Pleasureless Pain

Lilith and I are done. I am still in a quasi-relationship with G, her non-Domme personality, but there is no garentee that will last past morning, much less the next time we talk.

I no longer wear her collar. The contract that affixed it was aptly described as “in tatters.” She blames me exclusively. I cannot see singular fault in either of us, but rather see it as the fault of us both.

I feel like this has been a long time in coming, but the recent introduction of a serious catalyst has advanced events to this point, which may be beyond that of no return.

In the last week of her school year, Lilith/G became interested in a friend of mine from high school. D would be eccentric, but he’s not rich. He has a broad base of knowledge, one beyond my own on many topics, a quirky sense of humor, a twisted world view. In short, he is someone that she can converse with for long periods of time to a depth that was impossible with me. If she and I were soul mates, I once joked, she and he were mind-mates.

She approached me with the idea that she could begin dating him in a semi-casual way, mostly for intellectual stimulation. I was fine with the idea. Thanks in part to my own error, and in part to gods alone know what else, she became, and continued to grow, increasingly fixated with the idea of taking him on as a full boyfriend, sex and all. I was not, am not, ok with this idea in the slightest. We fought about it for more than a week, two or three hours a day, focusing on very little else. I tried desperately to find a compromise, proposing any number of intervening stages of intimacy and relationship between the two of them, in a desperate hope to hold her short of fucking him. It hurt, it damn near killed me, to suggest an acceptance of many of the things I did, but I was willing to give up my personal levels of comfort to try to keep things steady. She, however, seemed fixated on the idea of fucking him, and suggested, though never in direct wordings, that to allow her anything less was to demand that she give up her entire desire and wish, making it sound like I was asking her to completely ignore anything she wanted on the subject.

Less than two weeks ago, she decided we should go “on break,” to settle our own lives and issues before worrying about a relationship. At first, she suggested it last until the end of the summer. By the end of the conversation, she had decided that it would last until we’re living in the same state, which at bare minimum will be more than two years from now. I’m beginning to believe that it should have all ended right then.

The next night, she wanted to get back together, saying that being without me, not knowing I was hers and she was mine, was too painful. I could not do it; I knew that if we re-started a long distance relationship, without hope of seeing each other for months, if not nearly a year, would be foolish, would simply lead to an increase of pain and problems, and a rapid second break, which would likely prove permanent. Two days after that, I began to lose the numbness I had built up, and, faced with mutual and profound pain, we decided to begin a much more casual seeming relationship, one in which we worked on our issues but focused primarily on our own lives. Throughout this, she was working increasingly on her relationship with D, having no intention of ending it or changing it, nor, I suspect, of holding to any of the guidelines we had never quite agreed to anyway. It seemed horribly hyppocritical to me, that she be demanding that I wait for her, that I don’t date anyone, much less have any sort of intimacy with anyone, unless I was positive they would utterly replace her in my heart and be revealed as the one I want to spend my life with, while at the same time she was not only planning, but telling me about and asking me to help with, her breaking, controlling, and eventual fucking of one of the few friends I have left.

Throughout it all, she has been pushing that I need to become a full adult, that I need to take charge of my own life, make my own decisions, and stop letting, or perhaps making, someone else take control of it. At the same time, I feel I’ve been having to justify practically my every action to her.

The relationship as it was re-entered was intended to be looser, less restrictive, lighter commitment and no worries, but I feel like it’s been, in many ways, more taxing, trying, and (negatively) labor intensive than we ever were, even under the strictest of contracts.

Something needs to change, either in life, or us. Maybe there’s something she hasn’t told me. Surely she’ll think I’m wrong or immature on many counts. Certainly my views, opinions, and needs, differ from hers.

Something needs to change, because I’m closer to walking away than I have ever been.

Adrift in a twisted mind

On Sunday night, I thought I was going to jail. Never mind why.

In my despair and apathy, I snapped back at something Lilith said, and gave her permission (I know it sounds odd, a slave giving his Mistress permission, but she respects my views and feelings on serious issues) to find physical comfort somewhere other than with me. She protested, even though it is something she needs and wants, simply because she was afraid of what it would do to us. On a self-loathing impulse, I persisted, and over the remainder of the evening and a good bit of Monday morning, argued my point and pushed permission. As is scarily frequent with us, we both convinced the other of our point at the same time, and wound up basically having the argument in reverse. We have still not reached a definitive solution, but have found a workable answer. For now.

