I'm not fine; I'm hardly okay.

I've tried to talk myself up in all this to convince myself that I'm okay; that God and I are cool, and that everything is fine.

The truth is, I'm a wreck. I'm not happy. It's not that I'm not happy with him, because I am. He makes me happier than any guy I've ever been with. But I'm not happy when it comes to the physical portion.

I feel sick whenever we fool around, and the thought of having sex has gone past being something of excitement, and to a point where it's actually a complete turn-off.

I don't know how to explain all this to him. I don't even know how to explain it myself.

I feel like I'm falling apart.

An online friend e-mailed me recently about my posts. We've discussed back and forth a little bit what I've been suggesting through them, and I told her I wanted her to be completely honest with me. And she was. Honest enough that I got a virtual slap in the face hard enough that it actually forced me to stop ignoring my gut.

The truth is... I've been struggling for a while. Even between these posts and the attempt at humour with the whole thing. I figured if I just kept convincing myself that I want it this way and that I'm happy, I would believe it.

My friend wrote:" I do, however, deeply believe that there's no place for mediocre Christianity.  Yeah, there're always going to be mistakes.  I'd be the biggest hypocrite to pretend I don't make them every single day.  But they're mistakes.  God asks us to strive to follow him in every step.  That's what concerned me so much about your writing.  If you're not going to choose to try follow Christ's teaching, why bother pretending to be a Christian in the first place?"

And that's where the tonne of bricks came in. Isn't that the very message that I have strived to follow? Isn't that the very reason I rant and rave about the way so many in the church behave? Yet there I am, stumbling into the same category as the people who drive me up the wall.

I'm scared. I'm scared to sit down and tell the boyfriend that I can't do the sex thing anymore. I'm scared because I know he's not going to understand. He's not going to be able to understand the whole striving for purity and serving God through it. And what's worse is that I chose to start having sex with him, and now for him, I'm cutting him off completely.

How did I get this far so fast? How did I get so quickly knocked off course?

Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows... I just really can't believe that.

Relationships scare the living shit out of me. Seriously.

I'm afraid to let myself believe that this is really happening. People talk about that fuzzy rainbows and butterfly phase as being something normal to every relationship. I haven't felt that since... well, since I got my heart ripped out, shredded into pieces and handed back to me nearly four years ago.

It's because of sunshine and rainbows that I stopped dating. From what I've seen, they're dangerous.

But this isn't so much about the danger of them, as it is an admittance of fear based around the fact that I now find myself incapable of feeling them even a little bit. I'm realizing it's possible that in my quest to stop myself from getting my heart stomped on because of my fairytale idea of romance that I perhaps went too far, numbing myself to being able to really feel at all.

I know I am definitely in like with my boyfriend. But I find myself shutting my emotions off before I even realize it. I wait for and prepare for the worst. Dwelling on the 'if we're together then' to keep my thoughts and emotions in check.

And perhaps, I read too much into his actions or lack-thereof in a way to feed into my defence mechanism of preparing for the worst.

The truth is, I'm scared of letting him in. I'm scared of trusting him, and falling for him, and letting him have the part that is most precious to me. I always had this idea that I would give away my heart, my whole being, before I gave away my body. That my body would be the hardest part to give away. But it wasn't. Giving that away came with ease. There are times where I really don't even feel anything when I give him myself, and I'm terrified for him to know that.

I don't know if any of this is normal. If it's normal to be cautious about one's feelings and one's heart... or at least to exercise caution to this extreme. Or if it's normal to count on his feelings for you changing so that you can't be burnt when they do.

I feel like some teeny-bopper just entering the world of dating, so unsure of everything. And in a way, I probably am like that. This is all new to me. I don't even know how a proper relationship is supposed to function. But I guess that's part of the journey. Learning from the mistakes and taking things as they go.

A fresh new page...

My original intentions with this blog were to make it a humourous blog based on my new adventures into being a not so innocent girl anymore.

The problem with that is while I can be quite humourous, sex-humour it seems is something which evades me.

I've realized, if I want this blog to do anything for me, it needs to be raw and real.

So maybe it's about to take a more girly turn than I had hoped. It might just borderline mushy and romantic. But that's kind of what life is for me right now.

You see, I've never actually had a serious relationship. My track record for longest currently sits at 4 months, and two of those months the guy was only with me because he wanted to wait until we were back at school before breaking up with me.

I've never dated someone who really, truly liked me enough to actually want to be with me. Most of them became bored with me after a couple of weeks, or decided I was too much of a challenge. The lack of complexity apparently brings forward a bigger challenge for most men.

