Content note: discussion of consensual non-consent (CNC) with references to rape play and coercive non-sober kink
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, or something like that, they say. My manic brain put a nice twist on that today: scarcity makes desire obsessive.
I’m unraveling a thought thread that is made of so many different parts, I don’t know how to deconstruct them all. About psychological and fear-based play. About power and control and D/s. About desire and reciprocity and moving beyond what’s familiar, what’s comfortable, what’s easy. About sinking into desire, about communicating desire, about recognizing conversations that will inevitably happen (but this is not the time). It’s been a building, cumulative thing that I’ve been teasing out, slowly, and with moderate levels of success.
I’m allowing this to remain abstract so that I can tease apart the theoretical, have a firm foundation of understanding before diving into specifics. Because specifics mean saying things I’m not sure I’m ready to say. That means conversations I’m not sure I’m ready to have.
I’ve been down this road before, played around in these thought pools before. Back then, it was grappling with my feelings on CNC, something I felt an immense amount of shame about (but then again, back then, my understanding of CNC was restricted to rape fantasies. Perhaps I’m more comfortable now, but my understanding of what falls under CNC is also significantly broader as my understanding of “consent” changed.) But these swirls of thoughts are related to that, because I’m not sure I ever really dealt with my relationship with force, coercion, power, control. I’m not sure I ever really tackled the complexities of those desires; I wrapped them up in a safe, comfortable bow and focused on other aspects of CNC besides rape, but they didn’t go away just because I decided to turn my attention elsewhere.
If anything, they just get stronger. Because scarcity, obsession.
Example: longstanding fantasy: getting drugged without my prior knowledge that that’s what is happening, with hidden cameras to capture whatever happens while I’m in that state. Preferably something that doesn’t cause amnesia; I want to remember. I just don’t want to know it’s happening.
Let’s talk about that in the context of CNC. Also in the context of coercion, power, control. Or, I could do what I usually do, which is poke it with a stick and then run away and hope it goes away.
The problem with identifying desires- particularly complicated or loaded ones- is that once I can name them, I want to do something with them, and I don’t have a lot of places to be able to explore those things. When they just sit, they feel stagnant and start to build up pressure. I start feeling weird about having them- like they are inherently fucked up beyond the normal scopes of fucked up because I can’t find a way to exorcise them. So I lock them down in a tight little box, stuff my fingers in my ears and go, “lalalalalalalalalalalaaaaaaaaaaa” until I can forget that they are there, and they sit quietly for awhile.
For awhile. But they come back around. They always come back around.
So here we are again. Complicated feelings building back up and I don’t know how to expel them, or where. The dynamics I have, the ones I attract and build, aren’t made for these things.
Mmmm. I’m not sure if that’s entirely true. But it’s true enough.
Well. It’s not that they aren’t made for these things. Some of it is lack of interest on someone else’s part (and I work best in organic growth, so forcing it is never going to work). Some of it is hard conversations, asking for a shift or an intentional building of something that might change the equitable dynamics already present. But a lot of it is, I don’t know how to ask for these things. Beyond my usual panic at asking for things that I want, I don’t know how to ask for things that cause shifts in a relationship. Beyond the singular, in-this-moment want, I don’t know how to grapple with, address, or in any capacity bring up conversations on overarching relationship dynamics.
Because what’s safe is to stay where we are. What’s safe to to maintain what we have done because we know it works. It’s easier to quiet that part of me that says, “Hey… you know you want this thing, right?” than it is to look someone else in the eye and say, “Hey… I’ve been thinking about this thing…” Or just doing the thing.
Ugh. Sometimes this feels like a broken record ramble, but there is something in all of this that I need to find, and identify, and name. There are bubbles rising up, specific things that I know I want to play with, and I’m trying to just sit with those. There are images that pop up in my brain that are so breathtakingly beautiful that I literally fall over. There is something here, in this, for me, somehow, something that is hiding in all these tangled up thoughts and feelings.
Or maybe I’m just refusing to look at it, getting distracted by all these tangled up thoughts and feelings.
There’s that writing I have tucked away that I can’t make myself put out into the world. That screenshot I can’t make myself send. That sentence that plays over and over in my mind that I can’t make myself do anything with. That question I want to ask but can’t find the right way to frame it. Because right now is not the time. These things will be just as true down the road as they are now; these are all things that will hold (and if they aren’t, then it’s not worth the conversation now anyway).
But they hold heavy, and I feel them viscerally. This is the work I need to be doing right now. This is important, and it matters, and I don’t want to shut it down and run away from it (again) because there is no such thing as a convenient time to dance with your demons. And maybe, just maybe, part of this work is learning to hold it. Own it, recognize it, acknowledge it, and hold it.
And recognize that, when the time comes, you’re going to have to let the words out, say the hard things, ask the hard questions, and hear the hard answers. Because sometimes, it is harder- much, much harder- to get what you want.
Monomaniacism 