The first time I cried with Kristan was not when he was hurting me, but afterwards, when he had stopped. It was the caring, not the cruelty. The tenderness which left me utterly bereft. I sobbed silently as he sat on top of me, so focused on tending my wounds he didn’t quite notice the storm going on below. I told him, afterwards. But there were other times that I’m confident he never knew about.
In the quiet moments after sex I have cried calmly, quietly and completely silently, with my face turned into the pillows to hide the tears which are the only thing that might give me away. It is an effort to still my breathing and swallow sobs. There is a place inside that they are all forced into until my chest feels like it might expand and burst. I bite my cheeks and swallow again. Feel my eyes widen with the effort. Squeeze them shut. It is devastatingly lonely, crying in secret whilst you lie next to someone. There are few things that make me feel so distanced, so utterly alone. Knowing there will be no comfort, no soothing words or touch. And that there is nobody to blame but yourself, when you made the decision to pretend you are not crying, to hide your face. To surreptitiously wipe away tears and turn back with a forced smile and some blithe comment that you’ve rehearsed to sound as normal, as not-crying as possible. To know you chose this, that you cannot let someone see you cry because that is an outcome you cannot control – how they might react. And you are scared. So you cry invisibly and eat your sobs instead.
It happened slowly, after that. The first time was after he made me pretend to be asleep. I am in his arms after he’s come and I’m broken and dazed and it is the first time I do not want to be here, that I do not want to be held by him after sex and the closeness is making everything more wretched. I am convinced that he is still mindfucking me to the point where I believe that him holding me is some cruel form of play, that he knows I want to get away and he is purposefully keeping me there to hurt me. The feeling of him inside me is horrifying, this invasion of the very depths of me and I just want him out of me right now. And it truly is horror because it’s something I usually love, and that feeling of something familiar gone subtly, terribly wrong – it’s panicking me, hard. But I’m too scared to ask him to pull out. So I cry, instead. Maybe two tears before I regain control, make a face and shift my hips in a way which I hope makes my feelings obvious. He pulls out and I pull away. But that was the first time I let myself cry directly in front of him. Eye contact, no attempt to hide. There were so many other, more awful things going on that I think I forgot to keep that part of me back. So he sees me cry.
It is a wet and slippery slope. It happens more often after that. A few tears. Damp cheeks, glistening eyes. But I can’t quite let go. It is so, so hard. When I see people cry, I cry too. That is how I understand seeing sadness. So I cannot fathom that he will want this, will want to deal with it, with me. So I don’t give him the chance. I take that away, in the way that I do.
Then there is the weekend that makes me happier than anything has made me in a long time. I am feeling so much more sure of myself, of the thing that is us, and it is all coziness and warmth and contentedness. I can feel the deep glow and it is banked and bright. And then he does the thing I’ve been hinting at wanting and eventually outright asking for and it is all tumbling away in a whirlwind of angry words and sneering and violence and cold fury that is so awful that it’s somehow both completely wonderful and utterly terrible at the same time. At some point I reach out for him and he prises me hands from his legs and casts me back onto the bed and tells me that I do not deserve to touch him. And he keeps hitting me with the tawse even though it hurts in a very bad way. It is so much. So. Much. And when he has stopped briefly again to talk to me as if I am a thing, a stupid and irritating thing that he is forced to deal with it happens. I am sobbing, properly crying and I have lost control and cannot make myself stop. I don’t even try to hide my face. I am just there, and I’m simultaneously broken and somehow complete and it does not feel like the defeat I thought it would. It is a different animal. And in that moment so am I.
This is SO powerful. The way you describe hiding your tears is so true…it’s something you do to yourself, and it hurts that much worse. The way I read this is that you have become (are becoming?) more comfortable cracking yourself open with him in this way. And I read it as a good thing…I hope that it is. 🙂
Hi Kayla, thanks for commenting! Yes, I think when indulging in the sort of edge play that can end in tears, trust and knowing someone are absolutely invaluable, and that’s definitely been true for us I feel. The longer we’ve been together the easier those things have gotten. Definitely a good thing!