Vulnerability Is The Best Sex Toy.

For a long time I believed that the tendency to go non-verbal and remaining quiet during torture due to an imposition were the same thing. In effect, they lead to the same state, silence. My former partner did not impose silence on me, he did not care whether I screamed or sobbed silently, but more often than not, when he hurt me, I fell into silence. I retreated inside myself and while the mostly-desirable state of pain enabled me to retreat to a desirable state of euphoria, I did not bring him with me, I used it to hide from him.

Let me explain.

I realise now that my silence in response to his assault, both consensual and less-consensual varieties of it, was a trauma-based one. Inside that silence was the resolution that no matter how much he hurt me, I wouldn’t show it. I would pass out before I would admit that he was killing me. I think it was an excusable, if ill-advised use of my ego and pride, to prove to myself or to him, that I was strong, that I would not cower to him, that he could not really hurt me. Inside my silence, was my delusion of invincibility, but more importantly, my decision to deny him my vulnerability. In my unending analysis on the chapter about my ex, I am still figuring out how I could have loved someone so much, and not trusted them at all. Both of these things are true, I understand the temptation to preach about love without trust not being “real” love but I balk at this idea that anything that isn’t healthy, isn’t real. Polyamory has to be perfect to be real. Dominance has to adhere to an arbitrary moral code to be real. Love has to be healthy to be real. I love the ideology behind these statements, I do, but this is not how real-life works. Sometimes real things are terrible for you not because of their nature, but because of how and how much you consume them. Because of who you are. My real love for my former partner was a bad habit, but even within it, I know that trusting him was a shit idea, so I did not expose my vulnerability to him, if he succeeded at forcing it from me, I could do nothing, but I held it from him for as long and as often as I could. In the states that I was most likely to display vulnerability, I went non-verbal so I could hide from him.

It looked remarkably similar to how it looks now when my current partner is hurting me. Honestly, it looks exactly the same, but it’s not. With him, I fall into the silence that he demands of me, but when I do retreat into that state of euphoria, I take him with me. I use it to show myself to him.

Let me explain.

I was not naturally silent in my response to him, when we first got together, I had a world of screaming inside me. I didn’t just want him to know that he was actually hurting me, I wanted to scream my pain at him till it scared him as much as the prospect of being seen scared me. It was the complete opposite of pride, I had been so angry and repressed for so long, I had no room for pride, so I wanted to hurl my pain at him without shame. In a sense, that approach to vulnerability was defensive too, where in one I hid, in the other, I brandished. Where in one I created a lair, in the other, I bared my canines and dared the world to attack my lair. However, in the arduous passage of this process, I came to see how good it felt to admit to my vulnerability. To admit that I could be hurt.

That’s what it is, right?

Vulnerability is the ability to truly embody what you are feeling and allow the world around you, the people around you, to see it and to do whatever they want with that feeling. It’s to exist without defense, yet without fear as well. To be able to accept that people outside of you hold the power to truly impact you in ways you did not curate, you did not plan, you do not control and you did not orchestrate. It’s the ability to accept your emotionality and even your weakness; to admit that you can be hurt, overpowered, even broken. It’s a strange subversion of ego. In my days of keeping my vulnerability hidden, I fetishised and admired that version of myself. The version that was unapproachable. I was cold, a badass masochist, unbreakable, constantly aspiring to something other than human. The heart of my sexuality came from this place of stone-like strength, the world and my lovers beat against me endlessly, but I emerged each time, unaltered by them.

Nowadays, I cannot relate to that version of myself. Now, i fetishize and maybe even admire the ability to be vulnerable because in all the screaming I did in the wake of being sprung free from my ex, I found that what I really wanted from any of this, from kink and power-exchange, was the ability to unabashedly offer myself up for alteration. The idea of strength in silence was a wishful dream, it didn’t make me strong to suffer in silence, it didn’t make my suffering personal to pretend it didn’t exist. It didn’t make his impact on me any less or more, to ensure he never saw it. With my current partner, I learnt something I didn’t think I was interested in learning, I learnt to emote my sexuality. To put it in words, but more importantly, present it as admittance.

I want this. I do not want this. This feels good. This feels terrible. You are making me feel good. You are making me feel horrible.

Very simple words. Extremely easy sentences to make, but very difficult to say out loud, because ultimately it leads to really exposing who you are, even the parts that make you ashamed, the parts that you want to keep safe from harm, the bits you wished wouldn’t exist. These simple sentences meant admitting to the fabric of who I am, and letting him interact with all of them without erecting a fortress. Inside my vulnerability was the confession that I really did wish to adhere to a construct, a condition, that wasn’t of my creation. I will dance around using the word “submit” as much as possible, but you know what I mean, to give yourself to another person in the way that they actually hold the power to control not just your behaviour, but how you feel, is what it feels like to submit, or to love. They feel like the same thing sometimes.

From my vulnerability, he wanted my silence. Upon seeing exactly and entirely everything I went through in response to him, he wanted me to subvert the choice, the response, even the reflex to make myself heard. My silence is not an act of pride now, it’s not borne of my ego, nor does it come from the need to hide or protect myself. It comes from knowing that he knows, he can see everything I am going through and I want him to do with that exactly as he pleases. He can touch me a little and hurt me a lot. I can exist as a raw, aching nerve, as a volatile element begging for interaction. I can admit I want to be subverted, I can long for surrender. Vulnerability taught me to live without defence, to leave my borders unmanned and believe I will be okay, even though the man I love is going to gut me to make himself come.

That last part is just fucking hot.