I am usually a fairly stable person. When I decide on something, it is usually because I have given it enough careful consideration not to regret it, or because I act on impulse, and my gut feelings do not oft lead me astray. In this issue, however, I am seriously bi-polar. In one moment I can completely understand why it would be good for her and accept it, and in the next I can hardly consider the idea without feeling nauseated.

I don’t know what to do.

I have a series of feeling-driven reasons why it both would and would not be acceptable, but Lilith works less with feelings and more with reason, especially in this situation. I explained myself, and my reasons, to her this evening on the phone, and she accepted them, even though the feelings, and logic behind them, were so twisted that I’m sure they did not make as much sense to her as they do to me. Throughout the conversation, she was texting with D, which I was ok with. Then he invited her over. His roommate left at noon.

It’s not that I suspect anything is going to happen. It’s not that I’m positive I’d be bothered if something did. It’s not that I feel abandoned, although I wish I had gotten to talk to her longer.

It’s simply that I don’t know.

I have never been this torn on an issue, never changed my mind this many times, nor this sporadically, without reaching some definitive answer. I’m uncomfortable with my indecision, with my inability to fully and completely commit myself one way or another, and put this state of limbo behind us.

I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know what to say about things

So… Far too much has happened since my last post for me to even begin to describe, or make sense, of most of it.

I plan to start where things began making some semblance of sense again.

I lost my collar for the second time in early March 2008. It was completely and utterly my fault, and I understood why it happened, and I counted myself extremely lucky that I did not lose Lilith in the same traumatic event.

It was the most painful thing that has ever happened to me. I fully and finally came to understand the collar, what it meant, and how it should be treated, barely an hour after I lost it, and with it, a huge part of myself. I cannot begin to describe how lost I felt, how naked, without the chain and lock around my neck. Since December, I had not been without it for longer than it took me to take a shower, and it was gone from me.

I saw Lilith twice while we were together without a contract in place. For the first time in about 10 months, we spent two weekends in a row together, and they were wonderful. We departed, somewhat, from the BD/SM that had previously defined us, and found a beauty in it. We also spent a lot of time exploring the issues of gender in our relationship.

To all outside appearances, we are a heterosexual couple. Lilith has all the female bits, I have the male, so in the sense of anatomy, we are female and male. Mentally, however, it becomes much harder to describe. Neither of us feel any kinship to, or association with, our anatomic gender. Speaking for myself, I do not think like an average “guy,” and do not consider myself one of them. I have always been more comfortable with girls than boys, and with a few noted exceptions, my childhood friends, both real and imaginary, were always female, to the point where I was cast out of elementary and middle school society. Even when I was attending an all male high school, I felt, generally, closer to the girls I knew outside of school. I am a feminist sympathizer, and feel disgusted by the average male talk about strip clubs, sleeping around, and various other forms of degradation that pass as normal in this society. Through discussion with Lilith, both about her own gender identification and her WST and Sociology classes, and my own research, I have come to realize that I am Trans-Gender, or perhaps more appropriately, Bi-Gender.

Since Lilith has come to similar realizations, and we are both bi-sexual, our actual relationship status changes day to day, or even hour to hour. There are times when we are a heterosexual couple, but just as many when we would be more accurately described as homosexuals, lesbians, or simply a pair of trans-genders. Even when we can be described as hetero, there are times when she is acting as the male partner, and I am the female.

This realization, and a few others, lead to us beginning to play around with the idea of anal sex, with me being the one penetrated. The second of our two weekends in March was the first time Lilith fingered me, rather than the other way around. I loved it.

With the backstory in place, we reach the most recent weekend Lilith and I enjoyed.

