Moving To Stay Still.

The mat feels rougher than usual as I rest my arms and sink onto it, closing my eyes. My cheek is against the rubber and it feels harsh somehow. Or maybe it’s my skin that’s more raw. Even the sweat makes it burn. I open my eyes to see my hand resting right in front of me. It’s turned up to the skies and my fingers are bent. I move my hands and rest my palms flat against the mat to lift myself up again. Instantly, the pain in my shoulders and arms is back. I feel stronger with every passing second, and somehow even as I fall, I feel grace fall with me.

My eyes are deliberately closed because I refuse to look at this, but every once in a while I crack my eyelids open for a few moments and through the tears I can see the blurry outline of my hand. It’s lying turned up towards the sky, the fingers are bent. He asks me to lift myself up towards him; to look his words in the eye and show him how bruised and swollen he can make me. My arms feel so weak and the effort it takes to lift myself up makes me feel like I’m made of stone. It hurts more and more to hold myself up every second. I feel so weak as I fall back against the floor. But there’s no grace to shattered bits of porcelain on the floor.

I don’t know where I found the extraordinary amount of control over my body it takes to be able to move this way. I wonder this every time I lift my leg in the air and curl it behind me to grab it with my other hand. It makes me feel like I’m singing with my body and when my fingers meet my ankle and somehow the precarious balance that is my strange position does not collapse, I’m amazed I’m able to hit those notes. And even as I disengage and return to a more relaxed state I feel a balance I didn’t think I could ever create. I feel beautiful, inside my skin. Because I know how not to fall.

It takes the strength of every muscle in my legs to keep my balance while I’m bound in front of him. Everything fits perfectly; toes link together and elbows line up against each other. I could hold this pose forever but being bound in it makes me lose my balance. I struggle to stay still and upright. The closer I inch towards a shred of relaxation, a twitch of the shoulder or a shift of my foot, the more balance I feel myself lose. I won’t fall but that’s only because I’m bound in here. In a series of little shifts to find a comfortable balance, I twist myself into a wretched mess of ugliness. I have no control over these movements. It’s not beautiful, but it’s something.

I lay on my back, and that hurts more than usual too. I feel today, what he does yesterday. I move one day slower than him physically. Maybe even longer since I learnt to move more slow. There’s some power in the process of moving; it fulfils my repressed desire to dance. I am very aware of my muscles when I spread, stretch and open myself up. Open. That feels nice. It feels great to be so free with your body and still in control of how far it will go. Freedom and responsibility, like adulthood, are my favourite things.

Lying on my back in front of him feels like more exposure than it should. He sees me naked all the time but it’s different when I’m naked and he’s not; he walks around me and I’m on the floor. My favourite things in the world include fighting disparity while also living in it. Feels strange to see it; to experience it. Feels stranger that I have so little control over my movements. Even as he tells me spread my legs feel like they are made of lead. Every twitch of my arm feels like it is being watched. It’s hard to be so open. Just the act of exposure feels like being torn up. I don’t know why that’s one of my favourite things.

As I struggle to just keep holding still while I see the world upside down, I notice how I inch my palms closer, deeper towards my hips. It’s such slow movement, you wouldn’t notice it, but it explains why it hurts more with each second. The pain, in itself, is reward. I don’t know why but the more it hurts the more determined I am to hold it until I look the end of my tolerance in the face. The more strain I bear, the stronger I feel and somewhere inside that strength I’m finally forced to see myself as beautiful. It’s not over until I scream in pain and somehow it’s beautiful to fail when you lose against pain. The act of suffering extends me its beauty.

He hates it when I move while he’s hitting me. Predictably he also hates it when I wriggle or move while he’s fucking me. It’s odd to have movement confiscated from you but I know not to move as I feel his palm against my face over and over. I notice my lip start to twitch. It starts really slowly and my feel myself aching to inch out of his way so it’ll hurt just a millimetre away for some time. As I feel my lip tremble uncontrollably I wonder how long I can keep holding on; everything feels fuzzy and blurry. The pain, in itself, is the reward. Still I can’t hold on against it forever. It always wins. Pain always wins and I fall. The floor feels colder than usual. It’s not over until I scream and the shrieking would sound ugly but the act of suffering extends me its beauty. It’s always a little beautiful to lose to pain.