Ancilla's Dirty Diary: "How to break a person." (30/09/2021)

Last night I learnt how one could really break a person. It's been a week of endless cruelty, and that's okay, some weeks are like that. Whenever I say cruelty I think people understand something different than what I am really saying. I don't mean that him hurting me or restraining me or any of that is cruelty. That's just sadism. It's not that. Hurting me is the action, but cruelty is the the manner of his conduct. Sadism is when takes a belt and goes after me, cruelty is when he won't let me express my pain in any way. Sadism is when he gets between my legs and tries to shove his hand inside me like a savage, cruelty is when he still fucks me after that, just because he knows I already hurt. Sadism is when he welts my back and thighs and legs, cruelty is when I reach out for comfort during, and he swats my hand away like a fly, warning me about trying to touch him. Cruelty is when he knows I am about to cry, and he tells me he'll beat me harder if I do. It's when I tell him the honest truth about how much I hurt, and he tells me to shut up, and accuses me of weakness. It's when he wrecks me completely, and then refuses to show me any care.

He's been so cruel. Things have been evolving between us for a while, the last few of years have really been different than anything I've ever experienced in my life before. The truth is that while I'm immensely comfortable with being into pain and violence, I haven't always been so comfortable admitting that I actually wish to give up control. I've always been very judgemental of the fact that I don't just want to be a punching bag, I want to be his slave, and not in the way that I have little choice in the matter (like it was with my previous long-term partner), but in the way that I actively, and enthusiastically embody that role. I've done it for a while, but I've also made sure to be quite dismissive of it. To hide the actual intensity of my feelings about it. To make fun of it (which I still do, and will continue to do, to make sure I retain a balanced perspective on life). But all that communication is outward, inside me I have always known what I want, and who I am. I resisted it because it felt..wrong, over the top, juvenile, maybe even irresponsible, and definitely unnecessary. I resisted it because it was hard to see myself as this person. As much as I may love who I am with, it is still hard to trust people in the "I'll be whatever you want me to be" way. It's much easier if you are a part of the planning committee when you're curating the experience that tells you so. It's also much easier to never be seen displaying sincerity. Sincerity is the most shameful state I can imagine.

Yet it's all just a bunch of lies, because I am sincere. I do want to be whoever he wants me to be. I wish to serve, obey and be invalidated. I want to be invisible and useful. It was just hard to commit to anything more than "this gets me off" because that meant I care from places other than my cunt. I feel from places other than my cunt. A few years ago, though, I decided to let my self-consciousness about this go. It seemed childish because I was already doing everything I said I didn't ever want to do, but I was still pretending I was above it somehow. I figured I may as well embrace it and accept it about myself. I owe it to my story to see what happens here. And then things changed between us. We're so accustomed to thinking the best phase of our relationships happens in the beginning, and to fear any change in that state, but I have never bought that. The beginning of a relationship is like the beginning of any new class, skill or hobby. You're most excited about it, but you're also the least skilled at it. I am glad that changed, and we did, and how we interact with each other did too. I'd rather always go where life is taking me, than try to hold on to something because it once made me happy or I once thought that is who I was. I am tired of the phrase "things changed between us" being seen immediately as negative or dire.

Things did change between us. He became much less considerate of me, and expected I would rise to that without complaint. I learnt to do things his way, which for me, I think, was a true break in my character. I run the show. I run every show. If I'm in a room, it's my room now. If I'm part of a situation, I got it, I'll handle it, and please just stay out of my way. I decide what happens to me, to a great extent, even to the extent of trauma. I let go of the idea that I deserve and have the right to pleasure or whatever I desire simply by virtue of being in a loving relationship. I learnt not to speak, which if you know me at all, would seem impossible, but sometimes it doesn't matter how I explain something, and it doesn't matter why I didn't do something, just that I didn't. It doesn't matter if I think I did something well, and I don't get to explain it if he thinks I didn't. I made my peace with the fact that sometimes my words, and my ideas, are irrelevant. A distance appeared between the two of us, and not the bad kind of distance where you no longer understand one another or how to communicate, a distance in terms of who we are, it's best expressed by the sentiment that he touches me, I don't touch him. Some unspoken, and sometimes very explicitly spoken, set of rules began to govern our communication with one another. As a human being, I changed a lot in the last four years, but as a couple, we changed a lot more, I think.