As I couldn’t get out of work, and thus was unable to get to her before 8pm on a Friday, we decided to get a hotel room for Saturday night. We woke up on Saturday and, after a brief interaction with her roommates, got the hell out of her apartment. We passed most of the morning in the closest thing her hometown has to a Bohemian district, including a lot of time in sex shops, before checking into the hotel at almost the earliest possible time. Although we were not in strict contract at the time, and I did not have my collar, we had been leaning more and more back towards a D/s relationship, and it showed in our sex. I loved submitting fully to her again, and since we felt totally unrestricted by anything that usually disturbs us, we were able to work our way through everything we thought of, mostly as we thought of it. I believe it was the best sex we’ve had.

In the week leading up to the visit, we had both watched “Sweeney Todd” a (perhaps unhealthily) large number of times, and were seriously craving blood. We decided that, without the collar, we would simply engage in fear play, and Lilith once again wielded the knife that broke me in February. There’s something about that knife. I was in deep subspace by the time she first cut me, and the pain was beautiful. I had almost forgotten how much I love it. Four bleeding lines, none less than an inch long, were lain across my chest; some of the blood she licked off of me, some she smeared across her breasts for me to lick off of her in fulfilment of one of my longstanding bloodplay fantasies. After the bleeding had slowed, she took me inside of her, and then at my request cut me again, running the blade directly through a large bruise on my chest. The pain and pleasure are indescribable.

After that scene, Lilith left me, I think to wash the rest of my blood off of her, and as the euphoria of the scene faded, I was struck by the most profound mental anguish I had felt since the night I lost my collar. It hurt to have been that close to our D/s nature, to engage in play that had previously been bound sacred by the collar that bound me to her, and to be without it when the scene ended. I was crying when she came back to bed. I cannot articulate her beauty as she wrapped me close to her, not needing to know what was wrong, not needing to know why, and knowing exactly what I needed. She held me close to her, whispered comforting things, and I cried myself out, let go of all emotional restraint. When I could form words around my tears, I explained to her how I felt, explained that I had secretly hoped I might regain my collar. I have never heard words more beautiful than when she accepted my vows again. This is the third time I have been allowed to swear myself to her, and, gods willing, I will never have to re-swear the same, only add more to them.

We were far from done. Later in the evening, we took our anal play to another level, using the (rather large) double-ended dildo that she had purchased for us earlier that day. Although I was very unsure about how much I would be able to take, we were both very eager for her to fuck me, and I found the experience to be absolutely wonderful. We have much more along those lines planned.

There are still a lot of complications, issues, and outright problems in our world, and some directly in our relationship as well, but I feel confidant in us, in our new contract, in our love.

I know you are reading this, Mistress. I love you.

Reflections of a perfect weekend

Since late November, Lilith and I have been working on solving our problems and regaining the level of perfection we felt early in our relationship. We’ve been working to achieve a new realization of last February, the last time things were simply and almost effortlessly story-book-fairy-tale perfect. Before drugs took control of my life. Before her friends took severe objection to me and began making things difficult. Before our involvement, and eventual fall-out with K.

This past weekend was a realization of our hopes and efforts. Since we live almost four hours apart, we only get to see each other one weekend of every month. It’s hard, almost impossible, to fit a month’s interaction into a Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday morning, but it’s all we get. This past one was perfect.

Whenever we’re going to have a weekend together, we invariably wind up planning out every detail of what’s going to happen. Every time, the truth is far better than, though often stranger than, and never akin to, the plan. We had a hotel room, based on our need for time alone together, especially away from her roommates, and we had some rather intense scenes planned. Easily the most intense we’ve planned. The idea was for her to take a crop to me, until she was satisfied, and then carve “Slave” into my back with an exacto knife. I wanted it so much, it’s sick. We broke the crop after almost fifty lashes and as she laughed about it, I fell out of subspace, fell out of my ability to take whatever she had planned without thought of what it would do to me. I didn’t really realize it, and we moved on. I can still hear the sound of plastic tearing away from cardboard as she opened the knife. Hear the sound of metal sliding against metal as she opened the blade. I knelt against the edge of the bed, hands bound in front of me, waiting. She traced the blade across my skin, then began to cut. The first was far too deep. It hurt, purely physical pain. I tried to hold myself together, to fall back into subspace, but I couldn’t. The second cut hurt more, broke me. For the first time, I safe-worded out, I think. Maybe she just knew we needed to stop. I can’t remember. I was absolutely miserable. The pain was nothing compared to the fact that I felt that I had failed her for the first time since our D/s relationship really took shape. Under the face of both physical and mental agony, I couldn’t help it: I started crying. Serious, running down the face, dripping onto the bedspread tears, accompanied by wracking sobs. From there, I really don’t have a clear memory of what happened. I remember she unbound my wrists and bandaged my back, and that we lay on the bed together and she held me. I think it happened in that order, I could be wrong. She held me close to her, and told me everything was ok. That it wasn’t my fault, that she wasn’t angry. That I hadn’t failed her. That she loves me. Again and again, she told me all these things, and held me close, as I cried.

