Secret Confessions of a Smart Girl

I worry, sometimes, about using BDSM as a crutch, and then I wonder why it feels like it’s a problem. I think it has to do with intentionality. I am firmly of the mind that BDSM, and all things sexual, should be chosen with intention. If you can’t say to yourself, “I want to do this,” then you shouldn’t be doing it. A lack of active choice seems to often lead to stupid choices, or at least choices which I regret. If I can’t put on the blindfold with open eyes, then I shouldn’t be wearing it.

The problem is that sometimes, I can’t quite manage intention. My life right now, the life outside the world of sex blogging where sensual explorations are a detour rather than the pathway, is suffused with a sort of looming horror. Serious illnesses are running rampant through what little remains of my family, and it feels like sometime very soon everything that I rely upon for stability is going to collapse. I’m not handling it well. Combine that with an unfortunate synchronicity in work deadlines that has me somewhat frantically scrabbling to stay on top of the shifting sands of obligation and I have pretty much exhausted my supply of cope.

So where does BDSM come into it? I need a vacation from myself. This morning I took a few hours to read a really engaging book (well, half of it, it’s a long book), and for a while I just wasn’t me, wasn’t worried about life or work, wasn’t thinking about anything even remotely related to my life and it was glorious. Books, music, dancing, all these things are great for that. So is masochism.

I keep thinking thoughts like “What I really want is for someone to beat me until I scream, until I bleed, until I have a reason for crying that isn’t this nebulous, preemptive sense of dread. I want to fight something real, something that can be fought, something unlike all these illness that I have no control over, and have something real to show for it - bruises and battle scars. I want to be mad at someone for hurting me in some concrete way, and hate them, and scream at them the way I can’t scream at all the things that are really hurting me right now. I want to physicalize the stuff that’s making me crazy in order to find some way of dealing with it.”

And that doesn’t feel healthy. I can’t quite articulate all the reasons. Intellectually it makes sense to seek some sort of catharsis in a manner that in some basic and underlying manner I would enjoy, but it makes my masochism feel like a perversion instead of something I embrace with intent and choice. More importantly, I don’t think it’s something I could justly, or safely, ask of anyone I know. It’s kind of a horrible thing to ask of a top, to take you to a place where you hate them, and even thinking about it sort of defies all of the wonderful positive things I find about the scene. It’s edge play in a way that all the stuff I love with knives and needles isn’t and never will be.

Submitting, because I choose to submit, gives me power. Although some people will never understand it, it gives me power to say to someone, “I want to give you what you want to have, and I want you to enjoy taking it.” Bottoming to someone is, for me, usually a joyous exchange of desires. They want to inflict sensation, I want to experience it, and everyone leaves happy. That’s powerful in its own way too - asking for and getting something that you want.

Huh. That’s it. Right there. That’s the explanation. This desire bothers me so much, because at it’s most basic it’s a desire to have someone take away my power, which is the antithesis of my usual view of seeing BDSM sexually empowering. Normally, if I want to give up control, I am making that choice from a position of strength. Right now, I don’t have any control to give up. Also, it just feels somewhat squicky to use BDSM as therapy or a crutch. When I see other people doing it, it often makes me worry about them.

There’s something else, too. All of this is an extremely selfish desire. Although, were it to take place, it would probably appear to a fly on the wall to be a very submissive scene, in reality it would be anything but. What I want isn’t about giving anyone else what they desire, it’s about taking advantage of someone to get something I (and I hesitate to use this word in this context) need. I hate being selfish. It makes me get angry with myself, but the thing is this…

There are maybe 2-3 people in the world who I would trust enough to ask something like this of. None of them are people I’ve dated. Hell, none of them are people I’ve slept with. But I know them each well enough to know that were I to ask, they’d understand what I was asking and be flattered at the trust. They might not say yes, which is part of why they’re on the list, but they’d understand that I wouldn’t ask something like this of someone who I didn’t trust and respect completely and be honored by it.

It’s kind of nice to know that I have people like that in my life, even if I don’t take advantage of it. Because, as I mentioned earlier, even with those people it wouldn’t feel fair, or safe, to them.

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And on a less serious note, I just realized this sort of thing may be the BDSM equivalent of “Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.”