THE EROTIC

 February 23rd, 2026

I stumbled across an audio today of Audre Lorde reading her essay the Uses of the Erotic.

It's been probably two years since I last delved into this piece of work, a lot has shifted internally in regards to how I understand and relate to eroticism, though maybe not too much has changed circumstantially. 

I keep thinking back to all of my newly acquired awareness around my body. The experience around shame, sensation, and my historical need to remain composed as means of safety. This is a brand new phase I think I've reached in my experience. I suppose according to the dominant culture I've been a woman for some time. Biologically speaking, nearly half of my life so far.

 Psychologically, the shift has only just begun, and it may be a while before I reach the destination I'm seeking. Perhaps that road never ends, I'm not really sure. 

I'm coming to terms with the fact that I have absolutely uprooted my nervous system by training myself to remain composed for so many years as a girl and teen. 

Up until very recently, the notion of being touched by a man in an erotic way would've made me want to crawl out of my own skin. A lot of it was due to fear and internalized shame around having a body that's been the target of so much ridicule and criticism in the past. I'm beginning to unpack that as a result of my own lack of internal safety projected outwards. 

I think my understanding of eroticism was definitely very pornographic rather than erotic - it's difficult to lean into intimacy (under Lorde's framework) when you are committed to suppressing the feeling, but milking the sensation. 

In a strange way, the past few months, I have been overcoming that taboo. 

I've been coming to terms with my own fears around connection, and desire, and sensation. I am trying out new things that I never thought I would, unorthodox as they've been, it's given me a sense of personal power, I never felt capable of giving that to myself, I just thought I'd eventually meet a man and it would come about in that manner. Through their guidance. 

Now I see how misguided that was. From what I've witnessed and come to understand first hand, someone can come along and act as a catalyst or a point of initiation, but transformation of any kind is an inside job. The conscious choice must be made to undertake that journey. To be completely stripped bare and forego shame. It's just too personal to be share in that way. 

Moreover, I am trying to unlearn the dysfunctional ways of relating I am used to (through criticism, through the acquisition of status/power, through insecurity/fear) and relearn it a different way, which, I guess is requiring me to build an entirely different internal landscape. I'm learning to figure out what's needed for me to feel and remain secure. What I like and dislike right now, and how to vocalize those tastes without shame or unnecessary restraint, but also without shame or arrogance.

One of the other things I'm trying to get used to is the feeling of desire.

I was numb for a while. I couldn't really tolerate closeness or intimacy of any kind. 

My understanding of eroticism was deeply pornographic and sterile. 

The opposite of what Lorde is claiming as true power. 

The feelings in question would be fear, would be grief over mistreatment or feeling misunderstood, more grief over the emotional isolation and abandonment I was experiencing, the shame from internalizing all of those things (the abandonment, the mistreatment, etc.) as a personal defect and not something purely circumstantial albeit rather unlucky. 

Sensation served as a barrier between my mind and body. A muzzle on my mind so I could temporarily inhabit my body - which was a far cry from how I'd trained myself. 

The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos our strongest feelings. 

At one of my lowest points, when I was knee deep in my food addiction and using THC as a heavy crutch to simply get through. I was suppressing my impulses and closing off the different avenues for pleasure, simply because they felt like they carried too much emotional risk. That meant dating, sex, making friends, dancing, swimming, wearing clothes that were expressive as opposed to simply comfortable or functional - these things were all barred. I realized on some level that I was suppressing my own life force and vitality, but I was deeply afraid of the risk. 

I made numerous attempts to change my lot in life by attacking a symptom: my overweight body. 

I was working out frequently, tracking calories, restricting my eating, and so on. 

After a move back to my parental home, a falling out with someone close whose energy long felt punitive rather than nourishing, I gave up. I hit rock bottom for the final time since then. I threw myself into my addiction until I stopped deriving pleasure from it. It was so scary to eat and no longer feel full or satiated, yet physically unable to keep feeding. 

When I wasn't eating, it felt like the walls were caving in on me, and I just could not breathe. 

So I kept eating, and eating, and eating until the breakdown forced me into change. 

What I am grappling now is accepting the sensation of desire and not allowing my self-esteem hinge on explicit reciprocity from its target (I say target and not source, because I acknowledge that I am indeed the creator of my desire). 

I was spiraling this entire weekend (prior to my breakthrough) about a man I've recently come to develop feelings for. At least I think that's what my nervous system is feeling about him, I'm not entirely sure.

Much of our earlier interactions were filled with him attempting to connect, and me shutting down those attempts - some were conscious (a response to very real world boundaries that I felt should prevent connection) and some unconscious (my body tensing up and bracing at the near sense of him near me). It took some time and me being near him repeatedly and my body no longer identifying him as a threat to open up enough to feel him out. And it took finding out he has recently entered a relationship with another woman and seeing how devoted he was to her for me to admit that tender feelings were present under all of the armor I was wearing. 

His role in my life, as well as his relationship pose very real barriers that dampen any possibility of us connecting. I'm resisting the urge to tell myself it could be different, or crossing a bridge we both know might simply topple over and drown us both and seeing it for the lesson that it is.

It's been lesson after lesson in detachment for me lately. I recall when I was absolutely consumed with [redacted] about a year ago. I assumed that my desire for him meant that it should be pursued rather than observed. I slipped fast, and hard. Yet, I think my desire for him was more ornamental than it was sensorial. It was something along the lines of..this person is physically attractive, their style/mannerisms are things that I deem valuable. I would like to collect and possess his affection as a means of giving myself the emotional security I never got. 

It is perhaps how this man sees me, I'm not entirely sure. Either way, if love and eroticism were on the same axis, and inversely infatuation/pornography on the other, I would have very few experiences in the former. I think my understanding of love is deeply fragmented in the way that my understanding of sensation and pleasure was when I was actively bingeing. 

For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. 

I am just now beginning to connect with my body in such an intimate and whole way. I'm gradually shedding the mechanisms put in place to evade the anxiety and shame that connection would evoke. 

Perhaps some day down the line, I'll find myself able to truly connect and not simply hold the desire to possess the affection of a man for my lack of inner security. 

- vetiveroil