Have Mercy On Me.

I am so attracted to his lack of mercy. 

I think it will kill me. 

That's something only he can give me, really. I am the criminal who stole a loaf of bread to feed my family, and he is the court that could release me, but would rather condemn me for life. He can hold me liable and responsible for anything he wants, and he can pass a sentence on my life of whatever severity he chooses, and the only recourse I have is to appeal to mercy. To hope that there exists some compassion or a capacity to forgive that he will apply towards me because he feels sorry for me. He feels sympathetic to my suffering. He feels pity for the state I am in. That's a much more comprehensible condition to me, than one where I can explain my way out of a situation. It doesn't matter if I have a case to make, there is nothing I can do to make it easier for me, everything that happens to me depends entirely on his mercy. I find that much more palatable than depending on a safeword or my own behaviour. 

The thing that attracts me so much to the concept of mercy, especially in context of a relationship like mine, is that you can only appeal to it after you genuinely want whatever is happening to you to stop. You don't want mercy when the pain feels good. You don't want it when the torture feels warm. You don't want it when the hands on your body and the chains around your heart are comfortable. No, you can only want it after your tolerance ends. There is no other way. You can pretend to want it, but it doesn't feel the same. You only really want mercy after the point where you'd say stop or no, if you could. That statement seems murky and it's certainly not a relationship condition you should subject yourself to unless you are absolutely sure you want that, but it I do. I like not being able to say no. I like not being allowed to even utter that word. It's only in that state that you can truly rely entirely on mercy. 

And asking for it is so painful in itself. It's not because asking for it makes me feel small, not exactly anyway, it's because it crushes my pride more effectively than anything else in the world. I'll say with a reasonable degree of confidence than I am not a prideful person. I have self-confidence and my self-esteem is at acceptable levels, I know what I am good at and I am okay with what I am not so great at, but I feel no better or worse than any other human being. I look alright. I feel fine. I do okay. However, I do still have vestiges of ego and pride. There are things about me, that please me. Splashes of colour that make me feel special, and in some moments even make me believe I have more value than someone else. Begging for mercy crushes that part of me. It is the definitive and absolute end of pride. Saying I am so wretched and lowly that nothing could convince a person to stop tormenting me but to feel sorry for me is a place where pride absolutely cannot exist. You cannot care about what someone thinks of you, and beg for mercy at the same time. If you could still care, you wouldn't ask. I hate hiding, and it's where I feel most exposed. It's when I feel like I am finally admitting that I have a limit, I am a fallible human being comprised of weakness and vulnerability and real emotion. I feel like everything about me ends in the space where I cannot help but beg for mercy. 

Yet, it's not a sure thing. That's something else that appeals to me so immensely. Mercy, like alms, is something you cannot rely on getting. It's one thing to ask for a raise you know won't be denied, it's another to ask for a job for which you don't know if you are qualified, nor if it is available. You *might* get it but there's no way to know. There are some things that are easy to ask him for because you know they will be freely given, things like pain and violence. There are things it is harder to ask for like sexual pleasure or just touch, because you aren't sure if you'll get them, because it's not a sure thing, and not getting them could augment the torment, but it's still okay, because denial of those things still carries its own pleasure. But there are also things it is terrifying to ask for, like mercy, because the denial of it means continuing down the path that was killing you enough to ask to leave. The stakes are high and there is no choice but to ask. 

It's an immense, and somewhat painful relief when he grants it, because it always hurts at least a little when someone does something for you because they feel pity for you, but the primary emotion is always relief. There is no primary emotion when he doesn't, though. It's only chaos and confusion. His lack of mercy makes everything in my brain malfunction at once. He loves me, and he knows me better than anyone else in the world, and every day he lives with me. He brings me chocolate and puts on my socks for me. He reaches out to me for comfort and relies on me for sustenance in some ways. I know him. Yet when he is beating the living hell out of me, and it is clear as day that I cannot take another moment of it, and I beg him to have mercy on me and he doesn't, it's like I do not know him at all. 

I like the idea that I don't know all of him, and perhaps even that you cannot know all of another person no matter how much you love them. There are parts of the person you love that you do not know. You do not understand. I do not understand the part of him that can keep hurting me after I beg for mercy. I don't know who that person is, and I don't know what he will do to me. I don't even know quite how to communicate with that creature, and it doesn't seem to speak any of the languages I do. He's not that person, not to me anyway, and I do not know what that side of him contains. I do not know where it comes from. I do know how when it may appear and I do not know how to make it go away. I cannot see his brain at all, and it's so unsettling to be so completely unfamiliar with the person you know best. I love those moments after the denial of mercy, because I don't know where they will end or when. I love how I can fear him like a stranger, but respond to him like an sculpture he created. 

I am so attracted to his lack of mercy. 

I think it will kill me.