Disclaimer: This has NOTHING to do with the lifestyle or kink, it just happened to be the setting in which it occurred.
WAKE-UP CALL…
While perusing my kink feed the other day, I stumbled across something I found to be personally…jarring, downright disturbing on many levels. My immediate reaction was to assume it was a hoax, a fabrication meant to shock and solicit attention. But, to my horror, not only was it real, but it was being lauded…by people I knew personally. I felt nauseous, angry, and eventually, I felt shame…
LOVE & FEAR…
I am not what many would likely call a ‘romantic’ type, and I tend not to romanticize people or life in general. People are prickly, imperfect, fallible…and usually all the more interesting for it. Life is a rollercoaster—I try to enjoy the ride. Motherhood is similarly something I never romanticized. I expected to lose sleep, change a million diapers, trip over toys, lose my figure, and sometimes my mind. What I didn’t expect was the love, or, more accurately, the intensely undeniable and overwhelming love that I would have for my child. I can’t speak for other people, but from the moment my son was born, and every day since, the love I feel leaves me in awe…and many times terrified. How is it that someone so little, so innocent, can have such a death grip on my heart and very soul? How is it that every scrape, every bruise, every tear rips my heart out and leaves me feeling inept as a person? I kiss the booboo’s and console, give support, and show love, but sometimes there is no ‘fixing it’ or ‘kissing it better’…
INNOCENCE…
As a mom, every day offers me a new experience, a new learning curve. I try my best to be a guide for my child, a navigational beacon for maneuvering through the world, but my child—like life—did not come with an instruction manual, and I am far from being perfect at anything, including parenting. There are things that, as an adult, I can rely on my own experience/knowledge as a roadmap for directing and/or explaining how the world/people/society operate. But, sometimes experience/knowledge is not sufficient when confronted with explaining the hard stuff like ‘bad people.’ Not so long ago there was a school shooting where many children were killed. My son asked me, with obvious confusion and innocence shining in his eyes, why would someone do that? Why would anyone hurt little boys and girls? Did they do something to the man to make him angry? Were they bad kids?
The innocence astounded me, and then I was horrified. How do I explain such violence to a child? How do I crush his innocence with the vulgar truth about the world in which he lives? As an adult, I can rationalize that this person behaved malevolently due to some psychoses or mental/emotional affliction; I can use society’s force fed psychological diagnoses to self anesthetize so that I can sleep at night and step foot out my door all the while knowing that ‘bad people’ like this exist in the world. But, when it comes to explaining such behavior to my child, rationalization falls short. There is no easy answer; there are many varying degrees and purposely overcomplicated explanations, but it all boils down to the same thing…some people are just bad, mean, evil, spiteful, hurtful…whatever word(s) best apply. Having such knowledge from life and personal experience sucks; imparting such knowledge to my innocent child is gut wrenching.
DESENSITIZATION & APATHY…
Using a lifestyle euphemism, in my ‘nilla’ life I am usually particular about those I let into my personal life. I have neither the time nor desire to add drama to what is most often a daily juggling act while riding a rollercoaster in the midst of a category 4 hurricane. That said, as I have ventured deeper into my ‘kink’ life, I have attempted to be a little more affable with those I come in contact with. One of the beautiful wonders I have found in the lifestyle is the general open arms mentality; most laud and support difference. It’s a unique and liberating culture for me, in which I feel comfortable exploring my inner desires/fetishes/etc. without (much) fear of judgment or persecution. Everywhere I hear/see/read the mantra of ‘your kink isn’t my kink, but your kink is still ok’ and so forth, which is pretty damn cool.
But then, out of nowhere, comes the wake-up call I mentioned in the beginning. Suddenly I’m face-to-face with the ‘bad people’ in my own backyard, so to speak. I had to face the fact that I had allowed people into my life who were capable of monstrosity similar to the shooting described above, as well as those who promoted the behavior. And I found myself asking when did I become so desensitized that I allowed these people so close? Did I get so caught up in being affable in saying ‘your kink is ok’ that I allowed it to bleed over, to blur the lines between opening myself to accepting different kinks and opening myself to accepting ‘bad’ people, including those who support their behavior? Where along the way did I begin rationalizing that certain ‘bads’ were ok to have in my life? Was it a gradual process…today ‘not very nice’ can fuck off, but tomorrow I’m going to work on tolerating it; next week’s lesson is embracing ‘asshattery’; by week 10 I’ll be ready for lessons in becoming besties with ‘douche bags’ and ‘cunts’; from there, we move on to having dinner with ‘pure evil’?
ATONEMENT…
I can honestly say that what I feel is shame; shame that I allowed myself to become so desensitized and apathetic that it took something jarring to wake me from this sleepwalk. Shame that I have somehow allowed in varying degrees the ‘bad’ to slip through, so much so that it brought me into contact with a ‘bad’ akin to the one discussed with my son and those who promote it. This is my mistake, and for that, I apologize to myself and those I hold dear. And I promise that I WILL work on being more vigilant in keeping the ‘bad’ out of my life, and subsequently, theirs.
kittyskatnipkorner 