This is a very personal post in the #AskMeAnything series, and no one actually asked me about it, but I feel like it has some merit in the BDSM discussions we normally have on the AMA. Curious what the #AskMeAnything normally is? Check out the official AMA page on my site over here.

TRIGGER WARNING: Do not read this post if descriptions of child abuse will disturb or upset you. Just read something else. Here, I found this article about puppies which is way fucking better.

All good? Okay. Read on if you want to.

Q: How do you deal with past abuse and a love of BDSM?

A: Welllll, shit, lovelies. This week, I actually got a lot done. I knocked out stuff at work, I knocked out almost 10k on my current work-in-progress (WIP), and I ALSO got news from someone in my family that they had done research into the family history and decided to look up information on my father. Now, this person had no reason to know why this would be a poor choice, a bad idea in general, and the shit that has happened this week due to their “reveal” of this information is not the focus of this post.

The main thing you need to know before we keep going is the only piece of good news I got from that unwelcome research – he’s dead, and has been for years. I’m going to throw a tiny parade at the end of this post, and if you feel like joining me, file in. Feel free to skip ahead to the BDSM stuff below the backstory if you want.

So, here’s where you get to know more information than you probably ever wanted to know about a random author on the internet, but my father was a bastard. He abused my mom, he abused me, and he was a fucking nightmare. I literally used to have nightmares about him, but I’ve grown out of them. My grandparents pulled a Lifetime made-for-TV movie-esque escape for my mom and I when I was two. They drove over night to get to my parent’s house when my father left for work on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, spent an entire day packing up everything in the house my mother wanted to take with her, and then we all left the next day. My mother and I spent a week in a women’s shelter in south Texas while everyone looked for an apartment for us that my mom could afford on her single income (not so hot in the 1980’s) and then once we were settled there was more drama that I don’t remember at all because I was two.

The things I do know for sure? My father threatened to kill me and my mother, but no one believed my mother (except my grandparents). When she divorced him the courts said he had to have visitation with me, because there was no proof of abuse (i.e. photographic evidence by the time she filed). I then spent three more years “visiting” with him, where he continued to abuse me (thankfully not sexually) until my mom and I moved to a different city, where my mom got a much better paying job (enough to put me in a “real” daycare center, instead of staying with family friends) and that’s when official people noticed the bruises, marks, etc. CPS got involved, I was only 5 so I was assigned a representative who would “act as me” in court. I got photographed, recorded talking about all the insane shit he did, and when all of that was rolled out in court, my father signed away his parental rights, which I assume was in lieu of jail time, but since this is Texas… who the fuck knows. I do know for sure that since that time he has not legally been my father, and there was a restraining order against him until I turned 18 and became an adult.

Then, on my 18th birthday he mailed me a cheap birthday card with a handwritten, 2 page letter (front and back) on notebook paper that outlined in psychotic ramblings why I was the only reason he abused my mother or me. Basically saying that an age 0 – 5 year old could “tempt him to violence” and “off-set the wheel of time”. Those are the only real quotes I remember from that letter that sent me into a panic attack.

Wonderful, right? Right…..

I’ve always been a little odd, and I know this. I’ve seen so many therapists, been on so much medication (on and off), where people tried to “fix me”, and eventually I just decided that I was done. I am who I am, and that person is not a victim, and fuck everything else. Fuck my diagnoses, fuck the opinions of various therapists, and fuck the labels. I may be a little twisted, a little not normal, and quite a bit damaged in the whole forming-long-term-emotionally-stable-relationships department, but I like me. I like who I am.

And you know what else I am, and always have been to my memory?

Kinky.

This is where the name of this post comes in, so feel free to skip down to here if you don’t want to hear my “sob story”.

So, if you’ve followed along you know my kinks. I love to play rough in the BDSM community. I’m a masochist and a painslut. I get off on pain, I like rough sex, I like submission, I like having a strong, alpha-male Dom who is just as emotionless as I am, and all of this makes me happy.

That has, seriously, been one of the biggest issues I’ve dealt with this week. Going through the above sentence over, and over, and over to remind myself of what I like. The things I’ve liked for over half my life at this point. Regardless of my history, my personal experiences, I have still developed my own kinks, my own needs, and they do make me happy and – as I always like to say on these AMA posts around BDSM – that is okay.

I had to say that to myself a lot this week. I spent about … three hours in the middle of the night having a full-blown anxiety attack on the phone with the Dom and it was the same line he kept telling me as I vented about everything. It is okay. It is okay. It is okay.

Now, you may be wondering why I’m so freaked out by it?

Why would past abuse be connected to BDSM?

Well, here’s the deal. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. Personally, I hate the idea that people who are abused as children A) turn into abusers, or B) turn into twisted sexual deviants. It’s bullshit fed into the media by a bunch of assholes who were probably not abused as children, and therefore do not get to speak on the subject. I’m a very successful person, I have a great day job, I write sexy sexy books as a second job, I have a child (who I, btw, do not abuse), and in general I’d say my friends think I’m a pretty cool person to know.

