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The Release it Brings (#34 Pain)
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The Release it Brings (#34 Pain)  Image by me. Pain. There is so much of it in this world that it is, at times for me, physically tangible. There are some kinds of pain that I can easily cope with. The pain in my hips, back, and knees, the pain (in my ass) of these lingering allergies, the pain of watching this world I love being willfully destroyed by greed. These are pains that I have no alternative but to accept. Each must run their course, each will come to whatever end they will. I do what is within my capacity to do about each, but beyond that I have no choice but to accept the pain. These are what, to my mind, constitutes acceptable pains. The pain I will address in this blog, however, is the pain that I sometimes deliberately seek. I've never really talked in any depth about my dabbling in BDSM, mainly because it isn't the totality of who I am and trying to explain what I get from a good session to people who don't truly understand emotional damage and the aftermath it causes feel that this is unhealthy, that I should seek counseling, even that I should be locked up for a time.....for my own protection. Perhaps they are right, but in over twenty years of seeking this release, it's never been anything other than the Balm of Gilead for my spirit. It is much akin to our modern cutters, a physical release of internal pain. Religious flagellants practice self mortification as a demonstration of piety. This form of physical release is as old as time itself, and I don't think that understanding this release means that I'm a danger to myself or anyone else. I'm not a very gifted wordsmith like so many others, but I'm going to attempt to explain my masochistic streak. Firstly, this is not something I routinely seek, it is not a part of my day to day life. Think of it as a short term type of therapy that has roots in my early childhood. My father was an alcoholic, and due to the abuses he suffered as a , he was a self centered sadist. The beatings I received from him as a would land someone in prison these days. The beatings I witnessed my mother receive left scars on my psyche that no pill or therapy will ever erase. But far worse than the physical abuse was the verbal abuse that he mainly directed at me. From the age of six or seven, I was told I was unwanted, unloved, that my mother tricked him into having me, that if my mother had died trying to have me, he would have buried me in a shallow grave in the cornfield to be free of the burden of me....it never ended. I was fat, lazy, a , good for nothing....the list of shit he said is still there in my mind. And for the first thirty years of my life it controlled me. In every relationship I sought men who were just like my father, controlling, abusive, alcoholics. I think it was my feeble minds attempt to try to rectify all the pain of my past, to tame the beast that haunted my thoughts and thereby prove my father wrong. My third husband introduced me to BDSM, our forays into that type of play were simple bondage and sensory deprivation, that grew into mutual paddling. Pretty mundane, but it left a seed in my mind that in later years grew into a full blown exploration of the lifestyle. After my last and final divorce, I was filled with so much pain and fear that I was on the verge of a total collapse. I fell into the darkest depression of my entire life. I spent an entire month in bed at a friends house, barely eating, only bathing when I was forced, and sleeping. I simply could not function as a human being. Everything I read, everything I saw, any music I heard only felt like a barb in my heart, reminding me that I really was the failure my father always told me I would be. Depression does that, it turns the world into a cold gray place void of any comfort or love. After that month of giving into it, I realized that I couldn't continue this path or I would die. Plus my friend was starting to suggest that perhaps I needed to commit myself to a program. I know me, a caged life would be of no help and I'm not the sort to take something to turn off my emotions so I turned all my energies into finding freedom. A job and a place to live were the only things I would allow myself to give any thought to, a busy mind doesn't have time to dwell on such things as heartbreak. It helped, and the struggle kept me grounded well enough to survive alone. After some months of my fledgling freedom, I decided that I really missed sex. Not so much the gratuitous kind of sex I had been used to, but the kind of sex that left a person sweaty, breathless, and satiated and came from desire verses a sense of duty and obligation to a spouse. So I put up profiles on every swingers site I could find, and it was there that I met a dominant. To say I owe this man a debt of gratitude is an understatement. I may well owe him my life. We didn't meet right away, we talked. Long hours spent chatting, talking on the phone...it took him three months just to get me to open up about the fact that I was an abused , and another three to discuss it in any descriptive way. He was patient, he never tired any of the 'online domination' bullshit with me. He listened, and then he told me his real feelings on the matters we discussed. He knew that before I could become involved in the lifestyle I needed to understand the drive behind it, that I needed to know what I was truly seeking. I am an emotional bottler. I never learned to express negative emotions because giving vent to such things in my childhood meant that I would get another beating. I learned not to cry, not to feel anger or fear or hate. Just lock it inside a room in my heart. But locking these feelings inside of myself just allowed them to fester like a wound, to grow into a blight in my soul. I was a very bitter woman filled with darkness, a person who could easily hate with a passion, whose only kindness and compassion were for her and her dogs. And of all the things I hated, the hate I had for myself was the darkest of all. If I had a penny for every time I sat and sincerely thought about just ending it all? I would have enough money to buy a presidency today. I made two real attempts during my second marriage, but after the second attempt and some therapy I