Yesterday I went to see my therapist and she opened with, “I want to give you the quick and dirty answer to whether I will see your mom first: no. Now let me explain…” We talked about how she wouldn’t exactly be fair with my mom so there isn’t much point in having the session happen. That made me happy. This conversation actually took a little bit. 🙂 Then I said: “I’ve had an eventful two weeks! I found out that my step-mother died and that no one thought I would care so they didn’t tell me. I called my mom for the first time in six months and drama ensued. I had an enormously stressful trip to Chicago which included some huge triggering things and a blow up at the end and such fucked up travel that we left a day late and almost returned a day late. My car blew up. My apartment flooded.” Her response? “Wow. You’ve been busy.” Smartass.

We spent a while talking about the situation with japlady‘s dad. Whether she wants to admit it or not he has a condecending tone of voice and that is hard for me to swallow ever let alone when I haven’t slept well in days, haven’t eaten a meal that agrees with me in days, have been in majorly stressful situations over and over for days, and just generally am away from home so I feel kind of off-balance. In talking about my reaction to him we couldn’t come up with anyone he reminds me of exactly. Yes, the situation japlady lives with is similar to what my father would have been willing to do me but it never actually happened so I don’t know if that is much of it. I know that I hate how he treats her and I hold a lot of anger towards him for that reason. (Yes, japlady doesn’t believe the anger is warranted–but when has that stopped me?) It is huge and complicated and messy. We also got around to the part that the only thing I really dislike about japlady is the name dropping and her father does it more/worse than she does. So I probably resented not only that he was doing it but that he fostered this habit in someone I otherwise think is so totally terrific. I don’t have full resolution on this issue yet in my head so I am going to keep thinking on it. I feel like the conclusions I have reached so far are very superficial and I am not confident that I have hit the meat of the matter.

Then we move on to last night. I played with a good friend on Wednesday knowing that I was going to be playing with her again last night. She has recently gone through a really bad breakup and I have been aware that she is really hurting emotionally. I also know that she is a very heavy masochist. I don’t know how or why I decided to be arrogant enough to try and help her process through some of her stuff, but I did. On Wednesday I tried to take her down hard and fast and get her to cry in a gut wrenching sort of way and it worked. I tested the waters to see how much anger would come up when I started hurting her like that. Oh, I did it by punching her. Punching is a very primal and overwhelming sort of way to be hurt, and I hit rather hard. When she started getting to a really angry place on Wednesday I kept up my litany of telling her that she is a good girl, but other than that I didn’t really get into a dialogue about what was coming up for her. Last night I did. Before we started playing I told her that I was going to be asking her why I was beating her and the answer I wanted her to give is: “Because I’m a good girl.” I gave her a little bit of a warm up with spanking and light punching before switching to canes. Not very far into the scene I asked her why I was doing it and she couldn’t tell me that she was a good girl. She started getting into negative self-talk repeating things that were said to her during her horrible break up. Things about her being bad. I stopped hitting her. I turned her around and held her face up close to mine and told her that I would not hit her again if she believed that I was doing it because she was bad. I told her I would never ever reinforce that idea in her brain. It took a little more talking but eventually she started to be able to say that she was good and I resumed the scene. We went back and forth talking as I beat the living crap out of her about how the negative things he told her were wrong. That she is good and deserving. She was very upset and screamed out a lot of her rage and pain generating from how she was treated. After a while I started ramping up harder and harder. I am not a weak girl and I was hitting her just about as hard as I am capable. Towards the end she was Not Having Fun anymore and that was my goal. I told her that I wanted her to tell me to stop. That I want her to have the power to say that when she isn’t enjoying it anymore that it needs to end. At first she resisted and said she couldn’t but after a few more minutes she finally could ask me to stop.

I spent almost as much time crying during this scene as she did. It was tremendously difficult to do, but I feel very good about having done it. After I stopped beating her I pulled her to the ground and started telling her again how much I love her. I asked some of her women friends to join me in telling her so and how strong she is.

I think that a good way to understand just how far I pushed her was encapsulated when Spot said later, “Everything I have read has said you don’t do that.” Yeah. SM play is a very scary beast. When you are experiencing as much physical pain as she was in you are opening up your mind and spirit to be receptive to things that normally just aren’t available to you. It is very rare that I play that heavily and I would only attempt a scene where I knew I was working towards such catharsis with someone I have known as long and as well as I have known this person. If I had not spent so many years seeing how her relationship worked and knowing the kind of self-talk she does I wouldn’t have done this. But I do feel ok with the fact that I did this with her. I actually feel really good about it.

Honey–I love you. Thank you for opening yourself to me this way. I hope I get to continue to know you for a very long time.

And thank you to the girl who stretched herself sooooo much by being there and participating to the level you did. I know how hard it was for you and I have only love and admiration for your courage and strength and giving heart. Thank you.