It Hurts

This post will not have kink. You want kink? Go check out this blog.
This post will also ramble, and meander, and might hurt your head. It's hurting mine.

When I first started writing the latest collection of Bentmoore stories, Masters of the Hotel Bentmoore, I started with the story of Khloe. This is the "teaser," I guess you could call it, for Khloe on my Bentmoore stories page:

"Betrayed, dumped by her boyfriend, and feeling lost and alone, Khloe escapes to the Hotel Bentmoore to seek out the help of her long-time host, Mr. Shern. But Mr. Shern knows Khloe needs more than a little pep-talk and kinky sex to make her feel better.
Khloe is a cutter, and may hurt herself badly if Mr. Shern does not take control and give her the kind of treatment she needs. First, a session in the shibari ropes is in order; then, some serious domination and submission, with the help of his associate, Mr. Cox.
Only when Khloe is broken down completely can Mr. Shern build her back up and heal her broken soul."

I started writing Khloe. I got a good three scenes into it.
Then I had to take a break.
So I started to write Michelle, the next story in the collection. For a while, I tried to write Michelle and Khloe at the same time, writing each one on alternate days. But soon I gave up, and focused on Michelle completely. I finished it.
I tried again to focus on Khloe. I wrote another couple scenes. But it took me a lot of time, tore at my soul to get them out, and in the end, I hated them so much I deleted them entirely, something I've never done before.
So I started writing Samantha instead. And I had so much fun writing it, I put Khloe on the back burner.
Soon, Samantha was complete. I sent both Michelle, and Samantha, to be formatted, and put them up for sale.
I opened Khloe again. By now, I was sick of the sight of her, wanting desperately to be done and over with it. I rewrote the scenes I had deleted, then tried to fix them again. It was like spraying perfume on a rotting piece of meat. The words in my head made my skin crawl. I would write, and delete; write, and delete.
So I worked on Eve (Babygirl) instead. Eve (Babygirl) made me happy. It's simple, straightforward, and hot. There's nothing complicated to it; I just had to get it out on paper.
And now, Eve is almost done. I have to do some editing, which is tedious work, but...nothing altogether too draining. It does not hurt my head to do it.
And still, Khloe waits for me.

I know why Khloe is such a tough story for me. It's because, when I was young, I was a cutter. And remembering how it felt, remembering the consuming, numbing, overpowering, horrible, emotional pain, hurts.

It feels wrong, somehow, to be writing this--at least on this blog. There is a lot of controversy about what makes BDSM kinksters who and how they are. Many people think it's because of previous childhood abuse or trauma. Like our horrible childhoods warped us into sick, masochistic/sadistic adults.

I don't agree with that. Did I have a hard childhood? Yes. Guess what? Millions of others did, too. I think it's pretty rare to find a person these days who can say in all honestly, "my childhood was great. I suffered through nothing! And my parents protected me and loved me unconditionally!"
I think the best I've ever heard was, "my parents did the best they could."
I've said that many times.
My mother was a child of two Holocaust survivors. My father was the product of physical abuse and rape.
They did the best they could.

But here's the thing: not everyone who suffers, in varying degrees, through childhood becomes drawn to BDSM. In fact, I would go out on a limb and say most do not. So to say there is some kind of connection is, in my mind, questionable at best. After all, if (let's say) a majority of the population has a shared experience but only ten percent (maybe) ends up becoming adults who label themselves Doms, subs, masochists, sadists, etc, can you really make a connection? Or is it simply coincidence?

I don't know. I don't know if it matters, at least not for me, not anymore. I am who I am.
I am happy, I am loved and love in return...I would not change who I am or what I have. So does it matter how I got here, now that I'm here?
Yes. I guess right now, when I am trying desperately to finish this story and cannot because it hurts too fucking badly to remember what it was like to be that girl, it kind of does.

Here's the thing about that kind of emotional pain: it becomes its own entity in your head. Like HBO's Dexter has his Dark Passenger?

I used to think of mine as 'the big bad monster.' It looked like the gmork creature from Never Ending Story:

And sometimes, it would go away to the back of my head for a while, and leave me alone, and let me be happy, at least as happy as I could be while always knowing I had a monster inside me...but it was always back there, always back there, and I would never know when it would show up and take over.

Sometimes it would only bark at me, like a reminder it was still back there, but not make a move. And sometimes it would pay me a visit, but a short one, a somewhat calm one, and I'd be able to serve its needs and keep it fed and make it satisfied, and it would go away again.
And sometimes... sometimes it would sink its teeth into me, wrap its stinking, icy mouth around my soul, and suck me in.

Do you know what it's like to walk around like a shell of a human being? Like you're watching yourself go through the motions, but you're stuck on the outside, unable to think, unable to act, unable to change what's being done to you? Wanting so desperately to scream and cry and get back in your fucking body but unable to? Because it's being controlled by something else.
And where you are is cold, so fucking cold, numbing you with it, you wish you could shiver from it but you can't because you have no body, you're nowhere, you're in limbo, and it's the kind of limbo that religious fundamentalists like to call hell. But it's not hell, it's worse than hell. Hell is where you wish you could go, because at least then, you'd feel like you're fucking somewhere...and you'd be warm.

So you cut yourself. You cut your body to remind yourself, like a half-forgetten childhood story, that this body is yours, it is home to your soul, and by god you have a right to it. The skin opens, the blood flows, and you think if you can focus on the blood dripping in rivulets down your flesh, if you can concentrate really hard, you can follow the flow of blood back up and in your body, and your soul can be back where it belongs. And the cut will hurt, yes, but it's better than the nothing that you're experiencing right now. Anything is better than that.

Anything.

I don't think I can describe that kind of pain, isolation, loneliness, despair...that desire to either feel something, even if it's agony, or have it all end, because the hope that things might somehow change, that someday you might be saved, is becoming too painful to bear...I don't think I can do it justice. I think you've either been there, or you haven't.

I've been there. I don't want to go back.

But the story. The story should be written. It's become my own personal challenge now. That dark monster of mine is gone, I vanquished it long ago, but the bones remain. And maybe its corpse and remains did help shape who I am today, and maybe not. But I must use this skeleton in my closet for some good; I must bring it out, dust it off, examine it in the light, and then boil it down to ashes and make it into clay, form it into a story.

This story, Khloe. Which, for all intent and purposes, will look like any of the other short BDSM stories I've written so far...but will be so, so, different.

I will write it.