Resilience

I have, for probably at least a couple of years, had fragile skin that seemed to break and bleed under the least bit of trauma. There just was seemingly no elasticity left. No flex. No give.

This is a difficult circumstance if a significant part of the way that your sexual/erotic orientation is expressed is through SM impact play. We engage in a whole range of activities that put the skin on my lovely backside under stress. It needs to bend and stretch and then bounce right back.

I've invested a fortune in lotions and potions. We've applied bandaids by the carton. I've ingested vitamins and minerals and herbs of all sorts and descriptions. We've spanked through clothing. We've avoided what we considered the most delicate and vulnerable spots. Until about a month ago, no matter what I did, or what He did, every session seemed to end up with blood splattered and smeared everywhere. The bleeding hasn't stopped our play, but it has been a matter of concern. It has seemed to indicate a level of damage that simply would not heal or recover -- not with treatment, not with supplementation, not with rest.

Then, there was the awful and, for us, powerful break and reset that took place a few weeks ago. That event, difficult and painful as it was, seemed to be a point of healing for He and I at many different levels. One interesting thing, coming out of that has been, that I no longer break and bleed during sessions. Not at all. Fascinating.

If you go look up the dictionary definition of "resilience," you will find that it has two meanings that end up looking something like this:

• The ability to recover quickly from illness, change, or misfortune; buoyancy.
  
• The property of a material that enables it to resume its original shape or position after being bent, stretched, or compressed; elasticity.

I find that those two definitions, together are interesting in my case.

I think that the lack of elasticitiy in my skin these last couple of years was a physical manifestation of my declining emotional resiliency. I know that sounds like voodoo or new age mystical nonsense, but there it is. As we went from crisis to crisis, the traumas piled up and the space needed to fully recover just never was there: surgery --mine and His, extreme and protracted female problems, job loss, and job politics, and the advent of the poly energy vampire. Somewhere along the line, I got angry and lost my sense of joy and buoyancy. Where there had been a single damaged place, the artifact of the early days paddling regimen, suddenly there was not a single place that you could hit me that didn't break, split, ooze and bleed at the slightest provocation.

And then, the anger was finally fully expressed. Finally fully embraced. Finally exhausted. Finally absolved. Finally released. And now -- the brokeness is gone.

We are whole beings, bodies, minds, hearts, spirits. What is felt in one part will be seen and shown in the others. We cannot separate the parts and pieces. Cannot compartmentalize who we are and isolate the bits. Wellness and health will express itself throughout the whole person. So, too, distress, anger, fear -- all of these will show up in large and small ways throughout the entire person.

swan