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I wish I had waited


I am a 15-year-old girl who’s had sex since the age of 13. There are two main reasons I got into having sex at such an early age. One, I didn’t know much about sex so I wanted to see what it was like. I saw it everywhere from Victoria’s Secret shops to television shows.

Two, I was influenced into having sex because "everybody" in high school was doing it. I was in eighth grade and I hung around people who were older than me. The guys were not virgins. They would say things like, "It is not a big deal." So I thought that if I was not a virgin it would not matter that much because it had lost its specialness.

My parents and teachers were too embarrassed to sit me in a chair and talk to me about sex. My parents thought that I would not become sexually active because my brothers and sisters had not become involved with sex. In my middle school I did not have any sex education classes. At that time I was wondering stuff like, how does it feel to have sex? Do I get pregnant the first time? What is a condom? I once saw a condom on glasses worn by Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes and I wondered what it was.

The first time I had sex, I had to depend on what the guy knew. I was 13 and the guy was my sex education class. He was 16 years old and not my boyfriend. It was his idea to have sex and I was really adventurous at the time. I wanted to know more and it just happened. It was his idea to use a condom because I didn’t know much about birth control. After I had sex, I realized it was too late to take back the biggest mistake of my life. I went home and kept telling myself, "I’m not a virgin, I’m not a virgin." I felt really bad about it because growing up I was taught that you shouldn’t lose your virginity until you’re married.

Months later, when my parents found out that I was having sex, they lost their trust in me and sent me to a group home. But sex is addictive. I became addicted to the feeling of being loved because I wasn’t getting enough love from my family. I began to have sex with people that I really did not want to have sex with. Once I started having sex it was not easy to stop.

I personally believe that middle school is one of the most important places to be given sex education because when you get into high school you will see things about sex everywhere. Nowadays people do not wait to be seniors at the prom to have sex. They just have sex when they think they are ready, whether or not they are.

I wanted to save my virginity for someone special, not just some guy. I think that if I had known more about sex and taken sex-ed classes in middle school, I would have realized that sex is not a game. After the sex-ed classes I took in ninth grade, I learned that there is much more to sex than the "fun" of it. There are sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, and with those risks comes a lot of responsibility.

In the future, I want to wait to have sex until I meet someone who appreciates me. Sex can bring negative things when you are not ready for it.