Sometimes I just want to stop feeling

Stop thinking.

Just for a while.

Typically it happens when I’m alone. Maybe there’s a new stressful global event or a financial fear. Maybe my dad tried to reach out to me again.

My impulse is to numb myself. Scroll endlessly on my phone to distract myself from the paralyzing discomfort of my own life. Maybe if I focus on others long enough, the pain will go away.

The fear will go away.

But it doesn’t.

It stays there.

It gets bigger.

I feel worse.

Two Moments

There have been two moments recently where I was able to truly shut off my brain.

I asked Master for help. I asked Him to drag something small and pointed across my naked body. Like a sharp stick. He took that idea a bit further.

“This is a knife”, He said, laying a cold, heavy object on my sternum. “It is sharp, so I need you to sit very still”.

“Yes, Master”, I said, letting out a breath.

He dragged the tip of the knife slowly down my sternum, tracing the lines of my body. The sensation was sharp, terrifying. I knew He would not cut me intentionally. I knew I wasn’t in danger. But my mind focused on the blade running across my skin like it was a venomous snake. One wrong move and … I couldn’t afford to make a wrong move. I couldn’t afford to move at all.

I laid there naked. Shallow but regular breaths coming and going. My Master bent over my body with a light in His hand and a blade in the other.

Even just thinking about it now sends cold chills across my neck. Even now, days later, I feel the focus melting over me.

Ever since I was a small child I’ve had an anxious mind. It wasn’t until I received a diagnosis in high school that I realized how much it was impacting my ability to function. Constant noise and worries clouded my judgement and trapped me inside my own mind.

As I’ve grown older and had access to therapy, medication, and supportive relationships, I’ve learned to manage it much more effectively. My Master has been particularly helpful in this area, offering limitless kindness and patience even when I’m pissing myself off.

On any given day my mind is mostly under my own control, though there is always the potential for things to spiral back to zero. I suppose that’s why I’m wary of mind altering substances and experiences, though I find certain kink experiences to have the opposite effect. The intensity grounds me. The fear pulls me back to the present. The play acting and costumes and roles drag me away from the triggers of normal life and give me a chance to quiet down.

I want to access that level of focus more. Maybe you could call it “flow”. A focus so deep that it melts away the concept of time and leaves only the thoughts, feelings, and observations that are right in front of you. As I’m writing this I find myself feeling a lot of cognitive dissonance. I’m literally coming back to edit a piece that I have been avoiding for weeks because I don’t want to be present and focused.

And yet, here I am talking about how much I want to be present and focused. Here I am, avoiding my rope practice because I’m afraid of being mediocre (even though my deadline is quickly approaching) and daydreaming about a future in which I can enter a state of flow on both sides of the rope. Giving and receiving. Topping and bottoming. Uuuughghghghghgh why is everything about me such a contradiction?!?

Maybe that’s where I leave this one. Goodness knows I’ve got plenty more to write and edit.

Maybe contradiction is what makes us human. Goodness knows enough of us do it.