that wasn’t good enough for me.

I suppose it’s awkward for people to think of things like this. It’s something for adults. Something that comes with puberty. A toddler overly self aware is usually the sign of sexual abuse. With Bipolar, when there’s no sexual trauma to explain it, it’s scary. It’s embarrassing to explain to the neighbor why your four year old is trying to grope them. Why they run around with their hands in their pants all day. It’s frightening to think that the overtly sexual nature will put the child in harm’s way. For the record, it did for me, but that’s a story for another day, perhaps.

Despite the awkward nature of the subject, it’s something that does exist, and perhaps not in as small of a minority as some may hope. To those who remember a childhood like mine, you are not alone. We are the unspoken of ones, yes, but that doesn’t mean we need to be such a silent group. Perhaps if more people spoke out on this subject it would help diagnose other children with Bipolar as Bipolar and not ADD or Borderline, or whatever else they want to label things before they finally get the right thing. Hyper-sexuality is, after all, a pretty Bipolar specific characteristic.

Here’s to breaking the stigma, something those with mental illness deal with enough. Let’s not also make those with illness feel like they are sexually dysfunctional, as well.

[box]Got something to say? We’d love to hear it. Leave it in comments, or write your own post![/box]