That was the first time I ever needed after-care. For my entire adolescent/ adult life leading up to this, I had conditioned myself to never show weakness, to never break down. And I really pretty much never had. I don’t know exactly how or why, but I no longer feel like I need to be the invincible, inscrutable person I was. I have always felt totally comfortable with Lilith, always trusted her, but in that time I felt closer to her than I ever have. No one else has ever seen me broken that completely, seen me that vulnerable. Almost anyone else I know would have taken some sort of advantage of me. She held me and comforted me. It was perhaps the most beautiful expression of love I have ever known.

 

My breakdown was not the only new and bizarre aspect of the weekend. Looking back on it, Lilith and I both noticed that we are experiencing a partial gender-reversal. Actually, let me clarify: A traditional-gender-based-role-reversal. There was not a single grandiose proof of such, but rather a series of small examples. The most notable, and most repeated, was simply the position in which we lay while cuddling. In my understanding of the stereo-typical couple, and truthfully, in times previous for Lilith and I, it tends to be that the woman lays her head on the man’s chest, while he holds her. It seemed natural, and appropriate, however, when I curled up against her side, my head on her chest. When we saw Sweeney Todd again, it felt right when I cuddled up to her, rather than the other way around.

 

As improbable as it sounds, the weekend was perfect. We wanted, and got, an obscene amount of sex. We broke our record for number of times in a visit, and at a day shorter of a visit than when we first set it. We both clicked, though in different ways, to a state of mind and being that make it possible for us to make it through until I move back to her. We have once again found our perfection.

Something other than insomnia!

Though I’m sure there is another term for it, I have recently become infatuated with what I call “Death Play.” I define death play as any scene where Lilith ultimately decides if I am still alive at the end. The feeling this brings is ultimate, perfect submission, a surrender of not only my will but my very existence. It is without doubt the most intense feeling of fear, and the ensuing arousal, that I have ever experienced.

Lilith has held my life in her hands countless times, but she has not taken it. It is not simply because she could not overpower me enough to take it, but rather because she wants me alive. If she wanted my life, I would gladly give it to her, not because life means so little to me, but because she means far more to me than life does.

 

Her hand is warm as it traces a path across my chest, admiring the bruises and scratches she has left over the past two days. She presses down, hard, on the most violent bruise, and I cannot help but gasp in pleasure as the pain washes through my body. She drags her nails across my skin to another bruise and presses again. I feel my cock beginning to harden as she kneads the bruises, one after the other, and waves of pleasure smash across me. My conscious mind retreats. As the pain increases, so do my thoughts decrease, until I can barely contain my moans, barely feel myself think over the erotic pain I feel. Her hand, suddenly, is warm against my neck. I struggle feebly, testing her hold, which proves complete. My Adam’s Apple is crushed against the web between her thumb and index finger; I cannot breathe. Seconds drag by as eons as my world fades to grey. Everything is clear, as if etched in crystal. My life, chaotic and hell-bent and out of control, comes to simplicity and fruition in this moment. Here, with death in sight, a veil is lifted from my eyes, my nose, my ears, my tongue. Every sense, every experience on the edge of death, where a second is forever, is pure, is true, is exactly what that sense has always said, without the interference of the world.

“Kiss me,” I gasp, expelling the last air in my lungs. “Please.”

She sits above me, high and aloof, for the briefest second/lifetime more, and then her lips meet mine. The kiss is truth. It is love, lust, control, submission. It is the purest expression of everything we are. In the kiss, her hand retreats from my throat. As life/air returns, so does “normal” feeling, and part of me wishes to be brought back to the edge of death.

