Madison Rye Progress

I think there are a couple of kinks that I have which have warranted some introspection like that.

The first being weight, I suppose, though not really gaining. This is one of those very specific things, where I can point to exactly where it came from. Back in late middle school/early high school, I lost a shitload of weight, to the point where my mom and doctor got quite concerned. This was due mostly to a large amount of anxiety making it hard for me to eat all that much. In combination with this, I started dating at that time (well, 'dating', but it was more just an intense platonic thing with a few friends), and both of my first two partners were rather stocky. Given this negative association with just how skinny I was with how much I loved these very soft people in my life, I just kind of formed that association of softness with goodness, and later, softness with attractiveness and an ideal form.

Fast forward, like...23 years, and @hamratza comes along, talking to me of indulgence and hedonism, and thus another layer of appreciation is added. It is a complicated subject with my other partners who struggle with their weight, but I am happy to cheer them on and love them always. It is just not the path for me.

The other of these kinks that comes to mind is that of the intersection of pain and vulnerability (and, to a lesser extent, death). I am less sure of why it is that I have latched onto this. I will spend hours daydreaming or roleplaying situations wherein there is some vulnerability that is exploited. I know what the feeling is, in that it is essentially a hurt-comfort thing, where I or a loved one (it is a very switchy thing) feel a sense of pain or vulnerability, and then are shown love and cherished. The aspect of it surrounding death boils down to essentially knowing that I will be missed and mourned. It is a way of knowing that I am worth something by having that proven to me. Where it comes from, though, is more difficult.

CW for self harm and suicidality beneath the cut.

I suspect there comes a moment in the life of any cladist where we look back on who we once were and ask ourselves not "how did I get here" — for such is the stuff of stories — but "what made me who I am?"

Michelle Rachel Hadje was a simple woman. This is no indictment, mind. She was a simple woman who loved and craved the feeling of being loved in turn. She was a woman who had desires. She was a woman of the stage and of the song. She was a woman who treated her friends as irreplaceable and who desired nothing other than to be irreplaceable to someone in turn. And she was! She was, and that story is known, and not for telling here.

I am a simple woman. I love and wish to be loved, crave and wish to be craved. Whims, desires, cravings, all those wants and needs...these are all things that make up a person — even the simplest of us — and we are what we are because of them.

I am a simple woman, and the thing I simply desire above all else is to serve.

And yet, I look back at all that I was and compare it to all that I am and, yes, I am able to tell the story of how I got from there to here, from Michelle Hadje to Beholden To The Whims Of A Monster, and it feels all but impossible to answer "what made me who I am?"

This name that I have chosen for myself is a gentle dig at a monster, this other me, this Beholden To The Whims Of No-One. She finds this fact endlessly amusing as she toys with me. I can feel her gently twining the curls of my hair around a finger as I kneel beside her chair, a gentle and loving smile on her face as I think of her words: "A monster! Is that what I am, my dear? How cheeky."

I can feel the kindest, cruelest love in her voice. I can feel the way her words tug at me in much the same way her fingers do as she twists harder and harder, a bright spark of pain radiating across my scalp.

We are simple women. We love and have found love. We desire and are desired. We live in the fullness of each other. Do not get me wrong: we are fulfilled. We are happy.

But I kneel beside her chair with my hands folded in my lap and my head meekly bowed as she blesses me with bright sensations, tugging on a lock of my hair or pressing a claw to my throat, and she sits above me and wears her gentle and loving smile.

We never go out together, never leave at the same time. As far as the System knows there is only one of us, only Beholden To The Whims. It is our little game played with an unwitting world.

But when it is me that goes out and a friend says, "Holy fuck, Whims, where did you get that cut on your neck? Who did that to you?", all I can do is smile and bask in that remembered gentle love and answer, "No-One."