I described myself as a heavy bottom for a few years. I pushed my limits with Daddy. Let him prod and poke at the edges of my capabilities, wanted him to push my tolerances, my suffering for him. I began to learn what suffering for him meant. We brushed against those lines and slid over them here and there just to find that they moved when we did. My masochism wasn’t a hard shape. It was malleable. Pushing me was growth. Pushing me satisfied us both.
When we moved states, we stopped playing. It wasn’t a conscious choice, just something that happened. Priorities shifted from the play to life. The house we lived in was full of projects. Daddy’s job took up far more time than anticipated. And our connection was tempered by it all. When we did try to play, I couldn’t take a hit. I couldn’t stay still. I couldn’t feel him the way I once did.
I thought I lost my masochism. I thought I lost everything as a bottom. Was I even a bottom anymore?
I was devastated for a while. An identity I had worked so hard to build for myself was swept away by the busyness of life, a pandemic, college, etc. It was no longer at the surface where I could brush it with my fingertips but somewhere in waters, I didn’t dare plunge into. I couldn’t see the bottom so did it exist? Did the masochism exist in the first place?
Things have smoothed out and our connection is growing again. We’re back to playing. My masochism is blooming like out-of-control morning glories. I want more, I crave more, I need more from him. I want him to push and pull me through each blow until I am so deep I cannot remember my own name. I want him to say “one more” and give me two. All I think of is his sadism and how it feeds me. I lay in bed at night listening to him breathe and thinking about him carving lines in my thighs and drinking my blood. I stare at him during conversations as visions of bruises and boots and tears slide through my mind’s eye. I look at the implements in our bedroom and remember what each one feels like on my skin.
As the masochism comes back, I realize I am eyeing its shape, its greediness, with caution and wariness. I don’t believe it’s here some nights. I am overwhelmed by it on others. I scroll through FetLife and look at beautiful pictures of flesh hooks, bloody lines, needles through fingertips, and wonder why I haven’t done that. Am I even a masochist? If fear holds me back, how will I ever be the bottom I want to be?
My masochism should be no different than my service – something I admire and feed and trust to take care of me. But it too is going under the same scrutiny my concept of service did. I look at others and wonder how their definitions are so different than mine. I look at tops who seem to play wildly and without purpose and wonder how I fit into that shape of sadist/masochist. Are they not real sadists/bad sadists/untrained sadists or am I just a bad masochist? I value specific things in my tops, sadists, and desire certain energies. But it seems rare and hard to find and I wonder if I’m just the wrong kind of masochist/bottom for this crowd. That I’m too picky, that my expectations are too high, that my play style is just wrong.
Do I even have a style anymore?
I spent years trying to figure out why “service submission” felt so uncomfortable to me. And now I am spending time figuring out why this idea of sadism/masochism makes my skin itch. I look at my friends who are on the fringes of the community, people I hold deep admiration and respect for, and realize their shapes are more like mine. Realizing I am made of the same things as them makes me think that my masochism is what it is and I shouldn’t be holding myself to expectations I don’t even care about.
Comparison is the thief of joy and there is no better example for me than my relationship to my masochism. Comparison to myself, the bottom I was years ago. Comparison to people who dabble in those deeper waters I am wary of. Comparison to people who do things I don’t want to do. It is always easier to blame others for unhappiness than look at one’s self in the mirror and examine the true problems.
And, if I think about it, that mirror of my masochism is held by Daddy’s sadism. It is held by hands that love to slap me. It’s propped on boots that grind into my thighs. It’s decorated with canes and crops and whips. The mirror of my masochism is shaped by the man I serve and I don’t want it any other way. I want my masochism, my pain, my suffering, to be for him and him only. The masochist I once was is the masochist he loves and the masochist I am now is the masochist he loves. There is no difference between them other than my judgment. Who am I to judge his boy, his courtesan, his property? Who am I to question or doubt his desire for me?
So I will try to dive back into my masochism with glee rather than worrying about the bottom on the bench next to me. I will hold it tenderly again and let it grow and bloom the way it needs to. I will let Daddy trim and shape and coax it the way he wants it to. My masochism is only half mine anyways.
