Page 261 of Ashes of Sin and Stardust

“Jesus. Okay.”

“And what’s the most emotionally upsetting thing... well, never mind, you don’t have to answer that. Just remember the most emotionally distressing thing you’ve ever experienced, and how miserable and awful it was. That’s your eleven. For me, my physical and emotional pain are tied to each other. If I experience intense emotional pain, I feel physical pain that matches it.”

My forehead creased. Said in those terms, any time she was devastated or furious, she was also in extreme physical pain. No wonder she spiraled so badly.

Alice continued her explanation. “For most people, they operate on an emotional scale of one to ten throughout the day, but generally their mood stays within a few numbers. It doesn’t tend to jump around significantly, and if it does, it doesn’t tend to go back forth.

“But me... My scale isn’t one to ten. My scale goes higher and lower than yours. And I don’t jump one or two numbers at a time. I go from a two to a seven because I can’t find my pen, and then a negative five and I go numb because I suddenly hate myself, and then a nine and three quarters because I suddenly hate you because you didn’t answer my text fast enough andclearlyyou’re going to leave me. All of that happens in fifteen minutes. And then when I’m really upset, I go higher than ten.”

“You...really? You don’t seem like you jump that much, that often.” Alice definitely had her sporadic ups and downs, but I hadn’t witnessed such an extreme mood swings like she was describing.

“Yeah, well, I learned how to fake it from a super early age. I’ve been repressing and burying my outward expressions pretty much since I was nine, and the favorite in the family died.

“It takes a lot of energy and effort to hide it. That’s why I’m awful sometimes. Because I’mexhausted. Now that’s not an excuse,” she said, holding up one hand. “I’m not trying to justify my behavior. I’m fully aware I’m a shit. I’m just saying... you feel things up to a ten, sometimes an eleven. I feel up to thirty-five and down to negative one hundred.”

I stared at her in shock, trying to justify and imagine what emotional insanity her everyday life had to be like, let alone the traumatic events she’d been through.

“The physical pain relating to emotional pain fluctuates too. Anything above a five makes my body start to hurt. Anything under a two makes me feel numb, which makes me want to hurt myself. So, my best life is a three to a five. And I’m almost never there... except when I’m blissed out after a scene.” She gave me a guilty hint of a smile.

She went on to describe other things about her pain, some that resembled what I’d read about, and some that seemed incomprehensible.“The worst part is knowing other people don’t understand how I feel, and that my emotions and reactions are unrealistic and abnormal. But like you said, they’re real for me even if they’re not real for other people. It’s like people knowing there was a car wreck on the highway, but I was in every single car that got wrecked.

“Remember how I said I felt like I built up inside? And pain is the only way to drain it out? I can handle up to a certain amount throughout my week if I know I have impact to look forward to. Woodrow and I used to meet every Monday. So by Friday or Saturday, even though I was ready to blow, I could manage because I knew I’d have my release soon. I’d coast through the first few days after, then things would get hard again come Thursday or Friday, and then I had the weekend to try not to kill myself. Monday was always a clean slate, and sometimes I saw him on Thursdays or Fridays if I really needed it.”

“So you need regularly scheduled play more often than once a week. I know you enjoy spontaneous scenes and funishments, but we haven’t been doing a weekly maintenance session. That’s something you should have clarified with me from the beginning.”

She dropped her head, her shoulders rounding inward. I took her chin and made her look at me, but she had her eyes closed, and she was shaking a little. “I can’t meet your needs if you don’t share them with me. Won’t you look at me?”

She shook her head, still squinting her eyes closed.

“Okay.” I released her chin and she let her head fall.

She was still gripping the papers in her hands, and her fingers had made little crease marks in it. “Um... here.” She handed it over.

I handed it back. “I’d like you to read it out loud to me.”

She finally met my gaze. She looked horrified. Slowly, she shook her head. “Sir, I’m sorry. No. If I do that, I will throw up and probably pass out.” Her hands were shaking again.

That’s a hell of an extreme reaction to reading a book report out loud.“Okay...” I took the pages back from her. “I’d like you to please go get us both glasses of water, and I’d like you to finish yours by the time I finish reading. Better?”

“Yes, thank you Sir,” she whispered, and stood up, hurrying to the kitchen to obey.

I began reading the few pages. It was longer than I’d expected. I had told her five thousand words, but it was more like seven or eight. She did indeed hit every major point in the book, describing and explaining the basics of power exchange and consent, and wrote her thoughts about some of the main points.

I sipped the water she brought me while I read through her final thoughts and reflection at the end of the essay.

The most important thing I have learned about myself over the past month and a half with you, learning with you, reading with you, and letting you teach me, is that I am abusive. I could blame it on my disorder, or my trauma, or the death of my sister, or my parents’ neglect and probable suicide, or whatever else I wanted to, but at the end of the day, I am still responsible for my actions.

My world is bigger than everyone else’s; it’s both higher and lower, brighter and darker. It is hard to navigate. I have extreme reactions that other people don’t understand, and the overwhelming guilt and self-hate I experience on a daily basis perpetuates my actions and reactions. It’s a never-ending cycle of self-sabotage, destruction, attempted isolation, and emotional shutdown.

However, you said something to me months ago that I didn’t have the time or the space to process until very recently. You said, “Your emotions at the time don’t matter.” At first, I thought that meant the same thing I used to always tell myself: that it’s all fake, it’s not real, my emotions don’t count. I think what you really meant was, “you may feel a certain way, but what you choose to do is more important than how you feel at the moment.” And that is something extremely hard, if not impossible, for me to accomplish.

Having you as my Sir has helped me learn to consider my actions more carefully, regardless of my feelings at the time. But you have also helped me honor my feelings. I won’t lie and say I’ve gotten good, or even slightly better at that, but I have started to notice the mental shift of accepting that what I feel is real, whether I like it or not. I don’t know if it’s helped, but there it is.

Even though I try my best not to be, I am still very abusive, especially to those who I care about. I still lash out. I break down, I say things that I think I mean at the time but that aren’t really true. I push people away and cut them out of my life at the drop of a hat, and I think I would have done that the other night if we didn’t live together. I self-sabotage in more ways than one. And you don’t deserve that.

Sir, it took everything in me not to walk out that door the other night, and I had planned on waiting until you went to bed and then leaving. My mood shifted before I had the chance. I will probably do it again, even though I know it will hurt you–and I will hate myself when I come around and realize what I’ve done. I can guarantee I will say hurtful things to you again just to upset you out of desperation to regain control over the situation, because I feel like I have no control over my life. I do my best not to try to manipulate you or control you, but my attempt to brat you for attention and use it as an excuse to play is still, I think, topping from the bottom.

These are not submissive characteristics.

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