This is going to be a very personal post for me. It’s one I have battled with for a while and feels heavy as I write it.
The idea of smell has been double-edged since I can remember. People don’t like to use that word unless it’s associated with smelling bad. If it’s good, it’s fragrance or scent or aroma but smell_ It’s bad smell or strong smell or you smell. It’s as if people know this instinctively.
I’ve been fascinated with this for a long time. I can’t pinpoint when it started but what I call the Smell Thing has been on my radar probably since puberty. It probably started with the aftershave of the first person I crushed on and kept going from there. I like to know about it in others and find references to it in books compelling.
But it hasn’t always been easy. I had an incident at about 19 which has made things very difficult for me ever since and it’s something I am still battling to deal with. It’s hard to talk about so please bear with me on this one.
I had a partner, I call him my Lesson. Let’s just call him Burner because he was a Burner partner, though I thank the Universe every day for having given him to me to show me the lesson on never settling. He was nice enough but not on my level in so many ways and he came out with some pretty awful and ablist things. One day, it was a normal hot Perth day and I wanted to play with him. He said to me “go away, you smell like a fish factory”. I was crushed then but had no idea it was going to cause problems later on like it has done.
It was one comment from one person in all of my life. It’s stayed with me even now. I get scared when being with new people. I get scared to let people use their mouths on me. I don’t like the idea of playing without showering first. If a person starts telling those fish jokes, alluding to vulvae, it’s a surefire way to get me not to play with them. It’s not just a silly comment, it’s a battle now.
Maybe writing about it willhelp. I have no idea what I can do to make this easier. I am supposed to be this sex-positive person who educates people. I am going to be educating people who have had no prior knowledge of any of this. I don’t want to give them my traumata as well.
I don’t want to let Burner win and I know that the way I handle this is doing that but I am at the end of my options. It’s almost been 20 years since this happened and I am still dealing with it now.
For reference, no one else has ever said anything like that to me. The only thing people have said is that as a person with more weight on me, I am going to smell like person more quickly but that’s different. I use deodorant and perfume and I shower regularly as in twice daily in Perth, once in Europe when it’s freezing.
I realise that this is a very all over the place post but these types of feelings are not doable in an orderly way. Maybe someone else has had something similar and will know they are not alone with it. I don’t know if it is going to help me but if it helps someone else to know that even I battle with this kind of thing, then it is worth the heartache associated with all of this.