On submission as my way to taste the forbidden

I have a tendency to be swept off my feet by men. People who have known me for a bit can confirm.

Not by all men, that is.

In general, I tend to be rather intimidating and hard to impress. Sometimes, I can be a girl who emanates the vibe of ‘better don’t come close unless you have something really interesting to say. And I mean: really interesting’. Sometimes, I am a girl who has a bunch of guys around her begging for her attention. Sometimes, men treat me like a princess. I can’t say that I don’t like it. It can be pleasant and flattering. But it doesn’t turn me on.

I was raised in a family of strong women. My mother is a kind of woman who is a feminist and at the same time sees anything feminine as a sign of weakness. I love my mother. She is an amazing person and she has taught me a lot. She also might have been one of the reasons why my sexuality has developed into something so dark and twisted.

This tendency of mine to be swept off my feet by certain men has been in me since I remember. It would not happen often but there were certain kinds of guys (guys whom I found admirable and respectable and who at the same time did not pay much attention to me) around whom I was melting. If I met a guy like that, I would do anything to make him notice me, anything to get a sign of his approval. I’d travel to the other side of the country just for a chance of seeing him for a couple of hours. Usually, I wouldn’t get what I’d hoped for but it wouldn’t keep me from trying.

My mother hated my behaviour around those men. She thought that the way I was acting around them was pitiful. That I should be ashamed of myself for being like that. That I make a joke out of me. She has always told me that it should be men who admire me and not the other way around. That if I behave like that, they will for sure never be mine. Because the path to the heart of a man is being inaccessible. Only then, they will desire me.

There might even be some truth to it in the context of the culture that she was raised in and the, still pervasive today, traditional goals of a woman. There might also be some truth in it if you like when the object of your desire also desires you.

To me, however, it is a slippery slope.

My problem with desire is that I can either be a subject or an object of it but not both at the same time. And if my object makes me their object as well, my subject role gets shaky.

Not that it ever happened to me. I’ve been choosing my objects wisely so far.

I don’t know if it is because, trying to impress my mother, I have suppressed my natural behavior so deeply that now it comes to the surface blown up to unnatural proportions. My hypothesis is: 'Possibly'. But I know that men who are everything to me while I am nothing to them are my ideal kind of men.

I want to crawl at their feet while they don’t even notice.

I want to seek beggingly for a glimpse of their sight while they are busy admiring someone else.

I want to be ecstatic from them merely noticing me.

I want to pray for their touch not believing that I will ever receive it.

I want to be the most miserable, pitiful, despicable kind of girl. The one my mother would shudder with disgust when looking at. I want people to cringe with pity when they see me. I want them to feel sorry for me. I want them to think of me as a loser, unloved, and unlovable. I want them to think that they would never want to switch their places with me and truly mean it.

Because they probably shouldn’t.

Without my highly developed taste for rejection, such experience might prove dangerous for them.

Without my appreciation of hardship, it might not be possible for them to take it.

Without an understanding of the calm beauty of loneliness, the velvety warmth of sadness, and the reassuring composure of disinterest, seeking what I seek might even prove deadly.

For me, however, submission is a means for exploration of exactly those feelings. It is a way to experience a part of me that has never been accepted. It is allowing myself to feel to the fullest the emotions that I have never been allowed to experience.

Not so that I can prove to myself it finishes with a happy ending. Not so that I can show to my mother that she was wrong, that if you truly give yourself to someone what you get in return is their love and devotion.

I don’t think that it is necessarily true.

Rather, submission allows me to experience the rejection that has been so demonized to me, to feel the unreciprocated desire that I have been taught one should never feel. Submission allows me to live through being unloved, unwanted, pitiful, low, and ugly.

So that I can finally, without guilt, taste the forbidden fruit of weakness.