15 - Try To Understand

This story contains characters who are over the age of 18

Chapter 15 Try To Understand

"What is it like, that instant when you let it go? When you lash out, with everything in you, knowing you're going to be beaten to the ground? Is it a relief, to surrender to that? Well, imagine that relief compounding, ten times, a hundred times, with every blow, through pain, through agony, to become a pleasure so great and awful it fixes you like a spear.... Pain obliterates everything else. In pain, there is only the eternal present."

— Kushiel's Dart, by Jacqueline Carey

That is what it's like to surrender to excruciating pain and turn it into something far beyond pleasure, to crave the kiss of the lash as much or more than the kiss of the lips, to yield your entire body to someone else's will while they bind you and cover your eyes, never knowing whether their next action will result in pain or pleasure, or both. Wondering when and where the next blow will fall, anticipating it and still being surprised when it pushes you over the edge into climax.

Again, it's mentally freeing. I don't have to think about anything else. What's more, I can't think about anything else, and I cherish those incredibly rare moments. Pain obliterates everything, and there is only eternal present, lost in the moment. I doubt the line between the two is as thin for everyone else, but for me, pain quickly reverberates along my nerve-endings and turns into pleasure. I can escape everything else going on in my head, which is generally a considerable amount.

If you don't understand it, you probably never will. If you desire insight, read that book. It seems as though Ms. Carey channeled my most internal, hidden thoughts into her heroine. I only wish I was as courageous as her. As it is, I've taken many of her characteristics into myself, surprisingly finding some personal answers in a fictional world.

It might seem strange, a woman who enjoys being a valued partner in a relationship, who generally likes being in leadership positions, always striving to improve her life and grow personally and professionally, wanting to be in a relationship in which she hands over control of her base desires, but this was exactly what I wanted. Placing myself in a position below that of a significant other was natural to me, and satisfying in a way I didn't always understand. It was mentally freeing to submit my will to another person's, so long as it wasn't a relationship that required I lose my sense of self to do so. As said by my favorite author, "That which yields is not always weak." It was a choice, and it had a purpose. I could be submissive in this one aspect of my life without losing control of everything else.

Knowing where those lines were actually gave me the ability to take more control of the places where I couldn't see before. I could now see that, in my shy exterior, I was basically being submissive to everyone around me, everyone I met. I didn't like that idea; I would prefer to keep that part private like everything else about me. Now that I understood that part of me, I could give it as a gift, bestowing it only to those people worthy of that deferential part of me. All of a sudden, I was a new person. I had learned how to take that malleable part of me and turn it toward everyone I came in contact with, not just certain things to certain friends anymore, but one front to everyone. It freed me to be someone I'd always wanted to be, and allowed me to build another wall between me and everyone else. Everyone else got the new exterior, someone who was fearless and outwardly confident, almost friendly even, and the people I knew took notice. Through submission, I had found a way to reconcile the confusing feelings I had experienced and improve myself. I thought it was this dark and terrible thing inside me, but I came to realize it can be a beautiful and wondrous thing too.

And it was fun. Light BDSM is one of the first suggestions to spicing up a relationship, even a vanilla one. People find it interesting. Some people enjoy the role-playing aspect; a chance to be someone else for a short time. Other people find they do enjoy the pain or discipline, realizing something they were missing in their lives or relationships.

Of course, there is an even darker side of all this, a place in the mind where no light may penetrate. When you allow yourself to descend into this place of self-flagellation, when you use physical pain to blot out emotional pain, you risk losing the part of yourself that walks in the sunlight. You begin to feel as though you deserve only pain, and you prefer the physical pain to feeling anything emotionally.

I have been guilty of this on occasion. At times, I have believed that the pain was only punishment, that there was nothing beautiful in it, and that I deserved it anyway. It's a dangerous place to be, and I am much happier knowing that it's not true.