learned to control my urges, I learned to redirect myself. But in turn, I kept bottling all those feelings. A modern day Elsa, conceal, don't feel. A little under a year after I began my conversation with my dominant friend, we met. We had dinner and we went for a long walk on a river path and he told me what he wanted to do. We discussed safe words, limits, personal desires. He explained his sadistic desires, explained to me what his interests were. (And in retrospect, his sadistic side really doesn't seem so sadistic now. It was though this dark angel came to give me a release from something I never even knew was there.) We made a play date for the following week. Trepidation and anticipation are strange bedfellows, but the entire week leading up to that day were filled with both. The day arrived, and I spent most of it talking myself into going through with the date. By the time he arrived to pick me up I was internally twisted into knots, nervous to the point of nearly jumping out of my skin at the least sound or movement. We got to his place, and I had already gone monosyllabic, yes, no, maybe, I don't know....fear exerted itself. So, when we went inside he made me tea and we sat in the living room and talked more. He told me a little fear was delightful but even he found no pleasure in terror and that if anything worthwhile was to come for our playing I needed to trust that he would never inflict something I was unwilling to experience on me. After a while, I calmed down and we proceeded to his playroom. He handed me a hair tie and asked me to put my hair up into a ponytail and take off all my clothes. The ponytail was simple...being completely naked in front of him...not so much. Weight gain and loss, bearing, age....coupled with various times of being told how hideous I looked by others had given me hang ups about my body. I balked. He tore my clothes off, grabbed my ponytail and bent me over his lap and barehanded spanked my ass and told me that this was no longer a matter of my choice, this was his time and my nonsense was not going to be tolerated. Fear returned, but with it came anger. How dare he! Oh yeah, I asked for it. I bottled my anger. He saw that. A St. Andrew's Cross sat against the wall and he led me to it, placing me facing the wall, I was cuffed to it, his hands strong but oddly loving as he tightened the cuffs around my ankles and wrists. My heart was hammering in my chest when he slipped the ball gag in my mouth. He ran his hands across my back and across my stinging ass, laughing when my legs and arms trembled. He started spanking me again, I bowed my head silently vowing that no matter what, I would bear this in silence. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of hearing me tap out, so to speak. His hand grew tired, the ball gag had teeth marks, but beyond trembling and a soft moan or twelve, my stoicism was still there. We moved up to a paddle. The first bite of that thing brought a fury from me that I didn't even realize was there. I literally growled at him. He stopped to have a sincere laugh at my expense, which pissed me off even more. I stuffed that anger in with all the rest, bowed my head and waited for him to resume. And like a master plying his craft, he turned my ass into a throbbing mess. I could feel the heat rising up my back, I was cringing at every sound I heard, but I never gave voice to my pain. He stopped. He walked up beside me, grabbed my hair and pulled my head back and called me a stubborn bitch. I just glared at him, much the same way I would glare at my father after he had beaten me. He walked out of the room, and when he returned, I heard him swinging something, I turned and saw that he had a bamboo cane. Fear. Unrelenting fear. I strained against the cuffs, twisted as much as I could....he stroked my cheek with the end of it. "Sandusky?" (The safe word he had given me.) And while my brain was saying "Sandusky! Sandusky!" I refused. Somewhere in my haze of pain, I can only assume that I had let go of reality, I was an eight year old girl again, whose father was standing over her with a willow switch screaming, "Cry, damn it, show me you are sorry." And I was that defiant little girl who refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing my tears. The first blow of that cane felt like being struck by lightning. Pain, deep red and rolling, washed over me and I nearly fainted. My ears rung, my body flushed hot then cold. The second caused me to sag in the cuffs. The third brought the tears. "Sandusky." He didn't say a word, he laid down the cane and released the cuffs. I was sobbing. Tears fell in buckets as he wrapped me in a blanket and led me to a small cot in the corner of the room. I curled into a fetal position and he sat on the end of the cot with my head in his lap, stroking my hair. He spoke soft words that I've tried to recall many times over the years, with no luck. I cried not because of the pain, I cried because I was finally able to release some of what I had been keeping bottled inside of me, I cried for the childhood I was denied, I cried for all the pain I had forced myself to endure. I cried like a who can't stop. And he simply sat there, stroking my hair and speaking in that soft tone. I cried myself to sleep, like I had done as a . I slept a dreamless sleep for what felt like a century, but was truthfully only a couple of hours. My first reality upon waking was pain. I had rolled over onto my back while I was asleep, and the pain of that rough canvas against my tender bruised ass was an alarm clock like no other. I yelped and I heard him rise from the chair he was sitting in across the room. He came to stand beside the cot and he held his hand down to me and helped me to sit up. He handed me a bottle of water and asked me if I was hungry. I shook my head no, refusing to look at him. He took my chin in his hand and turned my face towards him. He stared into my eyes questioningly, then he said something that has stayed with me for all the years that have followed. "Did you find the answer you were looking for?" At the time, and for several days afterwards I had no clue what he was even talking about. I shrugged and said, " I guess " I didn't realize there was a question. He smiled and asked me to follow him to the bathroom, he showed me where all the bathing goods were and