�

03 February, 2006 - 1:29 a.m.
half-broken gifts: an essay on domination

here's another journal influenced by Piece by Piece.

"if we go back to the mythic, as long as there is domination of the feminine, we must have dominatrices to correct that imbalance. You know, I'm told that certain old-school men in the music industry require dominatrices to rebalance them so they can be ruthless in their work and immune to the pain they are inflicting. They're doing their penance, these entertainment industry cheeses who then subjugate their artists."

this brought to mind certain tendencies in my past to punish myself for the things i felt i'd done wrong. if i'd been mean to someone, i wouldn't let my self enjoy things like tv or movies or books. if i couldn't live up to my standards, for a while i'd pay the price in my own blood, jagged cuts made with razor blades underneath my clothes so no one else would know.

my mind was so twisted for a while that i'd stay in abusive relationships or just in relationships where i was unhappy, because i half-believed that i deserved that. and i think maybe we all go there in our head, even just one time, into the domain of Despair, and it's a tough road out of that place. What's worse is when the guys would go along with the idea that i deserved such treatment.

i thought, for several years, that i needed someone to complete me. i'd never been a whole person, not in my entire life. not through the sex abuse and the awful relationships and the rape. for a while as an adult i thought that sex could cure me, could win them over and make them treat me decently, but that never worked. i thought that men, women, were the answer to what i was missing. and all that did was make me emptier.

i think that it's hard to tell teenagers about the emotional effects of sexual contact, that giving your body to someone rips you open and makes you raw, and that if you don't have the ability to channel that into something positive, you're lost. you're in a cycle. giving your body to someone only works if they are giving in return, and i'm not even talking about orgasms. there's a difference between a giver and a taker, and that's not a joke about anal sex. if you give and they take, you're left with nothing. if they give and you give, well, that's a start. no one ever tells people about love and sex not meaning the same thing and that you can't buy one with the other. and maybe they should.

it's a pattern when you use relationships to fill holes in yourself. how can you expect someone to share their complete self when you're broken and missing pieces? and this is where pain came in. pain to remind me of what i'd lost. pain to show me that there was another feeling other than emotional pain. pain because i wasn't good enough for anything else.

and, if you've been reading, you know i broke under the weight of all that's physical and spiritual and emotional. i just wanted to die. and you know that i've found a place where i feel that i am at peace. but sometimes, when i put on my leather, sometimes i really resist the urge to bleed. it's sick. and it's addictive. but over time, it's becoming less and less. i don't need people to hurt me any more. and i can wear leather if i put myself into the right frame of mind, that it's power and control and the feminine come back for vengence. that it's sexual and that the emotion is red. and that's hot. it's no longer about the compulsion to feel that pain.

at some point, i realized that cliche that you can't truly love someone else if you don't love yourself. that you can't expect to give someone the gift of a broken heart and expect them to treat it with respect, or even to appreciate it. there has to be a balance of the masculine and the feminine within yourself. there has to be balance.

the journey for me has been about finding my pieces and figuring out where they go. it's a puzzle. i've gone through such loss in this short life. there are years i don't remember and i think that repression, for me, has been a good thing. but i have to create something within myself to fill that void. i can no longer take something from the outside world to fill it. the things with which you fill yourself must be things that cannot be taken from you. it can't be an addition or a person or a relationship or a habit. i've chosen to fill myself with positive things.

writing has been a big help to me in terms of figuring out where my pieces have gone. it seems ridiculous, even foolish, to be afraid to what's in my head any more. and i think i might be approaching a place in my life where i could share it in a healthy way with someone else and not feel like i was handing over damaged merchandise.

someone once told me, "however many years you lived at home, you have that long to get over the things that your parents have done to you." i think that's a load of crap, but if not, i'm way ahead of the curve.

previous - next