Gonna start out with some explanation: I've had a tendency, lately, to get triggered to shit if I try and make "let's play at five o'clock on tuesday" plans, so I haven't been doing that. I've been telling people "I'm not sure if I'm gonna want to play" "don't have any expectations" "maybe maybe maybe." it feels safer, to me. This is a little different for me-- I'm usually really into planning out my time; I'm very big on Making Plans With People. As a result, I've become a lot more intuitive and spontaneous, even, about sex. I kind of like it. It's probably really good for me, too, or something.
So, due to not really being able to fill my dance card, I showed up at the Society not expecting to play, just planning to hang out, reconnect with old friends, and maybe watch some sexy scenes. I ended up getting flogged briefly by one person, and tied up and dragged around somewhat more substantially by another! People I hadn't met before! I wasn't expecting that! XD It was totally awesome.
Consistent with previous experiences at play parties, I remember moments, not so much a story:
The tying. Shit, man, I fucking love rope. The way it looks, the way it sounds, the way it feels, the way it is so fucking hot to watch someone who is good at rope do what they do.
I am really great at open-ended "describe yourself!" on paper, but when he was like "so tell me about your experiences subbing" I was like "uhhhhh, I've done hypnosis a lot? and I had a chest harness this one time? it was hot?" and other dubiously-useful statements. when I mean, now I can think of a ton of things to say to that. In my defense, though, at the time I had half a chest harness on. And a mostly-naked guy doing the tying. :p
I mentioned to him that I was a fan of being dragged around by my hair. We were kind of making the whole scene up as we went, which I, uh, had never done before, but I was totally rolling with it. We'd discussed tying me to a chair or something beforehand, after I had a harness on. He'd finished tying and was standing behind me. He grabbed a handful of my hair and dragged me backward. I gasped, heard a chair scrape across the carpet, and felt him forcibly sit me down in it. I squirmed a little, feeling gloriously disoriented.
A while later, he lazily said, "you know, I'm feeling hungry. how are you doing?" and I mentioned that I was kind of thirsty. "Let's go get something to eat," he said, and started dragging me backwards by my hair/harness out into the main room and into the kitchen. Fucking, aah, jesus, the struggle to keep up with someone when they've got me like that, the way everything is unbalanced, the way I am no clearly not in control here-- hot hot hot. I heard people in the main room chuckling as I went by, and I'm sure I grinned myself. Kink is fun.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
eehehe :D
went to the Society last night, for the TNG invasion. I surprised myself and ended up having a blast-- haha, I mean, not that I expected to have a bad time, just that I didn't expect to leave as giddy as I did. XD
one thing I noticed, that I always notice when I'm at kink events, and then always forget about: the atmosphere of just... unabashed, joyful sexuality. Everyone, regardless of age or how they look or whatever, is accepted as a sexual person. and we're all cracking jokes about it, and talking about flogging is normal. it's something I don't experience often, but it's just so... so awesome.
one thing I noticed, that I always notice when I'm at kink events, and then always forget about: the atmosphere of just... unabashed, joyful sexuality. Everyone, regardless of age or how they look or whatever, is accepted as a sexual person. and we're all cracking jokes about it, and talking about flogging is normal. it's something I don't experience often, but it's just so... so awesome.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
some vocabulary I use when I talk about my trauma
This seems like a useful thing to share with the world. I kind of miss sexblogging, but I think I'll be mentioning my trauma a lot more in the future, so, here's a bunch of vocabulary I use. I've tried to talk about the vocab in terms of my own experience-- everybody's experience with trauma is ultimately a little different and a little similar at the same time, but I can only give voice to my own experiences.
Trauma: the aftereffects of abuse.
Abuse: situations and/or behavior that causes trauma.
Processing: comes from the idea that post-traumatic stress is at least partly due to memories not being integrated or processed properly. Usually, when someone is dealing with their trauma, the idea is to "re-process" the memories and make sense of them and re-integrate them. Usually, if I say "I'm processing" I mean I'm sitting with a memory and thinking about it a lot, turning it over in my head for a while-- sometimes hours, sometimes weeks.
