From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 16

Content Warning: References to childhood physical abuse, choking, coercive control, dissociation, BDSM, emotional manipulation, and abandonment trauma.

I liked him well enough. He was a bit crazed like me. I found him relatable in that he could be incredibly psychopathic, and at the time I was viewing myself as potentially fucked up enough to be so myself.

Turns out numbness and a purely evil tongue when triggered does not make a psychopath, just a hurt girl dealing with her own complex trauma responses. I have tons of empathy and go numb and into survival fighting when triggered.

It had been how I coped, trying to put myself in other people’s places to understand them and relate so that I didn’t have to carry more pain over how willfully and diligently they chose to hurt the shit out of me.

But I’m no victim. I clap back.

The last time I clapped back at my father when I was younger, his rage pinned me to the wall, his forearm choking me as he screamed red an inch from my face. He apparently was teaching me never to stand up for myself against his authority.

I blacked out. I still wonder if I was choked out or had I just dissociated. Probably both.

Clapping back at my ex Dom meant he’d punish me until I was exhausted and just wanted it to stop. Assailing me with criticism. Threatening me he’d leave, which was my biggest trigger. Abandonment wounds for the win.

He’d actually leave too, which was a pain I cannot yet put to words. I fought and kept fighting it and then submitted. At least I fought. That’s what I held onto to comfort myself after.

Otherwise though, I loved the BDSM.

-Rogue