Edvin
He told me to go outside and search the garden. He said I was looking for a handful of small smooth pebbles. He told me to find at least six and I did. I brought them inside. I sat them on the kitchen counter and waited for him to tell me what to do next. I'm like any girl. I've always got my phone. But since he came, my phone has become something very different to me. My phone is a trip to the movies instead of school. My phone is an afternoon at the mall with birthday money. It's Christmas. My phone is a holiday away from all the other days of tedium and carbon copies. He has wrapped me in happiness. He sends me happiness one character at a time until they pile up into words and sentences. The notification that blinks and rings. It’s the announcement of happiness like an angel playing a horn with the breath of something magical. His words are magical to me. And now he is telling me that I should take the stones and place them in my shoes and go for a very long walk. I'm to walk up to the shopping center where I normally drive daily, but now the trip will be torturous with the pebbles in my shoes. And every step is to remind me that he is real. He is not just a text message. The pain is real. And the pain belongs to him. And I don't think I can breathe. I put the pebbles in my shoes like I'm dropping pennies in a fountain, and each pebble is a wish that will shortly come true.
I walk the strange pathway that many women walk. I am simultaneously coveted and targeted by the lust of strangers exactly while I fill in all the corners and the cracks of my mind with doubt and contempt for my beauty. I think it's hard for men to imagine what that's like. I don't think men have any experiences in their lives that are completely incompatible while also being perfectly married together. It's a reality that you have to step around or else you'll never get anything done. But it's a reality nonetheless. And you live it and you breathe it and you hear it whisper bitter words as you walk by. You feel it stuffing you in a bag of eyes that never shut. And if you lose yourself you can easily suffocate. You can easily forget how to breathe. So when there is one who approaches you with a different type of attention that he will to bind you, he will certainly cut through. He is sharp and made of steel. He knows that I suffer and he's glad. There's no Superman in him. There's no attempt to pull me from the burning buildings. He says he likes the way my skin looks when it's charred. He likes my injuries. Now that's something new. That's not something I've heard before. That's not something they call out at you when you walk down the street. He doesn't shout. He's the only one who makes me want to turn my head. And in this world of irony and juxtaposition, I find that I like the shame I feel when he stares at me. I will gladly climb into the bag in which he promises to keep me still.
How did he get it open? How did he find a way to open up the part of me that I keep tightly sealed? I mean I'm adept at hiding it by this point. It's a simple thing. You let them see the things that they want to see, and they won't bother looking for anything else. But he is different. He found it all. It was as if every word I said became DNA proof of who I am. And after I'd spoken for just a little while, he was able to unravel me. To reveal me. And then there was nothing else for me to do but to tell him all the details. And as I told him the stories of abuse, I realized that I liked telling him the stories of abuse. They're my stories after all. He didn't feel sorry for me. He seemed to enjoy the stories. And that made me want to tell him more. And that made me happy to tell him more. The more he was turned on by my stories of abuse, the easier it was for me to admit that I was, too.
What a thrill. What a shock. I am standing here in the middle of my kitchen making dinner for myself, but I am in the middle of something more intimate than any sex I've ever had. Over the last several weeks, he has directed me and helped me to explore and to find things about myself that I always used to hate. I would pretend they were enemies. And now I feel like someone bound to a wheelchair who feels the weightlessness of outer space. I am in orbit. I am walking again. I am standing naked in my kitchen, following the simple direction that “everything should bring you pleasure.” And I am using anything to make that statement come true. And he is there. Not here. But there. But he might as well be here. His words are here. His rules are here. And because his words are here, I am his. I am listening. I am beginning to see that pleasure should be the constant. To be unhappy can the fiction. To feel delight can be the promise. I feel it because he tells me. I feel it because he tells me. And no matter where I'm standing I am sitting by his feet. Because he is the word that I am living. And the only rule that makes sense now is bliss.
