Healing

There are things that we usually don't talk about.

SM play, of the sort that we engage in, can result in bruising and welts and blistering. I almost always experience some skin breakage and bleeding. I am generally unable to tell if that has occured or not. The breakage doesn't hurt any worse than the rest of it most of the time.

But damange does take time to heal. I'm pretty quick to heal for the most part. It's usually a matter of days before I'm all healed up and left without any visible signs of the damage done.

I'm pretty much there today. This spanking over the ottoman was on September 23. Today, on the 28th, I am just fine except that there are places that itch. That itch is such an interesting phenomenon. It is the sure sign that healing is well along. It is the siren call that brings me back to the awareness of how long it has been. It is a signal that my body has once again done what it needs to do to effect the repairs so that we can go at it again.

I've read, over the years, all kinds of theories about how to prevent or reduce the level of bruising and injury resulting from heavy impact play. People who do this sort of thing swear by things like arnica and aloe and cocoa butter and a host of other pedestrian or exotic elixers. Mostly, I've learned that there is really very little that I need to do to cause healing to occur. It does. The wonder of the body's remarkable resilience is that, left to its own devices, my relatively healthy body does the needed work, and all returns to a state of well-being in short order.

It is a cycle that has become familiar and reassuring over the years. From wellness to pain to tenderness and injury to healing and readiness again. And all in its own time, even as I cruise along tending to a whole host of other stuff.

Just so.

swan