My Subconscious: this is a model I use to describe the way my truamatized brain operates; not everyone talks about it like this. My subconscious is like, my gut emotional reactions to things-- usually negative reactions. Oftentimes my subconscious will be at odds with what my conscious self might want, which is why I find this model useful-- "I really wanna go see Fast Five, but my subconscious is absolutely not having it, I will dissociate so hard if I go." --- true story. I was so bummed. My subconscious communicates with me by triggering me, making me dissociated, by having a strong negative or positive gut reaction to doing something or to thinking about doing something. Sometimes I'll have the urge to do something, but I know my subconscious will flip a shit if I do it, so I don't do it, and then it kind of feels smug at me.
Sometimes my subconscious freaks out and it's really helpful-- if I'm panicking at the thought of a situation, it might be genuinely unsafe for me, and then I usually ask whatever questions I need to ensure that it is a safe situation, or get myself out. Sometimes my subconscious freaks out and it's not very helpful, although it's trying to be. For example, say my SO has something superficially in common with my abuser. My subconscious might be all "THIS MEANS DANGER" and I have to be like "listen, if it's just that they both watch Doctor Who, it so does not."
I feel the desire to add: I have no idea how scientifically (or otherwise) accurate this model is, and I don't care. It works for me, and that's what matters.
Triggers: are stimuli that remind a survivor of the trauma in an extremely distressing way. Triggers can be pretty much anything-- the way a person looks, a noise, a song, a food, a place, a time of year. I distinguish between triggers that people have a responsibility to avoid (eg rape jokes) and triggers that you can't predict and shouldn't stress about avoiding (like a certain type of clothing).
Being triggered, for me, has been different as I've gone through the healing process. At first it felt like I was being raped all over again, then it felt dizzying and pokey (like every single thing around me was somehow related to my trauma), and lately, it's been a tight, tense feeling that won't relax, or a sudden sense of panic.
By their nature, triggers are the kind of thing that are horrifying and make you want to hardcore avoid them by any means possible. They are actutely, intensely distressing. I tend to approach mine with an attitude of "welp, this sucks, gotta work through this," and I try to just deal with them as they come. As I process them, most triggers go away, and stop being triggering. It's really awesome when that happens. :)
Flashbacks: usually triggered by something, a flashback is a re-living of some aspect of the trauma in real time. Sometimes they're short and sometimes they're longer. All of mine have been really short, just moments: for a few seconds, I didn't realize I was at work or on the bus or whatever, I felt like I was somewhere else (which honestly, I think that my brain has the infastructure to do this is really frikkin' cool XD).
Sometimes flashbacks, for me and for others, are more like an insistent tape playing in the back of my head that I cannot ignore (or a gif, as the case may be). Sometimes just my emotions flash back to whatever they were at the time, which can be really weird. One time this spring (in 2011), I kept writing the year as 07, 08, or 09 when I wasn't thinking about it. Once I wrote a check out to 2009-- it was pretty horrifying to me. I think of it as my subconscious not knowing what year it is, my subconscious as having a flashback to 2009 or whatever.
Dissociation: It's a survival mechanism that a lot of survivors use to escape the trauma while it's still happening -- I know I dissociated when I was raped. Later on, it's usually a response to triggers, in a way-- if I get triggered at work and can't sit down and deal with my shit, I tend to dissociate, to escape it. For me, I feel kind of floaty and detached from everything, not like my normal self. As a general rule it is not under my control, although I do have some tools to check if I'm dissociating or not, or to make it less intense. I used to dissociate very strongly, for long periods of time (it would wear off after a few hours, usually). I haven't dissociated in quite some time, now, except momentarily as what feels like a warning sign.
All of this was a lot more prominent in my life about six to three months ago. My triggers are much more mild now, and I can handle them better. I haven't dissociated really hard in a while. I chalk this up mostly to having healed a lot, but a little bit to being single again-- I think a lot of my issues rear their heads when I'm trying to date or have sex with somebody. Anyhow, seemed like it might be useful to put this out there.
Trauma: the aftereffects of abuse.
Abuse: situations and/or behavior that causes trauma.