Can you share love? It makes sense. I certainly feel there's a certain freedom to letting go of selfishness. He says he loves me. How could he not? After what I have experienced by following him, how could he not love me? He twisted the darkness that surrounded me for ages and showed me how the darkness could be a warm bath. It could be a cold drink. It could be his long hands inside of me going wherever they wanted to go. With him, my darkness became a language. For the first time ever I could speak it and it made sense. And another pair of ears would hear it, and I would feel like I was human again. I hadn't felt human for such a long time before the darkness ever became a permanent part of my body. It's like I learned how to dance with him. And when I look in the mirror, I am watching a movie, and I am dancing as well as any starlet ever has. So why would I mind if he were to dance with others? They have darkness. They walk that line everyday as well. They are filled with rage and shame that all gets held back by this unexplainable desire to please. He can do for them what he has done for me. And so he tells me that he does. He tells me that while he tells me that he loves me. He tells me to share his love. And I spin like Ginger Rogers when she was practicing her dances alone.
The remarkable thing about submission is that it can make you feel so free. I am free. I submit, and I am free. It's something I do. It's not a punishment. Even the punishments are not punishments because they are mine. It happens because I want them to happen and they won't happen if I don't. I've never been treated more brutally in my life. I've never had someone be more forceful, and yet I've never had this much power either. Because I know when things are at their worst, everything ends with the word from me. He exists because I exist. Every last little amazing thing he does, he can only do because I'm here. Without me he has nothing. This is what he tells me. It's taking me some time to see it, but I see it now. I have been in a cage for him. I have been degraded by him. I have been his to use whenever he wanted however he wanted. There are strangers on the street with violence woven into them that couldn't hurt me as much as he has. And all of it has been with my consent. And no matter how creative he is or how fearful or fierce or commanding or brutal, if I take a breath and release the air with the sound of the word we both know, everything will stop. What other greater power is there? Where else can one person use one word to stop her own destruction? When his sentences first started to find their way like fingers into the tender parts of me, I thought he had taken control. And now I can see that he is inside me by like any vampire. if I don't summon him, he has to go away. I am the garlic and the cross and the silver bullet. I am the sharpened wooden stake. And for the first time, the demon in my life is there by invitation only.
What is it when you discover that the latch is actually broken? What is that feeling? What does it mean? This gets used often as a metaphor, but the significance of Pandora's jar being opened is real. I know because I can feel it. It feels like a trick was played on me, and every single thing that flies out of the jar shatters me. It flies over me like a shadow, and I am left with scars. I am left with marks. I'm left with realizations that I never thought I would have to realize. I thought they were secure. I thought they were locked up. But here I am living in a world where desire has become the breathing and the blood flow and the sun up and sundown. My thoughts are loose. My dreams are all free. And I see things and want things that I know are dangerous to see and want. But I can't go back. None of it will go back. Misery and evil. That's what they said was in the jar. But for me the things that come out don't feel miserable or evil. It's just the consequences. It's what others say when they see these things flying over me. When they hear me speak the language of the shadow that now wants me to be true and to feel true feelings and to let my desires be what they are. You see, what came out of the jar for me was truth. And in many ways that's worse than evil. Because the truth can make you stand out. Other people who are evil will want to destroy you. Because who likes the truth? Yes it would be easier If I was filled with evil because then I could just fit in with everyone else. But instead I'm standing here realizing that my shadow has a different shape than the one that I thought it had. Less curvy. Not so soft. There are rough edges to my shadow and they're always fuzzy. And now that the truth is the one that's molesting me, I can see myself for the first time ever.
The funny thing about devotion is that it's alive. You think it should be hard like mahogany or stone. It should be a short word like “vow,” or a heavy word like “promise.” But it's not. Devotion is slippery. It's a sound you hear when you're quiet at night and the city noises come from all different places. And you think you can identify what each sound is, but after a while it's almost like you can't hear anything at all. Devotion becomes invisible. It becomes something that melts into your skin. It binds you. And you don't even see it anymore. You just feel it. But when you try to apply it to the one thing that you thought was for certain, it changes quickly. It changes inside of you. And then you look up and you're staring at a different sun. And there's no vow. There's no promise. There's nothing hard like mahogany or a brick or letting go. And then there's a new face and a new pair of lips and a new voice. Even though he told you that he would share his love, he did not tell you to share yours. Did he carefully slide his hands inside of you, or are those your hands ever inside of him? With his consent? Devote yourself to you, little one. Let whatever love you want come to you. I think I will.
