I am a flavourful woman. What can I say. I have more flavours than Baskin Robbins but I’m going to limit myself to discussing three of them today. (Many people have said that dating me is getting all the upsides of dating someone with multiple personalities. I’ve always cocked my head to the side when I hear that. Hrm.)

I’m feeling really excited about the beatings I’ve received recently. Two in the last three months! Look at me hitting warp speed over here. Once upon a time I was beaten multiple days a week but life evolves. Seasons change.

I like being a happy masochist. I will cheerfully direct you from the bottom how to hit me and where for me to get the most sexual enjoyment out of the experience. In my broad and storied existence this goes best with a service top, not a sadist. Even though this is the part of me most commonly paired linguistically as masochist/sadist it’s not actually a match. Being a happy masochist means that I enjoy the pain and I don’t suffer. Sadists, by and large, are not that interested in such a dynamic. Service tops love me though. They get to beat on me and grin while I get off. It’s very entertaining, I’m told. This is feeling like the bottomy part of myself that I have the most access to right now. It feels like a joyful reunion in myself.

Submission is different. Submission is giving up my will. I am a lot more passive. I don’t direct what is happening; I endure. I have mixed feelings about this right now at this point in my life. I recognise that a lot of it is literally just me using dissociation to barely be mentally or emotionally present in the room. I am a meat sack that will do whatever you want. I can take a really brutal beating this way. I will cry at some point but there won’t be orgasms. I’m not there to enjoy anything and I know it. I am there to be pleasing and I will accept whatever is poured into me. It’s not possible to kick this off then revert to happy masochist. I have to make a decision. Submission involves a lot of depersonalising. I am just a thing to work/be used.

Being degraded is very strongly related to the intense dark age play I do but it’s not always the same thing. It involves a lot of spelunking down into the layers of my psyche where I feel the most pain. Physical pain is such a constant part of my life that managing it isn’t that complicated in some ways. I am up for it or I am not depending on how my body is manifesting. Being degraded is different. It doesn’t line up with physical pain limitations. Being degraded is complicated. It’s psychological in a way the other two kinds of being on the right side of the slash aren’t for me. I need to be triggered into these negative emotional states to experience catharsis. I have to do it in a way that is sharp and pointed and impactful but has no lingering trails into my life. I have to find a way to not be overwhelmed enough to kick into frantic efforts to reduce psychological pain when I get back to my regular day job. That’s dangerous for me. Playing with the lower levels of this is my bread and butter of play. This is available to me when physical masochism isn’t safe. Dehumanising me, experiencing me as a thing to be hurt and used is very different from submitting. Submission doesn’t make me feel subhuman. Submission brings my soul with it to the dissociated place because only my meat sack is being set out for abuse. With degradation my soul is being hammered. What am I really worth? How could anyone love or respect something as disgusting as me?

This is a lot of why I insist on my long term relationships being with folks who very seriously treat me like a princess. They take care of me and adore me and make sure my life is as soft and fun as they can. They know I have suffered a lot in this life and they try to make sure the time I spend with them is better than the times when I have been alone or with people who didn’t love me at all.

I have learned a lot from Black women about what it means to crave a soft life. I eschewed such things for myself for years because I didn’t want to be like the awful rich white bitches I knew. Black women talked to me about how when you are this deeply traumatised it isn’t the same kind of entitlement. It’s allowing yourself to feel deserving of rest. I am not trying to get my softness through cruelty to other people or taking far more than my share and rubbing peoples noses in it. I have watched white women defend their soft lives with cruelty, entitlement, and avaricious selfishness. I want no part of being like them.

I want enough softness that when my battered and bruised body finally stops working I get to rest somewhere that has my pillow fort set up so I can support my fucked up joints as they repair. No, I don’t care about getting my hair or nails done. I don’t need fancy bags. I do have some nice dresses, but they are not from expensive shops. I’m a cheap bastard.

I have so much lingering resentment and rage for the wealthy. It makes my life surreal. I’m not asking for softness because I am better than other people. I’m asking for softness because my body is a few sharp taps with a mallet away from shattering. I want to feel like my partners believe I am a precious resource they desperately want to keep.

I have different levels of access to these three different flavours at this stage of my life. I’m really loving being a happy masochist. It’s so much fun. It feels like freedom and joy and being replete. I feel validated.

Submission is really hard. I think I would be able to access this in a limited way with one person at a time. I think I am past the part in my life where I can offer blanket submission to a group even for so long as a weekend. I think I can’t do that now. I am too hard to play with. I have too many small injuries and areas of deep trauma. I can’t put me to the side now and only give people what they want in a broad way. I would be able to pull off a one to one scene, maybe, but I haven’t tested it and I am afraid to. I sure as fuck will not be a pass around toy like this anymore. It’s not safe and I’m done carrying the damage for other peoples fun. My body is too fragile.

Degradation was the form of play Noah liked the most. He didn’t have to worry about hurting my meat sack and he could cause emotional torment with very little effort. The epitome of a lazy top. I say that without rancor. He inflicted a lot of emotional pain on me during sex. I get off on it like a race horse so I’m not actually complaining. I also don’t know how deep I want to go into this well with other people. It was safe with Noah because he knew my trauma mapping better than I did. His knowledge didn’t depend on state dependent memory. No one else is ever going to know me the way he did. It’s going to be a more dangerous game now. I suspect that this is the flame I will not be able to keep my moth self away from.

Submission is not all that appealing to me at this stage. I am in service 24/7 and it’s exhausting. I don’t want to give my fragile meat sack to someone who knows very little about it and let them do whatever they want to me. I am too fragile. The potential risks are so high for me and the people who will pay the price are the people I cannot take care of.

Being a happy masochist makes my day job easier for quite a while. It’s a lot of joy and energy for me. It’s like tapping a main water pipe when I need a glass of water. It’s so much energy.

Being degraded allows me to wade through the swamp of my brain and get the surges of fear/anxiety/lack of worth in a contained way that doesn’t blow up my life. My brain formed in a terrible soup of abuse and lack of worth. I don’t live there full time anymore but my brain will always find those ruts comfortable and home-like. It lets me siphon off some of the frantic energy that could otherwise fuck up my life. I think of this kind of play as harm reduction. I pretend I am being hurt by a very bad person so that I can avoid ever actually going to find a very bad person.

This is where Good Trouble last year was a risk. He wanted to step into degrading me without having a container. He thought me being good after the sex was me being silent and watching bad tv with him while he shushed me and told me not to talk. He didn’t know me. He asked for Daddy/daughter incest the first time we played and he didn’t ask me what such a thing might mean for me. He put me in a position that makes me feel nauseous from the start. He wanted the daughter to be intensely trying to “steal” daddy from mommy. Oh, and he wanted to meet my kids after 2 weeks of fucking.

I ran like my tampon string was on fire. That was not a good risk. That was a bad risk.

I am trying to be cautious. Mostly this means not doing all that much. It feels like a season for not pushing limits. It seems like a time to assume fragility and need for support at a level rarely inhabited.

I have to survive so I can’t be stupid. No risky choices.

Who in the fuck even am I?