A Secret Told
Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012 5:29 PM

�And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter� they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.� ― Sylvia Plath

In 2 more days I will be turning 35 years old. Thirty-five years old! I feel like that's a huge milestone, like I'm crossing over a certain threshold. For once in my life, I feel like I'm growing old.

Thirty was rough. It felt like the end of my youth, as if I had to wake up the next day and consider myself an actual adult leaving behind my twenties in a nicely wrapped little box. Thirty scared me. It severely depressed me. My twenties had come and gone and there wasn't much to show for them except a lot of heartache and pain. Most likely because I was trapped in a fog for so long from drinking too much and being depressed.

By the end of my twenties, I felt like I was coming out of that cloud, that I could look back on my life with no regrets and consider myself a survivor with a future to look forward too. Now I'm days away from 35 and all I can do is look back and regret. I don't want to look backwards and regret my life choices. I don't want to wallow about in some self made misery wandering why I didn't do more with my time.

The optimist would say, "Recognize it now. You're still young. Do something with your life starting this very moment." I can hear it now, "It's never too late!" And then there's the pessimist in me whose screaming in the other ear. "You're only 5 years away from 40. If you don't have children now, your body will fail you and you'll die childless." Even though I feel as if my body's been failing for me for 4 years now. Maybe it hasn't. I don't know. It could be me who has failed my body.

About three months ago I woke up and felt gravity drop. I know it couldn't have happened overnight, but it felt like it. It was as if I went to bed with the body of a young woman, woke up the next day, and felt my breasts fall just a little further than normal. It didn't help matters when I actually found a random white hair in my left eyebrow while plucking. Could I literally be going gray at this age? I'm too young to have white hairs, aren't I?

Next thing you know, I'll wake up and see that I've developed crows feet around my eyes or laugh lines around my mouth. My skin will become more papery and easier to bruise just like my mother's and my grandmother's. I'm really not looking forward to aging, especially since I still feel the same mentally as I did when I was 18 - just a lot wiser from all the experiences.

On the plus side, my sex drive is through the roof. My skin constantly feels like its on fire, and my body is always aching for release. I wish I had felt this confident and sexual in my twenties. I would have enjoyed sex a lot more. Instead I gave in all the time to boys and men, allowing them the use of my body for their own pleasure. Afterwards, I always felt cheap and disgusting. Even a shower wouldn't get rid of that feeling.

I don't know if I felt that way because I was raised with the belief that sex was sacred and meant only for marriage, if society pushed that stigmatism into my head because it was okay for men to have sex with many but if a girl did she was considered a slut, if it was because I gave in all the time disrespecting myself, or if it was something else all together. Even now I can't bring myself to have sex with my husband. The idea disgusts me, and it's not because he's sick. I could easily spread my legs for him and let him take care of his carnal desires, but once it was over, I'd be back in the body of that girl who gave in and gave herself up. I'm not sure what that says about my marriage, or about me in particular.

I know. It's odd. My skin is on fire and I'm desiring sex, yet here I am rambling on about how if I did it with my very own husband I'd feel dirty. I don't like sex with him. Never have, no matter how much affection I felt and feel for him to this day. Yes, something is wrong with me. I can tell. He's never forced himself on me. He never will. He'll settle for a sexless marriage, even, which only makes me feel absolutely horrible that I crave sex but not with him.

Now here's my real secret, something I'm ashamed of but I don't want to let go of: for the last two years, I've been playing World of Warcraft. When I first started playing, I played the game alone. It was great fun for awhile, but then I started meeting all these extremely interesting and fascinating people. The downside is, most of them were young, like in junior high or high school young. So stupid me... I lied to them about my age. I told them I was ten years younger than I am. I did this because 1. I didn't think they'd play the game with me if they knew I was in my 30s (talk about feeling OLD), 2. because I thought I'd never speak to them again and life would go on as normal, and 3. because I really wished I was in my 20s instead of my 30s. Now I'm really good friends with some of these people. I've played with them for over two years now, and I have no idea how to tell them the truth. I never bring up my age or anything, never speak of such things really, but I feel so guilty. Like I've misled them in a major way and if they found out, they'd stop being the only friends I really have in the world right now. Some of them did end up being in their 30s, some of them even older than that, but I was stuck in my lie and still am.

The other bad thing about this is, I really like flirting with them. No, not the junior high kids or high school kids, but the men I've met who are all 20 something or older. I've realized over the course of the last two years that I am a flirt and a tease by nature. I can't even help myself. The words just come out. It's just like my twenties except way worse since my sex drive is on overdrive, and I'm sober. And I have this really young sounding voice, and I look 10 years younger than I am, so that doesn't help me out any. Oh god, what do I do?

I want to flirt with them. I want to tease them. I want to be teased and flirted with. It's such a good feeling, like I'm somebody special and they can't help but adore me. I want to be adored. I want them to want me. But I am to old to be feeling like this, to old to be acting like this, and to married on top of that.

To make things even more complicated, there is one particular man I've befriended on there who I can't get enough of. He's 30, and he's so much like me it scares and excites me all at once. I've been speaking to him in depth for about 3 weeks now and he's everything I should have held out for, everything I want in a life partner, everything I ever dreamed about as a little girl. But here I am right now, married to a sick man, trapped in this life of my own choosing, knowing that had I not chosen this life I would never have met this man.

I'm at a very difficult point in my life, at a crossroads where I must make some very difficult decisions. The scary thing is, no matter what choice I make in the end, someone is going to be hurting - most of all me.