I don’t get cutting. I mean, I’ve never had the urge to do it. Or starve myself. Or induce vomiting. My punishment has always come in the form of exercise — track and cross country being the most notably evil. And bondage. I’m reluctant to trace masochism back to my preschool self, but I can. I can take you all the way back to four years old quite easily. The memories intact, the dialogue specific.
Why masochism? I don’t know. I have ideas about it. Theories I kick around. And maybe you’ve never experienced it. Maybe you’ve never had the world go entirely white, and your body fall away. Maybe you’ve never been without self. I think that’s what happens. I become solely my body — the pain explicit, focused and direct — and then white. A flash of white, and nothing. I used to think of it as peace. To recover a place without thoughts or emotions.
What if masochism is a safety test? What if I have placed myself in the most vulnerable of circumstances repeatedly, not in an effort to have my power extracted lash by lash, but to release it myself. Not to have it taken, but to give it away. What if I have sought your mercy by asking you to separate me from myself? What if your agreement is an act of love? What if the moment when you give it back, when you return my power, is the one in which I love you most? Because I am never helpless, never bereft. I am at our mercy. Yours and mine.
You stretch my mind, my thoughts. And that is a good thing.
In the way you describe it, it’s absolutely a release. As is bondage.
Parents of children with Sensory integration issues are told to wrap their kids up in blankets so that they are completely restricted- nearly painfully tight so that the child can be soothed. Therapy for these children is all about bringing them to “the edge” so that they learn to trust.
Fascinating, but call it bondage, and people freak out.
Yes, I’ve wondered many times if the white is fetal memory. To be restricted in the safest and most ideal of environments.
Hmmm. Some compare it to floating or flying. I never even considered fetal memory.
My boyfriend described experiencing the “white” for his first and only time just recently. He was on a roller coaster at Great Adventure sitting next to my eleven year old son. It happened during the first drop.