23/09/2022
This is going to be another one of those disturbing stories.
I’m that hypothetical woman. The one that, when someone asks, “Do people get into B**M because of trauma?” and everyone shakes their heads, I duck mine and feel guilty.
I have always been an outlier, my natural proclivities inseparable from the damage of my upbringing. But when I was 21, after being r*ped by a person I thought I could trust, my fe**shes took a darker turn. Before I’d been submissive and willing to endure anything; now I was full of rage, drawn to pain and fear, going to extremes just to feel something. It was around then I was diagnosed with PTSD, and then C-PTSD.
The way I took to edge play was instinctive - my mind recreated the violation, terror and injury of events from my past through S*M and roleplaying, trying to tear open the wounds, to let out the poison where it wasn’t healing right. I channeled a fascination with dangerous men into a fe**sh for the Joker; I asked my partners to threaten me with cap guns, and got into knife play. I compartmentalized my need for sensation and understanding myself into these scenes. Any leftover anger went into exercise, the shooting range, and the rants that I delivered to my therapist.
Eventually, I was not just circling around but wanted to simulate a scene with non-consent. I warned the man who agreed to help that I would probably cry, and scream, and that he would have to check in with me often to make sure I was okay. One rule we agreed to was that I was allowed to hurt him as much as I could.
I beat the hell out of him while he patiently endured it, until finally, I wore myself out. I cried for awhile. Then, because I knew I could stop him if I wanted to, I didn’t. It felt like something was being erased. Overwritten.
I’ve been told that this is absolutely the wrong way to go about these things. Hell, maybe it would have made things worse if I were a different person, or he were, or if I weren’t also trying every other thing I knew of to get better. But it was my idea to do it, it felt important at the time, and I feel like it helped. My brain has worked through whatever-it-is - I still enjoy some unusual things, but my craving for adrenaline, sensation and fear no longer drives me.
If this is how a r*pe survivor is coping, let them fu***ng cope. It’s hard enough to get by without someone else telling you how to heal.
