Pain

I once had a toothache so bad, I ended up at the ER. I remember that when the doctor finally came to see me, I was writhing on the floor, howling, and hitting my head on every hard surface I could find. It felt like hours after I was put on the morphine drip that the pain finally started to dissipate, and hours more until it was gone. Most likely these hours lasted only a few moments of "real" time, but for me, that's how I'll always remember them. I understand now how people become addicted to painkillers -- once the blinding pain finally passed, I was willing to do anything to ensure I never felt it again.

In my sex life, I play with pain because it excites me. Those temporary and completely controlled moments of pain that I subject myself to -- always ready and always with someone I trust -- give me the illusion that I can deal with the greater, chaotic pain of everyday life. After all, if I learn to control my reaction to the pain of a whipping, if I learn to submit to it, let go, and just ride it out, I can use this same set of skills to deal with any other pain I encounter -- physical or emotional. Right?

I've been staring at the same spot in the corner of my bedroom for hours. There, on my eye-level, the paint, light blue with white sponged-on patterns is beginning to chip. The crack of two parallel lines runs floor to ceiling, barely visible in some places -- darker and more pronounced in others. I can describe that crack in minute details. I can explain how it got there, and why it's the only corner where the paint is slowly coming off. I can do that, endlessly, finding a myriad of words in my vocabulary, but I can't deal with the pain that is, very physically, bursting out of my heart. The pain I can't go to the ER with, that I can't use morphine to alleviate. I have used all my BDSM experience, all the skills I have learned along the way -- I have altered my breathing rate, I have assumed more comfortable positions, I have tried to clear my mind with meditation, and nothing seems to help. I have taken pills, lots of them -- just enough to dull the senses, to knock me out for brief moments of rest -- but not enough, not enough to get rid of this terrible, unending pain.....

I can locate it -- ironically, it's in my chest, exactly where I imagine my heart to be. It's extremely physical, piercing, throbbing, spreading to my lungs, making it impossible to breathe, and then, what's even worse, collecting itself in a pinpoint, sharp, cruel, torturous, tearing into my flesh, past the rib cage, right into that muscle that won't stop beating no matter how much I'm trying to will it. And I don't know what to do with it. And I don't know how to stop it. And I don't know how to ride it out.

You call me a masochist for letting this pain overwhelm me. You tell me to go read a book. Distract myself and move on. But don't you see? I have learned to deal with pain by submitting to it, and when I submit to this one, it fills me up and takes over, until there is no me left. And this time, there's no one controlling it -- not you, whom I trust implicitly and completely, not me, who usually has so much trouble giving up control. And so, it just runs through me, so great and strong, so mind-numbingly simple, submerging me with each new wave, without time to process or adjust.

I told you I feel broken, but that's not true. I feel drowned, no, drowning, drowning, gasping for air and getting lungs full of water instead. I don't have the strength to swim back to the surface. And you made me promise not to sink to the ocean floor.