Now I know that I belong to him, but do I belong to every word he speaks? Do I belong to every smirk or smile? Do I belong to all the air he drops into the room with all the words that he says? Because that's a lot of air even in this small room. Those are a lot of words. Do I belong to every flex of his muscle? Every thought in his head? Every stare that he gives me? Even the stares that remind me of the stares from the strangers in the streets who don't know me or love me but would possess me if they could? Because sometimes his stares are like their stares. They didn't used to be. At least I didn't think they were. And then I look at photographs, and I see that he has the same face now that he had back then. And once upon a time I thought that everything he said or did was a commandment. I believed it was a tornado. An eclipse. It was something to be marveled at. It was something to be accepted. I found it thrilling. I loved it. But like something carved into a stone from long ago, some of his words aren't as clear as they used to be. They're not as crisp. Not as sharp. And I don't want to listen to all of them anymore. So I say no. And he's dismayed. He's upset. He understands I have the right to say no. That's what consent is all about. But he doesn't understand how I can say no to something now that I used to say yes to. What happened? He wants to know. I hesitate to tell him. It’s time. Time is what happened. One day I will be dust. One day he will be dust. Time happens. And while he would say to me, look on my works and despair, I don't tremble the way I used to. I enjoy. But I don't tremble. I can see the colossus is melting.
“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away” -Shelley
What is me? What am I? I used to ponder what it would be to be normal. I used to wonder what it would be like if the things that happened to me had not happened. I wanted to be a normal daughter for my parents. I wanted to be a normal sister. Even for my uncle who did the terrible things, what would life have been like if I had just been his niece? Maybe he would have chosen one of my sisters instead of choosing me. It's a terrible thought because I know I should not wish such things on my sisters. That's also a terrible thought because it was mine. It belonged to me. I had that place with him. And I think I'm less concerned about their harm or trauma than I am about the disturbing desire to keep him to myself. I don't know what it's like to undefine myself. This is who I am. I am the girl who suffered. And all the misery that followed came from that experience, but all of that misery is me. I am all the diagnosis. I'm the one they think should be locked up. What happens if I'm not that? Who would I be? Would I have tried to kill myself twice? Would I have been locked up three times? Would I hate my family the way I hate them now because all they want is to scrub this family clean? I don't know what it would be like to love my father and mother the way my sisters love them. I don't know what it would be like not to be jealous of all of the people who got through their childhood untouched. I don't know if I actually would want that. How could I? How could I know that? This new man has come to me and has obviously taken advantage of who I am. And I've loved it. Not since my uncle have I felt this way. It's freeing. This is the real freedom. To take the things that hurt you the most and to hug them tightly and say "I'm glad you are here." I don't know what else to say because I never had the strength to say anything before. And now I can speak. And now I know.
I know.
If ever there was a paradox that was more annoying, it's the one about the freedom of submission. If you give yourself to God, he will free you of your sin. Isn't that convenient. What an amazing deity to come up with something so clever and so self-serving. Who wouldn't want others to do that? Who wouldn't want others to submit themselves in order to be free? I felt it. I have to admit that I felt the freedom. For the first time in my life, the things that had destroyed me became the things that I could control. I could sit with him and tell him my pain, and he could help me turn it into pleasure. And I thought he was a magician. I thought it was magic. What else could it be? Years of shame and fear and pain all seemed to turn into pleasure in his hands. He would become every instrument that ever hurt me, and then he would hurt me. And I would love it. And I thought and I thought. Submission equals freedom? It did seem to be true. To belong to him meant that I was free. It was magic. And like any magic trick, at some point you have to just let go. You have to enjoy the magic of it. But then there comes a time when maybe you want to figure it out. You want to find out how they made the tiger disappear. You want to find out how they know you have a five-of-diamonds. How did they levitate right in front of you? And that's what I did with this magician of mine. How did he do it? He listened. He listened to me when I spoke. He heard my story. He heard everything in my voice. He could hear that the pain of my past was also a passion for me. Like all magic tricks, it's about sleight of hand. It's about what the audience. It's about using what the audience wants to believe to make them believe it. He wasn't a cruel magician, but it was a magic trick. Because everything I experienced actually came from me. I am indebted to him. I thank him, but now I know the truth. And every time he tries his magic tricks now, I can see how he's doing it. I know he’s palming an ace. It's disappointing. He unlocked me. He freed me. And instead of perching on his hand or his shoulder, I am flying to another land. I am flying to be with other birds. I'm not going to stay here with him. The real magic trick is that he made me disappear, but I'm the one who’s making me free.