on blood and bruises
[TW: violence, suicide, sex, assault both sexual and physical, BDSM]
hit me. just fucking hit me. give me your rage, your bitterness, your suffering. let it out on me. break me as the world has broken you. there is nothing else for it. there is only the hurt. time after time we are not granted the opportunity for violence that we deserve. we are beaten to the ground, dehumanised, brought halfway to our deaths so we can eventually finish the job ourselves later. you can’t punch a cop. you can’t punch the man calling you a tranny in the street. you can’t punch a billionaire. but you can punch me. it’ll make you feel better.
i’ve been struggling to write. i’ve been struggling to do anything, really. it’s unfortunately difficult to do anything when i’m staring at my reflection in the blade of my own genocide each day, waiting and quite ready for the thousand cuts to just slice my carotid already. i'm probably at my most unstable that i’ve been in a while. well, no, i definitely am. i'm the closest in a long time to hurting myself and to hurting myself in that one permanent way.
so i wrote that passage to try to clear my head. to try to think about anything else. maybe it says something that i came back, as i often do, to the thought of violence being inflicted on me. willingly.
it’s a strange thing to interrogate. to be desperate to be hurt, in a world that already inflicts pain every day. it would be in a controlled manner, of course. something i ask for and receive. ideally and most likely during sex, but not exclusively. and in most cases, it would be a matter of blanket consent. of asking for it once and then having it be a blank cheque for this other girl to strike me whenever she wishes. to slap my cheek, blacken my eye, and break my skin because i said so.
i want to feel something. something that isn’t the ongoing ache of being killed slowly. something more sudden. something with more intent. something with a little more care behind it. there’s no love like a girl who’ll punch you in the stomach and stroke your hair just after. to be beaten bloody and swaddled lovingly equally within the hour.
i can armchair psychoanalyse this. there are some clear factors. my dad hit me when i was young. i was assaulted in my teens. i’ve been hit and grabbed in the street by men repeatedly. somewhere in my brain i want to reclaim all this. i don’t want that to be the memory of violence my body holds. i don’t want that to be the score that it keeps.
my girlfriend once told me i live with catholic guilt, despite not being brought up very religious nor having religious family. i couldn’t argue with her. i carry a crushing guilt for existing, and for certain actions, that strongly influences what i feel i deserve - that being pain, usually.
i want a beautiful woman who i love, or at least like, to hit me. i want her to enjoy it as much as i do, hopefully more. i want to be punished. i want to suffer. i want to be useful. i want to be an outlet. if i’m useful, then i have a reason to be here. if i’m useful, she might keep me around.
and you know, it doesn’t just go one way. i do have some desire for violence within me. it’s something i’m ashamed and disgusted by. it feels a masculine leftover that hasn’t been rid from my body yet. the one time i actually punched someone, in self defense, i felt disgusted for weeks afterwards. that’s not what i do. that’s not for me.
but now. i have no outlet for any of it. and i have to admit, sometimes i really do want to hit something. there is so much pain and bitterness and anger bubbling beneath the many layers of personhood that my outward personality rests upon. but. it’s easier to ask someone to hit you than it is to ask if they want to be hit. you offer yourself up. you find a use. you become an outlet for them. and that’s what matters most. it’ll make them feel better. it might even help me too.
‘who [but friends] will kiss you, she writes, who will push aside your shirt and suck the flesh above your heart, who will ask for more rope, who will show you how to transform love into force back into love’ - catherine lacey, the möbius book