Oh my God. I feel like, growing up, my religion kind of traumatized me. I grew up as a Catholic. My parents put me in a Catholic school from pre-K to eighth grade. And I feel like I got brainwashed, like hardcore, you know, like ,from my own family, my mom, because she's super religious. And then from the school.

And, so one of my biggest fears were like, sex, the topic of sex. So growing up, when I was 18, I lost my virginity and I was still in the mentality of like, you have to be a virgin, you have to be pure. And I was like, oh my God, I'm going to hell. And for the longest time I felt like I wasn't good enough anymore because I lost it. So that caused a sense of trauma with myself internally because of my religion in that sense.

It felt like I wasn't good enough. And then what happened? And I ended up dating the most douchiest douche bags ever. Like shitty people. Because I felt like I just deserved that type of love.

And it took me years to actually figure it out that my value does not have to do with my virginity. Like, why do I always kept thinking like that?

Melissa Maria Duran

Born 1987, in Laredo, Texas