Unbruising

Once upon a time, I lived in a place called the Lush Pussy Palace, known for hosting debaucherous parties spanning multiple days with a core group of sapphic women wearing little to no clothes, consuming many substances.

One Tuesday, me and three beautiful women wanted to see who could give the best hickey. Clad in lingerie, we took turns against each other's necks until we came to a consensus.

As a consistent scumbag, I've never had much of a problem brandishing lustful markings in my day-to-day life (though I maintain a strict environmental policy with most lovers: leave no trace).

The same wasn't true for two of the women I was with, so our evening split into figuring out the fastest way to lessen the appearance of bruises, specifically hickeys.

Yep, that’s the path.

Throw a spoon into a freezer for 10 - 15 minutes, take it out, put the curved side against the hickey, move it in slow circles to increase circulation.

Don’t wait on this, you’ll want to do this through the first two days and then switch to warm compresses after that. If you have a cream with Vitamin K or Arnica, grab that.

The spoon method will only get you so far, if you need to hide it fast you could use a concealer stick or suddenly get really into ascots. To each their own.

Alright, that’s the light stuff. Time for the dark.

“I’m going to rape you”

His words, whispered into my ear, as I came.

He slapped me so hard I saw stars, he choked me to the edge of death. My safeword was broken. I was the one who shattered it.

He always leaves dirt on my skin that I can’t scrub off, my teeth on the curb under the steel toe boot of shame. This wasn’t about pleasure. This was about control.

The abuse he dealt hadn’t always been consensual. I met him when I was eighteen and fell madly in love. He was charming and funny and brilliant. He was also consumed by anger.

No matter what he did, I always came back for more.

Listen, I didn’t grow up with a protector. Autism made that dangerous. I was twelve years old when I was raped for the first time. At fifteen, I gave up on putting up a fight. At seventeen, I stopped keeping count.*

Before my daughter was born, she was my imaginary friend. I would show her the upside of down, promise her that she wouldn’t have to live as I did because I would always protect her. I named her after the dawn, because there was no greater feeling than seeing the sun peeking out of the horizon. It meant that I was safe.

In her physical incarnation, she is the brightest sun. The only person capable of pulling me from the depths of hell. My heart started beating the day she was born.

I sat in between the darkness of my past and the lightness of my present while we played a game. He was funny and charming, she was entranced. I saw my long lost hope shining through my daughters eyes. But then I looked at the bruises hiding under my clothes and I saw it clearly. This was all an illusion.

When she went to bed, I lost the man I loved and returned to my abuser.* We fought. I started it. I once confided in him about a particularly brutal rape where I was drugged and woke up naked in the middle of a field. I kicked him out after he told me that I was asking for it.

I put these bruises on my skin with another person’s hands. I thought that if I could recreate my past under my terms, it would somehow cancel it out.

And while it did sting to hear my daughter say “I liked him” when she woke up this morning, what hurt more was knowing that I let her down. The darkness I promised to protect her from sat in our living room.

Never again.

That’s how I’m getting rid of my bruises.

Xoxo,
A

*I realize that this part paints a certain picture of my past, so I want to clear this up: my life has been an incredible journey, and I wouldn't change anything about it. All of the lows have been equally matched by the highs. It has moulded me into an incredibly resilient and empathetic person.

*When I say abuser here, I don't mean that he was actively abusing me. As I mentioned before, I consented to what he did to my body. We were in an argument when he said the last comment. Was it a low blow? Absolutely. But I said some pretty horrible shit to him too. I meant it in more of an archetypical sense. He played a character in my story of an inner battle between darkness and light.