My Confession: I Learned to Desire Myself Every Night

There are things you only dare to write when you're sure no one will connect a face to the name. That's why I changed mine. Call me Mariana. I'm in my early twenties and live alone in a small apartment in the city, one of those places where you can hear the neighbor opening the refrigerator. This isn't a story I made up. It's a confession, and my hand trembles a little as I type it.

For a long time, I had trouble looking at myself in the mirror. I'm not what magazines call pretty: I'm short, my body is softer than I'd like, and every morning I felt that the face looking back at me was more tired than the day before. Anxiety, lack of discipline, sleepless nights... all of it kept piling up on my skin. I looked at myself and found only how little I'd loved myself.

What I'm going to tell you is how, without looking for it, I began to turn that story around. And it started, strange as it may sound, with a package that arrived at my door wrapped in anonymous cardboard.

***

I bought it one sleepless morning, hidden behind my phone screen, my heart pounding as if I were doing something forbidden. A vibrator. Not one of the classic kinds, but a clitoral-suction one, the sort that promises in tiny letters what you don't dare ask for out loud. It took me three days to press the buy button. Another four for it to arrive. And when I had it in my hand, I left it in the bedside-table drawer for an entire week, glancing at it out of the corner of my eye like someone living with a secret.

The first night I dared, I turned off every light. I was embarrassed even with myself. I lay down, switched it on at the lowest setting, and the soft buzzing seemed deafening in the apartment's silence.

I wasn't expecting much. I expected, I suppose, the usual: something warm and quick, a chore to release tension before bed.

I was completely wrong.

I pulled my panties down to my ankles, kicked them away, and spread my legs against the mattress. I was already wet before touching myself, with that sticky dampness trickling down the crack of my ass. I ran two fingers over the lips of my cunt, parted them, and felt my swollen clit throbbing, begging. The moment I pressed the suctioner's mouth against it, my whole body went on alert. It wasn't a harsh friction like that of my hurried fingers on other occasions; it was a rhythmic, patient suction, slowly sucking at my clit as if an invisible mouth were sucking it. I let my breath out slowly. I raised my hips without realizing it. And for the first time in a long while, I stopped thinking about how I looked and started thinking about how I felt.

I closed my eyes. The sheet clung to my damp back. I turned it up one level. Then another. With my free hand, I pushed two fingers into my cunt, all the way in, and felt the walls squeeze them, hot and slippery. I pulled them out, coated in my juices, and brought them to my mouth without thinking, sucking the taste of myself as if it were something forbidden. I lowered my hand again, this time stroking my tits over my T-shirt, pinching one nipple until it hardened, so hard it hurt. The tension gathered in one precise, hot point that throbbed more and more intensely, until a long, guttural moan escaped me, one I didn't even recognize as my own.

This is me. This body I've criticized so much is capable of this.

The suctioner kept sucking my clit mercilessly, and I could no longer keep my hips still: I fucked myself against the toy's face, moving up and down, feeling something enormous bearing down on me. I pushed my fingers in again, three this time, and curled them forward until I found that spot I'd always read about but had never known how to touch properly. That's where I broke. When I came, I arched over the mattress, a hot gush of fluid escaped me and soaked my fingers up to the wrist, and I had to yank the toy away: my clit was left so sensitive that the slightest touch was too much. I lay there trembling, my legs spread wide, my breathing ragged, laughing alone in the darkness. Not from shame. From relief. From a kind of tenderness toward myself that I hadn't felt in years.

***

From that night on, something changed. Not magically, not overnight. I still had gray days, still fought with the mirror. But I discovered that I had a territory of my own, a place where no one judged me, where my body wasn't a problem to solve but a source of pleasure that belonged to me and no one else.

I began to give myself time. To take long baths beforehand, to put on a lingerie set I'd kept with its tag still attached since a birthday, bought for a version of myself who believed she didn't deserve to wear it. One night I put it on. Just for me. I looked at myself in the closet mirror in the low light and, for once, didn't search for flaws. I saw wide hips, cleavage, parted lips, nipples showing beneath the black lace. I liked myself. I truly liked myself. I ran my hand over my belly, lowered it over my panties, felt the dampness soaking through the fabric, and touched myself like that, dressed, standing in front of the mirror, watching my face as I made myself moan softly with two fingers over the silk.

I tried the second toy a week later, another suctioner I ordered with less guilt than the first, and added a realistic dildo, thick, with pronounced veins, the color of a real cock. The first time I slid it inside me, I did it slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed, spitting on it first so it would go in more easily. I felt my cunt slowly open around the silicone cock, yielding inch by inch, until I had it all the way inside and remained still, breathing, feeling full. Then I began to move it, slowly at first, fucking myself with my hand, watching in the mirror as the cock slid in and out, glossy with my juices. I learned to combine the toys, to fuck myself while the suctioner sucked my clit at the same time, to alternate the rhythm, to make myself wait. I discovered that pleasure is also built with patience, that postponing it makes it more intense. That I could bring myself to the edge and stop, then return and stop again, until orgasm came over me like a wave that left me unable even to breathe, my cunt squeezing the dildo and my cum running down my thighs.