Processing: comes from the idea that post-traumatic stress is at least partly due to memories not being integrated or processed properly. Usually, when someone is dealing with their trauma, the idea is to "re-process" the memories and make sense of them and re-integrate them. Usually, if I say "I'm processing" I mean I'm sitting with a memory and thinking about it a lot, turning it over in my head for a while-- sometimes hours, sometimes weeks.
My Subconscious: this is a model I use to describe the way my truamatized brain operates; not everyone talks about it like this. My subconscious is like, my gut emotional reactions to things-- usually negative reactions. Oftentimes my subconscious will be at odds with what my conscious self might want, which is why I find this model useful-- "I really wanna go see Fast Five, but my subconscious is absolutely not having it, I will dissociate so hard if I go." --- true story. I was so bummed. My subconscious communicates with me by triggering me, making me dissociated, by having a strong negative or positive gut reaction to doing something or to thinking about doing something. Sometimes I'll have the urge to do something, but I know my subconscious will flip a shit if I do it, so I don't do it, and then it kind of feels smug at me.
Sometimes my subconscious freaks out and it's really helpful-- if I'm panicking at the thought of a situation, it might be genuinely unsafe for me, and then I usually ask whatever questions I need to ensure that it is a safe situation, or get myself out. Sometimes my subconscious freaks out and it's not very helpful, although it's trying to be. For example, say my SO has something superficially in common with my abuser. My subconscious might be all "THIS MEANS DANGER" and I have to be like "listen, if it's just that they both watch Doctor Who, it so does not."
I feel the desire to add: I have no idea how scientifically (or otherwise) accurate this model is, and I don't care. It works for me, and that's what matters.
Triggers: are stimuli that remind a survivor of the trauma in an extremely distressing way. Triggers can be pretty much anything-- the way a person looks, a noise, a song, a food, a place, a time of year. I distinguish between triggers that people have a responsibility to avoid (eg rape jokes) and triggers that you can't predict and shouldn't stress about avoiding (like a certain type of clothing).
Being triggered, for me, has been different as I've gone through the healing process. At first it felt like I was being raped all over again, then it felt dizzying and pokey (like every single thing around me was somehow related to my trauma), and lately, it's been a tight, tense feeling that won't relax, or a sudden sense of panic.
By their nature, triggers are the kind of thing that are horrifying and make you want to hardcore avoid them by any means possible. They are actutely, intensely distressing. I tend to approach mine with an attitude of "welp, this sucks, gotta work through this," and I try to just deal with them as they come. As I process them, most triggers go away, and stop being triggering. It's really awesome when that happens. :)
Flashbacks: usually triggered by something, a flashback is a re-living of some aspect of the trauma in real time. Sometimes they're short and sometimes they're longer. All of mine have been really short, just moments: for a few seconds, I didn't realize I was at work or on the bus or whatever, I felt like I was somewhere else (which honestly, I think that my brain has the infastructure to do this is really frikkin' cool XD).
Sometimes flashbacks, for me and for others, are more like an insistent tape playing in the back of my head that I cannot ignore (or a gif, as the case may be). Sometimes just my emotions flash back to whatever they were at the time, which can be really weird. One time this spring (in 2011), I kept writing the year as 07, 08, or 09 when I wasn't thinking about it. Once I wrote a check out to 2009-- it was pretty horrifying to me. I think of it as my subconscious not knowing what year it is, my subconscious as having a flashback to 2009 or whatever.
Dissociation: It's a survival mechanism that a lot of survivors use to escape the trauma while it's still happening -- I know I dissociated when I was raped. Later on, it's usually a response to triggers, in a way-- if I get triggered at work and can't sit down and deal with my shit, I tend to dissociate, to escape it. For me, I feel kind of floaty and detached from everything, not like my normal self. As a general rule it is not under my control, although I do have some tools to check if I'm dissociating or not, or to make it less intense. I used to dissociate very strongly, for long periods of time (it would wear off after a few hours, usually). I haven't dissociated in quite some time, now, except momentarily as what feels like a warning sign.
