#soft-rage

Some people hear “I like pain” and think that means I like being lightly spanked and told I’m a good girl.

Don’t get me wrong — I like being a good girl. But that’s not what I mean.

When I say I like pain, I don’t mean I like it soft. I don’t mean I like it ornamental. I don’t mean I want to be gently bruised just enough to say we did something edgy before cuddling for two hours.

I mean I want to feel it.

I mean I want to breathe through it. Bite through it. I want the kind of pain that makes me forget everything else — because nothing else in my life slows my brain down the way a hand around my throat or a belt across my thighs can.

I don’t want it for show. I don’t want it to impress anyone. And I don’t want it to be performative for you. I want it to mean something to me.

I like pain that makes me let go. Pain that makes me cry — not because it’s too much, but because it’s exactly enough. Pain that makes me trust you in a way I can’t explain without sounding unwell.

Today I crave being a toy. Not a person, not a partner—just something useful.

I want to be positioned, used, put down, picked up again. No questions. No choices. Just a role. A purpose. Just function.

Because today, my mind won’t stop spinning. And the only thing that sounds like relief is obedience. Not connection. Not softness. Just the quiet of being controlled.

I don’t want to be cared for—I want to be used. I want to be helpful in the most primal way. I want my worth to be the way I serve. The way I’m used. Just for today, I want that to be enough. I want that to be my worth.

Content Note: This piece explores themes of degradation kink, erotic shame, trauma recovery, and emotional complexity in submission. Mentions of objectification, self-abandonment, and survivor patterns. Please read with care.

There are cravings I still hesitate to name. Not the sweet ones. Not the ones about surrender or touch or even pain. I mean the ones that live deeper—coiled tight with shame. The ones that whisper, I want you to hate me. I want you to ruin me. I want you to spit in my mouth and call me a thing, not a person. And I want to come undone from it.

Sometimes I want to be stripped of power, pressed into silence, and treated like a toy. Not just used—but discarded. It turns me on in a way I don’t entirely understand. And sometimes it terrifies me.

In recovery, I’ve been taught to listen to the signal behind the craving. To slow down and ask: Is this coming from a place of need—or from a place of pain? And the truth is, sometimes I’m not sure. Sometimes it feels like both.

For context: What I’m describing is often called a degradation kink—a form of consensual play where being insulted, humiliated, or stripped of dignity becomes part of the turn-on. It can look like name-calling, being objectified, spit on, ignored, mocked, broken down emotionally or physically. It’s intense. It’s taboo. And it’s far more common than most people admit. Psychologist and kink researcher Dr. Brad Sagarin notes that “degradation and humiliation kinks often allow individuals to explore deep emotional vulnerabilities in a structured, consensual context.”

But what if that vulnerability isn't just roleplay? What if part of me believes I deserve to be hated? That’s where the shame creeps in. And it’s where I start to question: is this just a new language for an old wound?

Before I ever called myself submissive, I was already performing for men. I let them treat me however they wanted, because I thought love looked like endurance. I thought being wanted meant being small. Being silent. Being good.

Now, I give permission. Now, I ask for things. I tell men I want to be degraded, made powerless, called a slut or a thing. Sometimes I even mean it literally: “Use me like a toy. I want to be nothing but function.” And I do feel powerful, in a twisted way, when I orchestrate that. When I control my own objectification. When I say, “Ruin me,” and I don’t flinch.

But I still wonder: am I healing—or am I reenacting the same self-hatred, just with better lighting?

Author and trauma educator Melissa Febos writes in Girlhood that “erotic desire is shaped by shame as much as it is by pleasure—and often, the two become indistinguishable.” That line haunts me. Because it makes sense. The same part of me that learned to be desirable through self-abandonment is now scripting scenes where that abandonment becomes sexy. Empowering, even. But does that mean it’s safe?

When I hand someone the script—Call me a whore. Spit on me. Don’t ask me if I’m okay until it’s over—that feels like agency. That feels like I’m in control of the degradation. I choose it. I orchestrate it. But not always. Sometimes I get off because I don’t have to make a decision. Because being hated is easier than being loved. Because it quiets the part of me that’s always trying to be good. And that’s when I start to feel scared. Because the part of me that gets off on being hated doesn’t always care if I feel okay afterward.

As trauma therapist Dr. Jamie Marich puts it, “Survivors often return to what is familiar. Sometimes, that includes being treated in ways that replicate harm—not because they like it, but because the nervous system confuses it with home.”