he gave me a salve to rub on my sore ass and he presented me with a new outfit to replace the one he destroyed. I dressed and walked into the kitchen where he told me he would be waiting. He had already brewed me another cup of tea and he motioned for me to sit down, so gingerly I sat down. He smiled at me and asked me if I was alright, and I said other than my ass being sore I felt right as the rain. He asked me if I had any questions or any observations I'd care to discuss and I answered honestly that I was still trying to understand what had just happened to me. He nodded and said that was actually a good and healthy thing given my particular set of circumstances. And then he told me it was getting late and that we needed to get me back home. So I gathered my things and we headed to his garage to get in his car. He held the door open for me and helped me in. Most of the car ride home we spoke only of mundane trivial things, movies, music, books. When he pulled into my driveway, he put the car in park and I reached for the door, and he took me by the arm and told me to wait. " I realize that there is a lot for you to process, and in the coming days you are going to question everything that happened. But I want to tell you something, you are not who you see yourself as. This is not a deviant aberration that you need to fear or feel shamed by. You were looking for a release from pain and I gave it to you." At the time all I could do was manage a little smile and nod. If it was a release from pain, why was my ass on fire? He walked me to the door and gave me a deep kiss. He thanked me for a beautiful afternoon. He told me that he was going to wait until I contacted him, but under no circumstances was I to take that to mean he didn't want to hear from me again. He said he looked forward to hearing from me when I was ready to talk again. I thanked him, smiled, and stepped into my house. That night I was still drained, so I went to bed. I slept the sleep of the dead. Deep, dreamless, sound sleep. For the next couple of days, I kept going back to the question, did I find my answers. Answers to what? Answers to just how high my pain tolerance levels were? How crazy am I? Every time I sat down I was reminded of that afternoon. My ass was an angry shade of dark purple and red for the first three days and every time I caught sight of it that question would ring in my ears like an endless litany. I woke up the fourth and I realized that the pain was fading from my ass. I thought back over everything, more than the actions, I thought of my reactions. I thought about my motivations for pursuing such a thing. And I realized what the question was that I needed to answer, the one he helped me answer. There is no shame in acknowledging pain. There is no shame in feeling negative emotions. That it is alright to cry and feel the entire spectrum of my emotions. And that I was just a who didn't deserve the cards fate had dealt, and that I shouldn't be ashamed of what had happened to me when I was young. It was not my fault. I sent him a message. In the message I thanked him. From the bottom of my heart I thanked him for what he had given me. For some of us, physical pain opens a doorway for the emotional pain we cannot express to leave our hearts. I saw him several more times, we played many different ways, he gave me wings to soar with. He passed away several years ago, a massive heart attack. And even though we had both moved on to different people and places, we stayed in touch. I cried when I found out he was gone. He was a very true and honest friend to me. I seldom feel an urge to play with my masochist these days. I'm quite adept now at ridding myself of emotional poisons, I don't bottle anything negative. But once in a while, there is enough ennui to make that defiant girl need a strong hand to guide her to where she needs to go. "Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson   |
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Amazing story and so wonderfully presented! Obviously, relinquishing control and experiencing beautiful, pleasurable pain could heal deep wounds. Excellent post! Visit my blog It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World of NaughtyInSO, leave a comment, become a watcher. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ LIVE AND LET LIVE Be happy! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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9/3/2017 1:27 pm |
Wow! Damn!
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i am LS and this was beautifully written to show the catharsis of certain sessions. BRAVA You cannot conceive the many without the one.
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A great post.  BDSM is defintely great therapy!  
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Fascinating read. I've long wondered if we ALL don't come from what would now be called "dysfunctional families", though clearly the level of dysfunction I experienced in no way compares to yours. Very Twisted, on HNW A HOT Vacation Idea The One Where I Don39t [post 3312759] My Private Blog – Tell Me All You Secrets
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Fellow traveller...The day we can truly absolve ourselves from blame...Is a day of celebration...As kids we can't help but blame ourselves...We really don't know any better...It just has to be our own fault...Your story is very well written...You have my sympathies for your loss...Folks like that are few and far between...    
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To the contrary of what you said at the beginning, I think this was very well written. It definitely can bring about a catharsis; I'm glad you found the right person to achieve that with.   
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Dee I'll be back to read this in it's entirety- just wanted to help it link- seems the "blue" light is on the fritz (Virtual Symposium Group) use Virtual Symposium Group
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That was a fascinating read. I myself can remember getting hit by my father on a few occasions but never suffered any verbal abuse. Sadly, he died at 48 years old (of a heart attack), I was 14 at the time and mum was left to bring up five kids on her own.
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