Submitting has allotted me the gift of sexual satisfaction and gratification, as well as provided me with an emotional refuge that I didn’t know I needed, or even wanted, for the longest time. It protects me from the wheels constantly turning in my mind, questioning my own worth and nagging at my soul.
A majority of my sexual experiences have not been driven by my simple, human need and desire for pleasure. Sexual abuse has left me constantly on the defensive, emotionally numb, internally screaming “I AM NOT DAMAGED GOODS!” as if repeating that statement would somehow lead me to actually believe it. In all, the choices I have made have been my way of getting back at those who forcefully took something from me. My promiscuity has always been a two-middle-fingers-high, fuck-you-and-you-and-you type of retaliation to the thieves who had stolen a piece of my soul I knew I would never get back.
While I have given myself to far too many men in my life in order to prove that I am not vulnerable, weak, or damaged because of what happened to me, it clearly hadn’t worked. It didn’t dull the pain, make me feel valued, or remove any of the guilt, shame, and mind-numbing anger I felt daily. I allowed men to do things to me that I can’t even begin to think about now, all with the idea that I could tell them to stop if I really wanted to. That it was MY choice. My body was always present in those situations, but my mind was not. I found drinking and lost myself. When alcohol no longer hushed the subconscious voices, I added pills. Anything to shut them up long enough to let some unworthy individual use me and leave while I was left to cling to the few, less than satisfying, minutes of attention I was given. Although I felt that I was choosing my own form of sexual expression instead of allowing someone, anyone, else to choose for me, it has become nauseatingly clear that that was not at all the case.
I found myself becoming a submissive purely by accident but was so drawn to the adrenaline rush—the high—that I got from it that I knew it was something that I needed constantly. I am a moth to a flame when it comes to submission. It is a powerful magic that allows me, sometimes only for a brief moment, to teeter on the edge of bliss and having a complete breakdown. It’s like some kind of sick, twisted game that I can’t, and honestly don’t want to, stop playing. Knowing that the next moments could either make or break you, that all you can do is trust his decisions, is like playing with fire. And I’m a complete pyromaniac.
Submitting and surrendering to another isn’t about being passive, it’s about being open. Which is the exact thing I ran and hid from for years. When you find yourself in that moment—the moment where you are completely vulnerable at the hands of another—you know that no matter what horrible things run through your mind, you have no control. All you can do is feel. And for a girl who has dedicated so much of herself to feeling absolutely nothing, it’s an extraordinary feeling.
makingmeredith 
