Choosing sex over my physical safety may have been one of the best decisions I made this year.
Now, I might sound like an irresponsible horny beast unable to survive a few weeks without rubbing my genitals against someone else’s, but there is so much more to the story than a primal need for pleasure – and I do not regret a single, orgasmic moment of it.
Before lockdown 2.0, I was determined to maintain extremely limited contact with people. I have a condition called scleroderma, a disease that makes my immune system attack itself and requires immunosuppressant drugs during flare-ups, so I was very much in the high-risk category.
For almost all of this year, every decision I have made has been designed to protect my physical health. I shielded for nearly eight months, missing out on pubs reopening and only treating myself to one socially distanced lunch with a friend.
Even after the first lockdown ended, I avoided popular walking areas, turned down invitations for socially distanced meets, turned my hands into dried husks with constant washing and kept a mask basically glued to my face.
Although I was impatient to join everyone else basking in their renewed freedom, my continued isolation felt like a fair price to pay for a healthy body.
Eventually, however, like countless others, extended isolation overwhelmed my ability to cope. Nightmares and insomnia decimated my sleep, anxiety and depression loomed, and I felt devastatingly lonely.
I have PTSD and depression and when the second lockdown was announced, difficult feelings came flooding back. It felt as though the ground had given way beneath my feet, leaving me on a cliff edge without a safety net.
I was living with one housemate in Birmingham and after clearing it with them, I finally made the decision to prioritise my mental health above my physical health, choosing intimacy over guaranteed safety.
Just before the second lockdown, I had reconnected with an old flame who lives on their own and had not been around other people for months on end, meaning that he was the perfect candidate for a lockdown sex bubble.
A sex bubble seemed like the perfect solution: not only was it government sanctioned, it meant I could satisfy my urge for physical contact.
I am an extremely tactile person and for me, intimacy is a key part of maintaining my mental health. Without it, I find it difficult to keep depression and PTSD symptoms at bay, making it easy to slip into a dissociative state when isolated where I feel as though I am floating away from my own body.
Regular physical contact helps keep the mind and body connected; in past relationships, soft, sensual touch and gentle sex have quite literally helped maintain my grasp on reality.
And as we entered lockdown for a second time, I had never felt such intense longing. Even thinking about sensual intimacy brought tears to my eyes and my heart ached more fiercely than after any break up.
Accidentally brushing past someone in the street had become the highlight of any day and my heart soared every time a hug was an option.
On the first night we hooked up, I walked to his house to avoid public transport and there was little chance of crossing paths with anyone else, so my anxieties were mostly limited to whether this physical risk would have the desired effect on my mental health.
The payoff was worth every anxious second.
A simple spoon was a symphony of sensual satisfaction. Every orgasm felt like I was rising through the ceiling and out into a free world where mysterious viruses do not exist and lockdown measures are an old wives’ tale.
Although our meeting was technically within guidelines, no previous sexual encounter has ever felt quite so illicit.
A dopamine-induced rush created an instantaneous response and I had a dreamless sleep followed by a day free of PTSD symptoms. My decision regulated the pleasure centre in my brain and soothed symptoms of mental illness.
Being held by another person felt like floating on a cloud high above the mania of the real world. Nestled in that safe, intimate bubble, I felt certain I had made the right decision.
While neither of us has any interest in a romantic connection, we have agreed to remain in a lockdown sex bubble by not seeing anyone else.
Sex may not seem like a potential lifesaver in the midst of a pandemic but a shared orgasm could stop many isolated people from stepping into a black hole of depression in this Covid-19 stricken winter.
I have long-term health conditions that cannot be vaccinated away so my physical health will always be a concern, however, this year has proven that being starved of intimacy erodes both my physical and mental health.
So from now on, healing any cracks in my mental wellbeing will take priority.
We are all playing our part to subdue the coronavirus but I am certain there are many people struggling the same way I was. The simple truth is that most humans require physical and sexual contact to be content, some of us are just better at unashamedly acknowledging that need.
Although worry over catching Covid-19 lingers, I will contain the fear by keeping within the sex bubble and shielding my mental wellbeing as fiercely as I protected my physical safety in the first lockdown.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing rosy.edwards@metro.co.uk.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/11/27/i-missed-sex-so-much-in-lockdown-i-risked-my-health-to-get-it-13663933/
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