White wedding innocents.

I'm about to blog about sex.
I know right.

But in all seriousness, I was thinking that maybe I shouldn't be so old-fashioned in my ideals about sex and virginity and what not. Of course I can't force my standards and morals onto other people, but sometimes I tell myself that I need to stop being shocked when I hear stories about my peers and their sexual excursions. We're in high school. I'm well aware that almost everyone has sex.
But that's the part that disturbs me. It really does bother me the way that as teenagers in this day and age, we've created an environment where it's practically unheard of to have a long term relationship without any sexual activity whatsoever. Does that not bother anyone else?!
Teenagers toss sex around like it's nothing. Everyone seems to have their way of justifying it. "I know it's a big decision, but we've been dating for almost a year." Does that make it okay? Really? Because in the grand scheme of things, think realistically about how many relationships you will go through before you marry your future spouse. And think about how long those relationships might last. Does almost a year of dating when you're 16 seem like the appropriate time to give up the strongest proof of love? Not to sound like a CPR teacher playing a broken record, but your virginity is a gift you can only give once, to one person. I'm just about certain that when I'm old and shribbled up, I'm going to look back at all the men I will have dated by then, and if I were to pick the one I'd want to give something that important to, it isn't going to be my "almost a year" in high school.
It's just something far too big for us to understand at age 16. It means more than we know in the grand scheme of things. I'll be the last person to tell you that you can't fall in love as a teenager. But I'll be the first to tell you that you don't understand love as a teenager, no matter how strongly you've felt it. Sex, love, and virginity are concepts far bigger than us that we can't even begin to understand the meaning of at our age. And you don't play around with things you don't understand.

But I'm not the kind of person who tries to live other people lives for them, or force my ideals down anyone's throat. I won't tell you to stop living the way you're living or doing what you want to do. But I think the lack of value our generation places on virginity is sickening.

I read somewhere that because of the way our society views sex, a virgin has become a "rare and beautiful thing". In that case, and in any case, I am DAMN proud to be a virgin.