Yeah, that's what Sadie said…

The libido is a funny thing, is it not?

For many women it is cyclical, dependent upon hormonal fluctuations, the amount of chocolate we’ve eaten, the position of that goddamned planet Mercury, how annoying the kids have been that day, or whether or not we’ve been told our ass looks super-fucking-hot in the new jeans we just spent a good chunk of our paycheck on. As well as a host of other factors, of course. Women are a complex species of creatures; there’s almost no telling when we’ll be revved up and ready to go, either for an adventure with a partner or just our very own sexy selves.

I was blessed with a fairly active libido, as a result of either genetics (thanks, Mom!) or luck… or perhaps it was the slut-dust that I was blanketed in at my birth? It’s hard to say, but its prodigiousness was one that presented itself, unawares, at age nine (on a bicycle, no less,) and then ran what I can only assume to be a usual path  – cycling to and fro into my adulthood, through marriage and childbirth and then petering out almost entirely before it was once again re-delivered to me (unexpectedly yet ohso happily!) after a two-year battle with an autoimmune disorder. It was then that my sex drive went into full-tilt, and continued almost unceasingly for more than five years. The endorphins all that sexual activity produced served, I believe, an important purpose – I stayed in touch with myself.

Yes, in that way too.

But when my husband and I separated, I lost it. My libido that is (although to be sure my mental stability was not at its utmost peak either; cray cray I have felt on more than singular occasion.) My dear drive had gone away; turned cool-blue, frozen embers of my body’s memory, and I feared that the fire might never be lit again. I worried that to wake it up would require more than I had the energy for, or the capacity to achieve. Would I ever have the desire to desire… desire… once again?

In the haze of my missing libido I also lost myself. I began to wonder if I remembered who the hell I was? Divorce has a way of making a person re-assess everything – what was, what is and what may be. Was I not me anymore without this man who had accompanied my libidinous fluctuations the entire way? Was I still me but now this was just a different me? I shuddered to think that libido and I were so inexorably linked that it would even attempt to define me in such a way.

But I care about sex, you know? I suppose many of us do, and in fact I know we do. Sexuality is my business, it’s where I focus so much of my time and effort, trying to pull sexuality out from under the dark shroud of taboo and into the brilliant light of awareness and understanding. But how does one negotiate such a path when one’s own energies in that realm are tamped down to the extent that the ash left in its wake has blown away?

It turns out I needn’t have worried, nor been afraid. Because I have begun to wake up. To feel the surge of urge – and desire – once again. I could point towards that which sparked the blissful ignition, but I won’t. Best just to say I am happy to discover myself back in a place where there is a warmth and a will and a wish … to whack off.

It appears I am back.

And with that happy revelation (inspired by happy satisfaction,) I am off… to replace all the dead batteries in my vibrators that have been sitting, gathering dust, for far too long.

As well as to say a say a quiet “thank you” to my lovely libido-rouser.

*thank you*