More from the troubled mind

1/30(31?)/08

3:56 am

 

I would kill to have a full night’s sleep.

I have to be at work at seven, so I have to leave the house by 6:15, since the roads are going to be nasty, so I have to wake up by 5:45, and that’s pushing things. An hour and forty-five minutes. It’s not enough. But I would kill for eight… fuck that, for six, or even just five hours.

About 21 hours ago, I overdosed on caffeine. Not the go to the hospital kind of overdose, the took just over triple daily recommended dose kind. The “wow, this feels like two Ritalin up the nose” kind. Activate God-mode. Click-clack. Engaged.

Unlike Ritalin, though, the caffeine lasted less than three hours, rather than eight. For three hours, though, I was a god-machine. I finished four hours’ work in two and a half. And then I crashed, crashed hard.

Caffeine is a trick-some drug. It can boost you so high, but when you come down, you’re lower than when you started. And I started sleep-deprived. I finished out most of the work day as a partial zombie. I was saved from a total breakdown by Fight Club. That book is my new fucking bible.

I see more than a few similarities between the protagonist and myself. Insomniacs, desperately wishing for sleep. Split personalities, fighting to keep themselves, not their other, worse halves, in control. Anarchists (Here, I suppose, I more resemble Tyler, but two faces of the same coin…), wishing we could destroy humanity to save the world. It was a lot more poetic the first time I thought of it.

The adrenaline rush I got reading Fight Club, coupled with heavy metal and the ideas the book gave me, drove me through the end of the day. And then I went home.

I spent a good portion of the afternoon reading things I’ve written. Fragments of novels, old AIM conversations that I saved for their particularly witty content, old self examinations.

I’ve been evaluating myself, my actions, my values, for just about a year. Whenever something is totally fucked up, completely wrong, and what have you, I pick a topic that describes the problem, then ask and answer questions about it. You don’t want to know some of the things I’ve thought. Point is, it helps me deal with the issues to input them into a computer, to make my thoughts dance black and white in front of me. I never solve anything… But I feel better about myself when I’m through.

I went hunting for lye, too, around 7pm. The flake kind of lye. Not the crystal kind. Long story as to why I want it. Trouble is, I couldn’t find it. The people at Home Despot said that it was the wrong season to need that. I countered that it depends on what you’re using it for. The guy looked at me funny, real funny, and I wish I could know what he thought a sketchy late-teens-early-twenties guy wanted lye for in January. They still didn’t have any. I did manage to get an exacto-knife, though, for use in a different part of the same scheme, so it wasn’t a total loss. I guess. I wanted that lye, though.

I talked to Lilith for almost three hours tonight, first by AIM, then by phone. Since we usually get only two hours every other night, and this was the third night in a row, it felt like it should have been a wonderful thing.

Somewhere in the phone time, though, everything seemed to go horribly wrong. She’s unhappy. It’s not my fault, she says, and I desperately want to believe it. Something’s missing, she says, and I can’t help but agree. She misses the chase, the thrill, the time when everything is fresh and new. Maybe she’s not meant to be tamed, she says, she misses being single, in some ways. Part of her, she stresses. Not all of her.

I cannot remember the last time I was truly afraid of anything. When you’ve hit rock bottom, what can you fear?

I was afraid, horribly afraid, sick-to-my-stomach-oh-gods-I’m-going-to-puke afraid, as her words broke over me like a storm. I was truly afraid that I was going to lose her.

We’ve been together for almost 14 months. Fourteen months going on eternity. Even outside of our D/s relationship, she is my world, my goddess, my best friend and my other half. (Go ahead, gag, plenty of people do) I don’t know how to live without her, anymore. I cannot imagine a bright future for myself. Whenever I try, it becomes a bright future for us.

I found out that I have not truly hit rock bottom. I’ve come damn close, but what I thought was a bottomed out point was actually just a bounce. Without her, I still have plenty of free-fall before the bedrock.

