Held by Hurt, Until I’m Not
There are moments I don’t just fall into shame—I choose it. The last time, it was in a scene where I forgot to say “sir” when I was supposed to. It wasn’t rebellion. It wasn’t playful. There wasn’t enough closeness between us for that. What came instead was a flush—hot, fast, and disorienting—that filled my cheeks and emptied the rest of me. Shame pulls me out of my body, but pain brings me back. As he made me start counting from one again, each strike felt like a tether: a sting, a thud, a return. The mistake echoed, but so did the rhythm. And somehow, in that rhythm, the shame didn’t just punish me—it placed me.
I carry a lot of shame. It’s threaded through so many parts of me that it stops feeling like a pattern and starts feeling like a presence—always there, humming under the surface. Shame is dizzying. When it hits, I sometimes dissociate, slip sideways, get lost. The difference now is that I’ve learned how to tether myself—or let someone else do it. Impact. A voice. A rule being enforced. Pain has become one of the only things that can pull me back. There’s something deeply seductive about being put in my place, especially when that place is clear and earned and unshakable. Shame gives me discipline. It gives me assurance. But there’s always the risk: what if the scene ends before I find my way back?
There’s a reason shame can feel like a high. It hits like heat—sharp, bright, all-consuming—and then leaves behind something almost tender. The same stress chemicals that flood the body in moments of overwhelm, like cortisol, can heighten sensation and sharpen focus. For some people, that’s distress. For me, it’s more like a pulse I can trace. Sometimes I think I’ve trained my body to seek that edge: the blur of humiliation, the ache of being wrong, the sting that says yes, this is real. Shame brings clarity. It tells me exactly where I stand. And when I’m already floating, that can feel like being touched down. Add repetition—especially in scenes that echo older wounds—and it becomes more than a reaction. It becomes a ritual. A craving. A choice I keep making with my whole body.
But shame doesn’t always stay where I want it. There are scenes that end before I’ve come down, where the thud of a paddle or the sharpness of correction doesn’t quite stitch me closed. And that’s when it turns. Shame lingers like a hangover—thick, dull, crawling. I start rereading everything: what I said, how I sounded, whether I deserved the tenderness I wanted but didn’t ask for. There’s a silence that follows those scenes that feels louder than anything that happened during. If no one names the shame, if no one tells me I’m still good, still wanted, I assume I’m not. I remember once curling into a ball on the couch afterward—knees tucked, breath shallow, just trying to stay in my body. I didn’t feel alright. I didn’t know what I needed, only that I needed something. And it took me a long time to soothe myself back into stillness.
I’m learning to name it faster now. To recognize the moment when shame stops feeling like structure and starts feeling like punishment. When the sting doesn’t clear the static, it just deepens it. I still find myself craving that sharp, clarifying pain—still letting certain dynamics echo things I haven’t fully healed. But I’m not inside it blindly anymore. I can feel when I’m reaching for shame instead of softness. I can feel when I want to be punished more than I want to be held. And maybe that’s the shift: not avoiding the craving, but seeing it for what it is. A pattern. A pull. A bruise I keep touching—not to suffer, but to understand where it still hurts.
