the place with all my demons: on degradation and shame*

It’s always been about loss of control, for me. Helplessness. The giving over.

How I used to think that would be all blood and violence. For a time, maybe it was. Screaming and crying and eventual silence. How I used to think that would be enough.

But we grow, and we adapt, and I am a masochist. When I got better at interpreting the blows into what would make me come, I was no longer satisfied. Not fully. I accepted that I could do that. I even liked it.

How I used to think I could never fully suffer again.

I don’t know how I got to this place. Back then, words like ‘dumb’ and ‘worthless’ were on my list of hard limits.

There was a path, I’m sure.
Little taunts when I cried from beatings.
Piss on my shirt and in my mouth. Small things.

And then, when we had been long-distance for many months, when I came home for a week in the middle, there was this one night. A night where He mocked me for not getting Him off. Had me ride Him and neither looked at me nor reacted. Made me bend over and stay completely still and silent while He came and I did not. After, I turned away sobbing, hating Him for using one of our limited nights so selfishly. Hating myself more.

But in the time away from each other (sometimes even still,) whenever I got off… it always went back there. Every time. That awful suffering. I didn’t tell Him. (How I used to think I could keep this to myself.) My eyes closed, my hand between my legs, thinking about feeling completely tossed aside. That shame. That worthlessness. I started to notice it in every scene I found strong enough to think about, write about. It crawled into the most secret fantasies I had.

And in recent weeks, it has crawled right out.

I love pain. I still do. He can push beyond my masochism to where I get that, generate real tears, real fear in the moment. But that’s just it: I do love it. I want it. I can think through it.

When He’s in my head (and oh, how He’s in my head…) there is no escape. There is no secret enjoyment. Even what I enjoy, I hate. I suffer. There is no end to it. I can’t claim dehydration or exhaustion. I can’t tense different muscles or move a bit forward. I can’t meditate through it. I certainly can’t focus on the knowledge of His Love.

My emotions have controlled me at so many points in my life and here is a man who can control them, more powerful than all the darkness.

I don’t know how I got to this place: my looking back at my Owner Friday night, his cock inside me, begging Him to say something awful to me. Knowing in that moment that was the only way I could come. Needing to cry in self-hatred. I don’t know how I got to where in two weeks we will do our first full scene of public humiliation and how that’s the first play in forever I’ve found myself actively hoping He will forget, fearing in anticipation, not knowing how to prepare for. Give me beatings. I can stretch for that. I can prepare myself. I can know what to expect. Even now, I know part of me writes this to deflect that shame. Look, that isn’t real. That isn’t me. I’m not really that… whatever I will be. Remember me, how you’ve seen me bruised and bloody? Don’t you know I’m actually strong?

But I am not. He is in every one of my recesses, finding my weakness and taking it for Himself. And I crave it, and hate myself for hating myself. And I beg.

And then He says what I need Him to, takes me to that cliff where all my demons lie below, and I finally, finally, look up and say with my small voice:

“Please, please, please may I come?”

And He laughs.

“No. But you stay there for me. Right on that edge.”