The scariest part of the entire thing was the suddenness. Yesterday we were talking about the next weekend I’m going to spend with her, and all the crazy shit we’re hoping to do. (Enter the lye flakes and exacto-knife) Even tonight, everything seemed fine, until the shit hit so hard it very nearly needed to be carried on to the next fan.

I hate hearing tears in her voice.

Things seemed better by the time we parted ways. We spent at least fifteen minutes remembering some of our favorite, more innocent times.

The night we met.

Our first kiss.

The first time we said “I love you.”

We avoided the unpleasant times, skirted our problems. It seems better.

The conversation ended with “I love you.”

Things should be normal.

I would kill for a full night’s sleep

My hallucinations are starting to kick in, which is a pretty common piece of insomnia, at least in my experience. Nothing is holding still the way it normally does. The colors are more vibrant, but in a cartoonish, slightly mis-colored sort of way. This is a good part of why I do this.

At 4:42, I’m considering logistics. I still live with my parents, in the basement. My bedroom is directly below the kitchen. If I go upstairs at 5:10 or 5:15, I can cook myself breakfast. Scrambled eggs and toast, breakfast of sleepless champions. My mother (may the devil tear her soul for all eternity) does not believe that I’m an insomniac, however. So I don’t know how this might go over with her. I guess I could always just say I’m getting up and eating before work. You never know, it might even work.

I just realized that some of the hallucinations are images of me at work, diligently doing my virtually meaningless essential job that an exceptionally well trained monkey could do.

I would kill for a full night’s sleep.

Another old insomnia (Jan ‘08)

1/8/08

12:56am.

It’s official. I’m not sleeping tonight. This is either the best or worst decision I could make, but then, it always is.

I start my first day at a new job tomorrow at 7am. That means leaving the house at 6:20 at the absolute latest. That means getting up at 5:45. That makes less than five hours of sleep. Fuck it.

I feel like far too much has happened far to fast. My last job was seasonal work, which meant I knew it was going to end right around Christmas, but it was still a difficult thing to accept. As I have done many times before, I went all around my small(ish) suburban town and put in applications. Dozens and dozens of applications. As has happened many times before, nothing doing.

I spent a long weekend after Christmas in New Jersey with family. Tons o’ fun, lemme tell ya. Within 20 minutes of getting back from NJ, I went out to a friend’s house, we stole some booze from the local Meijer, and got fukking toasted. I’m told I accounted for most of a fifth on my own. The night after that, I hung out with my best friend/twin brother, who I’ve known since we were 4 or 5, for the last time before Easter, if not till summer.

The day after that, I took a leisurely four hour drive down to see my Mistress. I feel the need to clarify: When I say Mistress, I don’t mean the other woman, the girlfriend outside the relationship. She is the only woman for me, the love of my life. I use the term “Mistress” because that is what she is. Our relationship is of a BD/SM nature. I am her slave, her pet, her toy, and she is my Mistress. Lilith.

While I was staying with her, I got a surprise phone call from a company I had applied to months before, and utterly forgotten about. Surprise, new job. There’s also a pretty damn good chance I caught Mono.

Only a few hours before I had to leave her, she asked me if I would like to celebrate a Handfasting. For those who don’t know, Handfasting is a pagan ritual, spiritually and emotionally binding. The couple is bound by vows of love, devotion, and fidelity for a year and a day, somewhat like a trial marriage. At the end of the time, it can be made permanent, or the two involved are expected to have realized that life-long devotion is not actually right for them. I was overwhelmed; I want nothing more than to spend my life with her, but have done a lot to break and lose her trust over the past months, so this show of trust and pure love was, well, perfect.

I now wear part of the ribbon we used wound around the collar she gave me to mark me as hers.