All of this was a lot more prominent in my life about six to three months ago. My triggers are much more mild now, and I can handle them better. I haven't dissociated really hard in a while. I chalk this up mostly to having healed a lot, but a little bit to being single again-- I think a lot of my issues rear their heads when I'm trying to date or have sex with somebody. Anyhow, seemed like it might be useful to put this out there.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
musings
So, the relationship I had been in ended about a month ago, and I find myself here, again, single and announcing it to the world. lols. I guess... I don't know where this blog is going from here. Sex is different for me now. I had a lot of really excellent casual play last summer that made for great sexblogging, but I don't know if I am able (or, more importantly, if I want) to do that anymore. I originally started blogging about my sex life at least partly out of a need for others' approval, and I'm moving away from that both consciously and as a natural part of my maturing process, I think. So maybe this blog filled a need for me at one point, but maybe it doesn't anymore.
I also don't know if I want the archives of the blog to be publicly available anymore. Most of what's on here is from my abusive relationship and the time when I was thrashing around using coping mechanisms without understanding them-- which is stuff that has become really quite personal, and there's stuff I've said I don't agree with anymore, and yeah. it's messy.
I'm thinking, if anything, I might wind up posting a lot about the intersection of sex/kink and my rape trauma. Which, honestly, is something I think should be talked about, although I don't know if I'm the one to do it. And I'm not sure if this is the venue I'd like to do it in (tumblr is where all the cool kids go these days :p). I'm really not sure. I think the tone of the blog would probably change from "omg you guise I did all of these hot things" to something more introspective and thoughtful. Certainly, hopefully, something more mature and self-aware. >.>
And I guessssss that paragraph leads me to "but omg will my readers want to READ that?!" which is an insecurity I used to have but, like I said, I am moving away from, because goddamn, it's my blog and I can introspect if I want to.
So: yeah. My shit's changed. I'm not sure where I'm going from here. I may delete the blog, or I may not. We'll all have to see. I make no promises, and hope y'all have no expectations.
I also don't know if I want the archives of the blog to be publicly available anymore. Most of what's on here is from my abusive relationship and the time when I was thrashing around using coping mechanisms without understanding them-- which is stuff that has become really quite personal, and there's stuff I've said I don't agree with anymore, and yeah. it's messy.
I'm thinking, if anything, I might wind up posting a lot about the intersection of sex/kink and my rape trauma. Which, honestly, is something I think should be talked about, although I don't know if I'm the one to do it. And I'm not sure if this is the venue I'd like to do it in (tumblr is where all the cool kids go these days :p). I'm really not sure. I think the tone of the blog would probably change from "omg you guise I did all of these hot things" to something more introspective and thoughtful. Certainly, hopefully, something more mature and self-aware. >.>
And I guessssss that paragraph leads me to "but omg will my readers want to READ that?!" which is an insecurity I used to have but, like I said, I am moving away from, because goddamn, it's my blog and I can introspect if I want to.
So: yeah. My shit's changed. I'm not sure where I'm going from here. I may delete the blog, or I may not. We'll all have to see. I make no promises, and hope y'all have no expectations.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
more katy perry
So, this "ET" song she's got out on the radio (youtube, lyrics). It is a Very Bad Song. And not the "needs a spanking" sort of bad. :p It's baaaaad. The metaphor is really heavy-handed, relies on stereotypes and buzzwords, and is stretched past the point where it's useful. By the second verse, I'm like, "okay, katy perry, WE GET IT. you are having sex with a very strange guy!"
But at the same time, the song's toootally a guilty kinky pleasure for me. The bits about "wanna be a victim?" ho yeah, can I ever identify with that feeling.
Because, every now and again, I'll be daydreaming in class about BDSM, and being dominated, and I'll get horny and I'll feel... oh, like, "please dominate me, please control me, I need to be controlled, I need to be dominated, please."
It's a good feeling.
But at the same time, the song's toootally a guilty kinky pleasure for me. The bits about "wanna be a victim?" ho yeah, can I ever identify with that feeling.
Because, every now and again, I'll be daydreaming in class about BDSM, and being dominated, and I'll get horny and I'll feel... oh, like, "please dominate me, please control me, I need to be controlled, I need to be dominated, please."
It's a good feeling.
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