So I check in with myself: Am I choosing this now, or am I being pulled into a pattern I haven’t healed yet? Do I feel seen afterward—or just used? Can I talk about the scene with my partner—or do I feel embarrassed, ashamed, afraid it’ll make them stop wanting me?

The truth is, there’s no clear answer. Sometimes I crave degradation because it brings me into my body. Sometimes it helps me rewrite old scripts. And sometimes I just like it—and that’s okay too. But I keep asking the questions. I keep grounding myself in partners who can handle the weight of what I’m asking for. I talk. I write. I don’t just chase the craving—I try to listen to it.

And maybe that’s the most honest thing I can do.

Sometimes praise feels more dangerous than pain.

Not because I don’t want it—because I do. But because I never really learned how to receive it without waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It’s easier to be used. Easier to be hurt. At least that makes sense in my nervous system. At least I know what to expect. But when someone calls me good, or sweet, or tells me I’m doing well, part of me shuts down. Like I can’t trust it. Like maybe it’s a setup. Or maybe they’re just saying it to get something. Or maybe they’ll take it back once they really see me.

Praise hits something soft in me that doesn’t know how to come to the surface without shame. There’s a part of me that wants to melt into those words, to really let them land—but instead I flinch. I deflect. I rush to prove I deserve it, or I push it away before it can be taken from me.

Sometimes I crave the kind of praise that feels earned through obedience or pain, because that at least feels legible. I can tell myself they meant it because I bled for it. But what I’m still learning is how to hold praise that isn’t tied to performance.

The kind that says, you’re good—not because I served perfectly or suffered beautifully, but because I exist, and I let someone see me.

I didn’t start with kink. But once I found it, something shifted—quietly at first, and then all at once.

Vanilla still has its sweetness, its warmth, its comfort. But it doesn’t reach me anymore. It skims the surface, polite and safe, like hands that hover instead of press. Like a kiss that ends before it deepens.

It plays the part well enough. It’s fine. It’s good. But it doesn’t hold me. Not the way I know I can be held—until my body forgets where it ends and yours begins, until my head is light and my chest is full, until I’m anchored in a way that makes the rest of the world dissolve.

It was honestly some of the best sex I’ve ever had. Easily one of the hottest men I’ll ever sleep with — the kind of beautiful that makes you feel a little bit ruined afterward. He used me exactly the way I wanted to be used: held me down, choked me out, spit on me, left me shaking. I gave him everything, and it felt incredible.

Afterward, he handed me a cherry Poptart and said, “You’re stronger than you think.” Then he built a pillow wall between us, put on his headphones, pulled down his sleep mask, and went to sleep.

That was the aftercare.

No touch. No real check-in. No “how do you feel now that I’ve pulled you apart and made you cry.” Just a motivational quote and a boxed pastry.

I wasn’t expecting poetry. I didn’t need to be coddled. But I think I expected something. A gesture. A glance. A little softness to remind me I was still a person, not just an incredible fuck.

Instead, I laid there in the dark trying to convince myself I wasn’t being dramatic. That I should be grateful. That not everyone gets to be split open by someone that gorgeous. That the sex was worth it.

It’s not just that I miss him. It’s that I have to pretend she never existed.

The version of me who was softer. Slower. Obedient. The one who waited for rules like they were love letters. Who lit up when he said “good girl” like it meant something about who I really was.

I can’t bring her into the rest of my life. She doesn’t belong there. She’s too much and not enough. Too eager. Too dependent. Too undone.

So I bury her.

Act like she was just a scene. Just a kink. Just a phase.

Pain isn’t always intimate. Sometimes it’s mechanical. Or bored. Or just enough to say “we did something.” Sometimes it’s sloppy — like a checklist of rough things someone saw in porn and decided to copy on a real body without ever checking to see who lived in it.

I’ve had pain that left marks but no meaning. Bruises that didn’t ache in the right way. I’ve had hands on me that thought pressure was the same as presence. It’s not.

Because real pain — the kind I crave — asks something from you too. It’s not just about how hard you hit or how red my skin turns. It’s about whether you’re watching what happens after. Whether you’re listening when I go quiet. Whether you're giving pain, or just doing pain.

I don’t want to be your experiment or your proof-of-concept. I don’t want to be handled like a body that will bounce back no matter what.

I want pain that knows me — or at least wants to. Pain that remembers what I said when I flinched a little too hard. Pain that doesn’t always mean cruelty. Pain that might mean care. Pain that can coexist with reverence — not because it’s soft, but because it’s earned.