And I also discovered that, in those moments, my head filled with images I didn't dare confess during the day.

***

The one that returned most often was a woman. Lucía, I'll call her, though that isn't her name either.

I met her at the café where I sometimes stop to read. She works the midday shift, has an easy laugh and hands I stared at longer than I should have the first time she handed me my little cup. Nothing happened between us. Just counter conversations, a couple of jokes, the brush of our fingers when she gave me my change. But something about her stayed inside me.

I'd never been with a girl. The idea had always filled me with a mixture of curiosity and fear, like standing at the edge of a swimming pool without knowing whether the water is cold. But in the darkness, with the buzzing between my legs, the fear disappeared and only curiosity remained, lit up and without brakes.

I imagined her entering my apartment without my having to explain anything. I imagined those hands I'd watched so closely moving slowly over the lingerie I now dared to wear, squeezing my tits, sliding down my belly and slipping beneath the elastic of my panties. I imagined her whispering in my ear the things I had never believed anyone could think about me.

—Don't cover yourself —she'd say in my head, pushing away the hand I instinctively wanted to use to hide myself—. I want to see all of you. I want to see that wet cunt you have for me.

And in the fantasy I obeyed her. I let her look at me. I let her tear my panties off with her teeth, let her mouth travel down my neck, bite my nipples, suck one tit and then the other until they were red. I let her fingers find the path I already knew by heart, let her part the lips of my cunt and push two fingers all the way inside, curling them, searching for me from within. Except this time they weren't mine or a toy's: they were hers, warm and curious, learning me inch by inch.

—You're soaked —she'd whisper in the fantasy, pulling out her gleaming fingers and bringing them to her mouth to suck them herself—. Look how wet you are.

The toy did its part while my imagination did the rest. I pictured her kneeling between my legs, spreading them wide, taking her time, looking up at me with those eyes that undid me at the café. I pictured the heat of her tongue replacing the device's suction, that tongue sucking my clit up and down, sliding into my cunt, licking me all the way to my ass without hesitation. I pictured the weight of her body on mine, her tits pressing against mine, the way she'd say my name with her mouth smeared with my cum. I pictured myself riding her afterward, sitting on her face, fucking her mouth until I came in streams over her tongue, gripping her hair while she swallowed everything.

—Come in my mouth —she'd say. Give me everything.

And there I was, in the real bed, the suctioner stuck to my clit and three fingers buried to the knuckles, coming while I thought about giving Lucía a mouthful of me. Then I imagined returning the favor, going down between her legs for the first time, learning to lick a cunt that wasn't mine, sucking her clit until she trembled, pushing my tongue deep inside her to find out what another woman tasted like. I imagined her thighs closing around my head, her hands pulling my hair, her broken voice telling me not to stop.

Someday. Maybe someday I'll find the courage to ask her if she'd like to have coffee away from the counter.

That night I came thinking about her and screamed into the pillow so the neighbor wouldn't hear me, biting the fabric while the orgasm shook my legs and left a puddle of cum beneath my ass. I slowly pulled out the dildo, looked at it shining with me, and without thinking brought it to my mouth and sucked it, imagining she was the one giving it to me. Then I lay on my back for a long while, still half-dressed in the lingerie set, one nipple out of my bra, my panties hanging from one ankle, smiling at the dark ceiling.

***

I know this isn't the great passion story people read about. There's no lover appearing at three in the morning, no clandestine encounter in a hotel. There's a woman alone in a small apartment, slowly learning not to be afraid of herself. But to me, it's the greatest confession I have to make, because for years I didn't believe I deserved even my own desire.

I miss having someone, I won't lie. I miss the weight of another body, a mouth that isn't mine against my skin, someone else's fingers pushing into the places only mine ever enter. Sometimes the fear of responsibility, of complicating my life, of opening myself to someone who might leave afterward, wins out, and I stay where I am, safe between my sheets and my toys. But it's no longer the same confinement as before. Now it's a choice, not a sentence.

I understood something during these months of discovering myself: no one will love you for you until you dare to love yourself first. And loving yourself, I've discovered, also means this. It means giving yourself pleasure without guilt. It means putting on lingerie for yourself. It means fingering your cunt in front of the mirror without lowering your gaze. It means accepting that the body you have is the only one you'll ever inhabit and that it deserves to be touched eagerly, fucked eagerly, not out of resignation.

I still have a long way to go. There are still mornings when the mirror wins the fight. But now I have nights that belong only to me, nights when I learned to desire myself, and no one can take that away from me.

The next time I pass by the café, maybe I'll dare. Maybe I'll ask Lucía if she'd like to sit on this side of the counter one afternoon. And if she says yes, I won't arrive trembling with insecurity. I'll arrive knowing, at last, what I'm worth between the sheets, knowing how wet my cunt gets, how I scream when I come, and what I have to give a woman who knows how to look at me.

Thank you for reading me. For listening, even in silence, to this confession I never dared say out loud.