It absolutely infuriates me that simply by existing as who I am, I somehow support the second claim on that list. And I fucking wish (more than I can even describe) that I could know with absolute certainty if I would have been kinky without the childhood I went through, and there are SO MANY examples of that being possible. For example, my Dom was not abused and is the matching puzzle piece to my kinky persuasion. I have a lot of friends in the community who were not abused, and are just as masochistic and kinky. Which means that people with totally well-adjusted, not-abusive childhoods can be active, fun members of the BDSM community,  just like me.

So, what’s bothering you, and how does that matter in your BDSM lifestyle?

What drives me mad, and always has, is that I do know that some very specific elements of my kink are rooted in my abuse. My therapists had a lot of shitty (and judgmental) opinions about it… but I know a few things for sure.

First, I took the strongest memories of that abuse and made them mine. I took the power away from those memories. My father’s favorite thing to use was his belt, and now my favorite implement in play is a belt. Except, when a Dom uses a belt with me I have full control over it, and, also, they never use the metal fastenings on me. I can safeword, I can stop it with a word, and that is empowering. My father used to drink himself into unconsciousness, and so to make sure I didn’t wander or go somewhere I wasn’t supposed to, he used to tie me to furniture. Now? I like bondage. Yep, that’s fucked up. You can go ahead and nod your head, or look shocked at your screen, because yes, that is really fucked up, but the thing is that when bondage happens in BDSM – I am still in control. I can end it. I can say a word and make it all stop. So, once again? empowering.

Second, I also know that some of the memories of my abuse have permanently fucking ruined certain things for me. Most of all? I am perfectly fine with name calling, but I cannot be called ‘wench’ by anyone without physically flinching and shutting down for a minute or two. This is because this was the endearing ‘pet name’ my father chose for me, because he used to have me bring him beer from the fridge (he even tied a dog toy to the fridge handle so I could open it easier). So, a Dom can call me bitch, slut, whore, cunt, slave, what-the-fuck-ever, but if they accidentally call me wench – game over, bro. Safeword time. I’m out. THIS ESPECIALLY SUCKS, because in my non-BDSM time I love doing Ren Faires with my friends, and the word ‘wench’ gets thrown around quite liberally, and so I spend a lot of those days blocking out use of the word, reminding myself that no one is calling ‘my name’.

Alright, but does abuse = a love of BDSM?

Nope. Nopity nope, fucking no. Absolutely not. There are so many people who dealt with abuse and are not involved in the BDSM community. There are also people who were involved in abuse and enjoy the fantasies of abusive like situations in books, porn, etc. but they would never even want to participate in a safe, sane, consensual type situation in real life that resembled them. And then there are those who were abused, and happened to end up in the BDSM community. And I’m sure they have the same questions I spent this week asking myself, and my Dom, and the universe: Would I still like these things if my life had been different? Would I like different things? Would I have a more socially acceptable outlook on relationships and sex? Would I be vanilla?

The point is… we don’t know.

And we never will. Brain chemistry is pretty much still magic when it comes to science. Sure, they know *some* things about brain chemistry, and we’ve identified some artificially built chemicals that can help with some weird brain chemistry stuff and packaged them into medications, but if you’ve ever listened to nerdy science podcasts (like I do at random) you’ll learn that scientists are pretty open about how very little they understand about the brain, and DNA, and the entire concept of nature vs. nurture.  Could my brain chemistry have been different before my abuse? Totally possible. Could it be possible that I was genetically pre-determined by my DNA to be a kinky, sexy, fun BDSM fanatic who would one day write books that celebrate this absolutely incredible lifestyle that helps and supports so many kick-ass people (whether they’re active in it or not)? Yep, ALSO POSSIBLE.

We just don’t know, and because of that… we just have to accept who we are.

No matter what your history is, your current health state, your life experiences… you have a choice to be who you want to be (without trying to figure out if that other thing is the ultimate cause of this thing you do now). Now, I’ve already admitted in this hellaciously long blog post that I spent several days this week losing my mind because that family member sent me a bunch of info on he-who-shall-not-be-named, and I kept my Dom up until past 2am in the morning freaking out on the phone because I was trying to answer all of those questions. It just took a long breakdown to get back to the place I had been before the terrible *surprise* gift from that family member. The place where I’d already accepted my history, and accepted who I am now. Recognized the fucked up similarities, and then reminded myself that, I am who I am, and I like me.

I like me in all of my fucked-upness, and I happen to have some pretty wonderful people in my life that also accept my fucked-upness.

In that respect, I am damn fucking lucky, and in celebration of my nightmare fuel being dead & buried, and all of my wonderful friends who love me for me… it’s parade time.