An old insomnia rant (mid-December ‘07)

It’s 6:30 am. I’m sitting on the couch in my bedroom, in the basement of my parents’ house. I’ve lived in this house for close to 16 years, and this room for 7. I woke up at 1pm yesterday, and haven’t slept since. I’m not planning to sleep until midnight at the earliest, which will be 35 hours without. I might shoot for 59. I spent about 3 hours reading Fight Club. It was an interesting decision, really. At about 340am I made the conscious decision to stay up and read rather than sleeping, especially since I’m expected to be awake and functional by 830. Sometimes it’s easier not to sleep. 35 hours without sleep was cake for me at one point; last year at school friends and I would marathon multiple days without. The first morning I woke up in bed with my girlfriend was after my first night of sleep in four days. I don’t know if I’m actually an insomniac. I believe myself to be more akin to a nocturnal creature; naturally active at night, it becomes instinct to sleep during the day, or, when that becomes impractical, not to sleep. Some nights, this one especially, I wonder if I may have made myself this way through my own actions. I have had a lot of drug problems over the last year and a half or so. I have a very addictive personality, and a curious nature, and the two combine to make things very difficult. Last year, while I was still in school, I experienced a period of several weeks where it took me 3 vicodin, 3 oxycodon, and 12 Tylenol (which added a flavor to the trips that helped make up for the fact that the prescriptions just weren’t doing it for me anymore) just to get through English class. I was saved from that through a series of fortuitous circumstances: I ran out of vic and oxy around the same time I started dating my mistress, and aside from one near fatal overdose on Tylenol, I was able to use my excitement and positive mental setting to overcome the withdrawal. Not long after that, though, I became borderline alcoholic, again taking at least a shot, if not two or three, just to get out of my dorm room each day. Next on my list of failings was marijuana, which I had experimented with before, but never in quantity. By the end of third quarter, however, I was in way too deep. There is a five week stretch of my personal history where aprox. 90% of my memories involve either buying pot, smoking pot, or talking about it with my friends. My most consistent smoking friend, K, once asked me (in the only memory I still have from about a 10 day period) if I had been smoking without her. When I answered affirmatively, and she continued to press me for information, it turned out I had been high at least once a day every day for over two weeks, and had been to three class sessions out of 24 scheduled. Almost needless to say, I failed 10 credit hours that semester and was not asked to return to the school. Although I had only smoked pot once over the last month of school, summer hit with a vengeance. Re-united with my high school friends, whom I consider more my family than anything else, and enabled by an apartment in downtown Ann Arbor, our insanity reached new levels. We had several hundred dollars of fireworks purchased in Ohio, two friends prescribed amphetamines for ADD, and more weed connections than we could shake a lighter at. Two or three nights a week, three to six of us would put two Ritalin or Adderol each up our noses and smoke at least an eighth of an ounce of weed, while walking 5 or 10 miles and driving out to desolate suburbs to light off the fireworks. We’d fall asleep at 4 or 5 am if we slept at all, and I’d be ready for work the next day at 9. All summer. I quit smoking again in September, and that lasted about a month, but then I was right back to where I was: the end October, and most of November, passed in a THC induced haze. I’m currently sitting almost half-way through December, and I haven’t quit smoking pot, but I’m using less than once a week on average, probably close to once every two weeks. Special occasions, really. The tying story throughout all of this, is that I always slept like a baby when I was smoking regularly. Now that I’m not a pothead, but rather a recreational user, my insomnia’s come back hard.

I think this past night had the potential to change my life. As I have mentioned, I read fight club. I had never read the book before, nor have I seen the movie. I’m inspired, and I’m fairly sure it’s not just the sleep deprivation. Project Mayhem sounds, not only possible, but logical. It truly might be the only way to save the world, and I’m more than ready to organize, work towards, and even sacrifice myself for the achievement of those ends.

I suppose an introduction is in order

I suppose an introduction might be in order, though I do not believe in names, and have been known by too many to decide which one I might give you.

I am about 6’3”, of slightly above-average weight. Long brown hair, (usually) blue eyes.

I am a dreamer, but often my dreams are nightmares.

I am an anarchist in the true sense.

I am religious, but it took a long time to become so.

I am sick in the head.

I am a masochist, a submissive, a slave.

I am aroused by pain, by the sight of my own blood when she spills it, by the sound of a crop striking flesh, by the feel of a blade against my skin, by her commands.

I am a recovering drug addict.

I am an insomniac.

I am a college dropout, trying desperately to return to the academic arena.

I am everything.

I am nothing.

I have hit rock bottom. I finally feel that I can fall no further, and while that is reassuring, the depth that I fell only betrays how far I need to climb.