Back in the Day...

A comment on the Beast  post, has been lodged in my mind all week:

I was trying to remember if I read you back in your masochistic days... But I am wondering if you go there ...now..... maybe you will be able to step off the ledge into the abyss and know you are safe and find your peace???

Ouch!  There it is -- the definitive judgement of a long-time reader that, while I might have been a masochist back in the day, clearly I am not a masochist any longer.  Somewhere in the last few years, I've let my membership in that elite club lapse. 

Beyond the fact that I feel pretty tender about that evaluation; beyond my almost overwhelming urge to defend myself against that verdict; believing that my commenting friend was intending to be understanding, sympathetinc, supportive, and helpful -- I wonder what, if anything, there might be for me to say about the state of my (once and former) masochism?

There is wide variability in the definitions that I found on line for the word "masochistic."  This seemed to be the most inclusive/broadest of the ones that I found --

1.Psychiatry. the condition in which sexual gratification depends on suffering, physical pain, and humiliation.



2.gratification gained from pain, deprivation, degradation, etc., inflicted or imposed on oneself, either as a result of one's own actions or the actions of others, esp. the tendency to seek this form of gratification.


3.the act of turning one's destructive tendencies inward or upon oneself.


4.the tendency to find pleasure in self-denial, submissiveness, etc.

I have never been the sort of masochist described by definition #1.  I know those kind of masochists.  I've always envied them.  Master often refers back to a long-ago play partner that would come at the sound of Him pulling the zipper on His toybag...  That ability to transmute pain directly and reliably into erotic pleasure just seems almost magical to me.  But then, I think that the fact that salmon return each year to spawn in the same waters where they were born is pretty amazing too.  I can't tell left from right, and some fish with a brain the size of a walnut can out navigate me by pure, simple, untutored instinct.

Neither am I aligned at all with the sort of masochism in definition #3.  I am not prone to self-harm.  I can fall prey to melodrama and contemplate the possibilities of self-destructive behaviors -- wondering whether there might be some relief to emotional pain in cutting.  My curiosity, however, is purely intellectual.  Even in the depths of my Tallulah Bankhead inspired dramatic musings, I never find any actual impetus to really DO anything.

I am really much more some combination of masochist type #2 and masochist type #4.  I do tend to find pleasure and some almost mystical satisfaction and fulfillment in self-denial and submissiveness.  Probably, it is part of what Master is inclined to label as "some kind of perverse Catholic thing..."  I can, with relative ease, find my way into a sort of moving meditation that allows me to iron shirts and pack lunches and scrub floors with a deep and peaceful sense of calm.  I do derive some sort of gratification from our SM play and the pain that He inflicts on me.  In spite of the difficult passage through the actual event, I can come out the other side feeling sure and powerful and expanded in terms of my awareness.  I revel in being controlled -- in being left without any choice about what will and will not occur. 

None of that is really any different for me today than it was 8 or 9 years ago.  Surely, I have a significantly reduced pain tolerance these days.  I am much more likely to dissolve in tears and panic than I ever was in the very early days of our relating.  I know, intellectually, that we are not playing at the same levels that we once did -- and I am still convinced that I hurt more; hurt worse; hurt more inconsolably now than I ever did "back in the day."  The visceral experience belies what I think I know. 

I could speculate about what has precipitated the change.  I could theorize about why I struggle so much more at the age of 55 than I did at the age of 45.  I could blame my present reality on a whole host of circumstances and realities.  The fact is that none of it matters.  There is no way to go back and reclaim those former years; no way to undo the choices and mistakes and missteps; no way to clear away the wispy veils of the years and see that masochist clearly enough to use what she knew to make today any easier.

I think that, as He and I go forward, I may find my way to some sort of peace.  I believe that, as and if He wants me to step off and fly, it will happen.  I believe that if I  can find some sort of solid belief in my own self, in the choices I've made, I'll also recover my sense of power and joy in my own masochism.  I believe that if I can reconnect with Him, and through Him reconnect with the part of me that was a "sexy" and "sexual" woman, I'll be able to use that energy to power me into and through the kind of play we used to enjoy.

A masochist is a complicated critter.  There is no one way to be a masochist; no one way to experience the emotions and intricate pleasures of that path.  I am not, as my commenter friend pointed out, the same as I was back in the day, but I am far from done.  I am still learning and still growing, and still determined to meet His needs, fulfill His demands, thrill Him and thrill myself in the doing.

swan