And then there were the guys who dated me because they were bored of being single, and thought that it would make me happy. No wonder they only stuck around for a month or so -- I can't imagine actually dating someone you didn't have feelings for.

So the fact that my boyfriend actually likes me, and is brave enough to express it continuously is kind of new to me. The fact that he thinks I'm beautiful, and that he doesn't want to flirt with other girls is new to me.

My trust issues are crazy when it comes to this. I'm in constant fear that he is about to turn around and tell me it's over, but I'm learning.

Relationships are not something you just magically know how to do. They are things that need to be worked at, and that take time to develop into something real.

This is where my next adventure lies. In discovering that relationships can be built on more than fickle reasons, and learning that it is possible to find someone who makes you feel like a million bucks, even on your worst of days.

And now the struggle comes in...

For the past several years, I have been a firm believer that inter-belief dating is a bad idea. Not that I'm one of those people who think that someone who doesn't believe the same as I do is evil, or a heathen or whatnot. But rather, because it is difficult to combine two lives completely when there is such a variance in belief.

I want to be able to share my life with the person I am with, and having a different faith makes that hard, because it's a part of my life I don't know how to share without to be forcing it on them. As much as I can handle them not believing the same, to some degree it does hurt, because I can't share in their joy of that either.

Last night, the boyfriend told me that while he does believe in God, he doesn't really know if he can connect with being a Christian, because he believes that all the religions must have something right. That if they're all combined together, that the answer is in there. He doesn't really like church, and though he will attend with me if I ask sometimes, he doesn't think the answer is there.

To some degree, I'm fine with this. I respect that he is searching for the truth instead of just accepting something being told with him. That he is willing to admit that while one might be right, until the search for truth leads him to that conclusion he's going to keep searching.

I love that he's not a blind sheep, conforming to rules and regulations just because.

But there's a part of me that is crestfallen, because this is going to make things a lot harder. It's going to be harder because everyone already is pestering me about the whole equally-yoked issue. Because my parents keep telling me they're terrified if he's not a Christian that I'm going to lose my faith (to which I point out if someone can change my faith then I clearly didn't believe in the first place).

Mom won't get off my back about the fact that he hasn't come to church with us yet.

That stuff is all hard, but it's expected. True; God says in the Bible we shouldn't be unequally-yoked. But I think it also says something that despite his faith, the BF is incredible, treats me like gold, and sincerely likes me, which is more than I can say about any other guys I've ever dated, including the Christian ones.

And honestly, the Christian ones are never actually interested in me. I'm either too extreme in my thinking (not extreme as in fundie, but as in open-mindedness), I'm too nerdy, I'm not pretty enough, I'm not this, I'm too much that. I often wonder if a lot of Christian guys have this idea in their head that the Christian women to be married are the ones who fit the 'ideal' Christian woman category, and that anything outside of it just isn't right.

But I'm rambling. I think my biggest struggle comes into play with the fear of showing him my God-passionate side. I don't want him to feel I'm trying to force my faith onto him, but for me, my faith is my life. I live it, I breathe it. I just don't want it to be too much.

Sandra Dee and I have a lot in common...

I suppose in a way, I am like the modern day Sandra D. Or was.

Gosh, I was terrified of everything. From smoking and drinking, to doing anything with boys and dancing.

In college, I let loose a bit, but still was very cautious over what I did with guys. I had this idea that if I had sex, God would turn away from me and I would be done for. Or that I'd be one of those random cases you hear about who got prego the first time and that would be it. My story would be over. Donezo. Finito. Sandra Dee would fade away into the history pages, only to be remembered as that girl who caved to sex, got knocked up and threw away her future.

After a four year dating hiatus, I met this guy, and caved to sleeping with him. I realized waiting was doing more damage to myself because I wasn't actually sure why I was waiting, other than this inherent fear of pregnancy and disease.

The first time was... well, it was awkward, hurt like hell, but was awesome. I lost my virginity amongst a bunch of storage boxes, moldy blankets and cobwebs to a man I wasn't in love with, and I couldn't have been more proud.

Now, that man is my boyfriend, and frankly, I'm surprised that he's so patient with me in this learning process. I mean, I'm no expert, but so far, I don't think I'm that great in the sack... he seems to think I'm pretty good for a newb. Of course, that could still be a back-handed compliment.

Either way, it's a new adventure... this one just involves little to no clothing...

But, back to the point.

I, like Sandra Dee, came to the realization that sometimes, if you have a man worth holding onto, it's okay to let go of your fears and have a little bit of fun. And, like Sandra, I am learning to be fully proud of my sexual prowess, and maybe one day, I'll get to be that vixen in the bedroom that I've always dreamed of. For now, I'll settle for trial and error and wal-mart lingerie to get the mood going.