The most stark difference was the escalation of cruelty. He's always been mean, but this is not that. This message was different. It wasn't "I don't give a fuck," it was "I know exactly how much I am hurting you, and I expect you to take all of it and say nothing nor ask for anything". Everything became less of a suggestion after that. Every version of a safeword we ever had, not that we had a concrete one anyway, but before then he usually responded to me begging for mercy or calling him daddy, he stopped doing that. He stops when he wants to stop now (and sometimes that even means he stops before I want to) and I trust that he knows what he is doing. He does what he wants now, and I am rarely ever part of the decision-making process. It was debilitating for a while, now it just feels like my normal life. He's a lot meaner to me in general now, a lot more demanding (and very comfortable being so, and when I compare it to years ago when he was uncomfortable with me even making his coffee, it's insane), there is very little wiggle room, and there are literally no excuses. He has no shame about saying routinely, and with relish, that he expects some kind of total and absolute perfection from me, and he won't validate it, or compliment me, but he will destroy me if I slip even slightly.

It sounds very dire but it is actually the most intense intimacy I ever experienced in a relationship. Just that there are moments when it's gut-wrenching. Like last night. Something else that really changed between us over the last few years is how we have sex with each other, and by sex I mean, penetrative (PIV) sex. It's so dispassionate, it's almost cold. It's completely transactional, and almost completely devoid of intimacy. I can still have passionate sex with other people, I think, but I can't do it with him anymore. On a few, rare occasions when it's not like that, it's very tender and loving, and those moments are so rare. I am not kidding when I say that until last night, it had been *years* since he got on top of me to fuck me. I've been asking for it, with more frequency in the last few months, and mostly in moments when the storm is completely over. It's hard not to feel like you deserve some sexual tenderness at some point. He's been ignoring my request for months and months, he hears it or reads it, and then says nothing. Leaving me thinking that maybe, just maybe, later, he'll take me in his arms and let me feel the weight of him on top of me, and kiss me, and hold me while he fucks me. It's hard to ask for this, and it gets harder each time he rejects the request, but last night it felt like he wouldn't.

As I said, he's been horrible to me all week. He's been "show me exactly where it hurts so I can hurt you more in that exact spot" horrible. I've been going above and beyond to please him, and all he's been doing is looking for specks of dust on my tableau of perfection, and then making me start over. He's been horribly cruel. So horrible I actually found out what comes after two-hours of tears, it's defeat, it's complete and utter resignation. It's the inability to even react anymore. I've been living my life feeling like my gut has twisted in on itself. So last night, when I asked, I was expecting him to say yes. I was tentative in my approach, but sometimes you just know the moment for something is perfect. I knew it was the perfect moment to ask him to please get on top of me, and I wasn't surprised at all, that he said yes. I thought for sure that he understood I was at the end of my rope, and I was, I could cry at the drop of a hat. At a slightly raise voice. At a look. Sometimes the vulnerability feels like having a body composed only of open wounds, there is no chance that nothing will get infected, it's just so easy for the infection to find the weakness when it's all of you.

And so I was ecstatic at the prospect of being able to feel like a person; at the prospect of sex feeling like love, tenderness and pleasure, instead of the cold rough usage of a hole. Except, that's not what he gave me at all. He got on top of me, like I had been begging for months, and he fucked me exactly as he would have if he hadn't. He wouldn't even touch me. He wouldn't kiss me. He wouldn't let me feel any warmth whatsoever. The only difference was that I was on my back instead of bent over on my knees. Whatever fantasy I had concocted about how it would feel when he finally yielded, felt like a child's imagination of a perfect world. It broke me. I shrank visibly in size somehow. And that's really it, that's what really changed between us in the last few years, things never look how I expect them to. I never get what I think I want. He never does things that way I had envisioned. It never feels how I expected it to feel. He gave me what I asked for, but he didn't make me feel loved or even wanted as a woman, and maybe even just because he wanted to show me, once again, that expecting is way too privileged a behaviour for him to allow.

It destroyed me. I cried half the night. But I wouldn't have it any other way. That's the part that's truly gut-wrenching.