My Shadow is a Sadist
The thought that I might be Sadistic happened a couple years ago when I fingered a woman for the first time.
For whatever reason at that moment I felt the urge to not be so nice. I was (in my mind) a bit...enthusiastic. She let out a small exclamation of what I interpreted as slight discomfort and arousal at my roughness. Her sharp inhale of breath woke something within me. I had never realized until that point how much a cry of pain could sound like a cry of ecstasy…or an orgasm.
I distinctly remember grinning. I remember that the grin felt somehow foreign on my face. I didn’t know what I looked like in that moment, and for all I know my smile could have been a grimace. Regardless, that grin - if it was one - stuck with me because it wasn’t mine; it was my shadow’s.
The shadow is a Jungian concept that human beings essentially have both the good and the bad within themselves. The shadow self is made up of all the things a person wishes to hide from the outside world, and sometimes even from themselves.
Be it a short temper, a judgemental belief, or any number of things, the darkness of the shadow gives us all the illusion that we can hide - and thereby control - the things we see as flaws within ourselves. Of course, the harder we try to hide such things, the more overbearing and stronger they become. Ultimately, Jung calls for balance, for putting light onto the shadow within ourselves and learning about it.
In the case of that smile, I personally wanted to learn why it had happened. I had done quite a bit of “shadow work” before, and felt this was a good opportunity to get back into my meditation practice and explore a bit deeper.
A couple months back into my practice, I had an unprompted thought, albeit a familiar one. You want to hurt people. You want to cause pain.
"Okay. Let's think about this,” I said to myself. “Sure, I mean, no need in hiding it; I can be a sadist, can’t I? Sadism is totally acceptable in the kink community.”
Then I had a new, somewhat uncomfortable thought: You want to cause pain to those who do not want to be in pain.
"Nope, fuck this," I said, this time out loud. I got up from where I had been sitting and went off to do something else, yet all the while thinking, “What’s wrong with me?"
A few weeks went by and one evening as I was debating myself, I finally decided to just sit down at my laptop and type out the inner dialogue I was having. It went like this:
You can be your whole self if you embrace this badness. Haven't you always wanted to play the villain, the bad guy, even just a little bit?
Maybe I've had such thoughts before, but I have no intention of actually hurting someone who doesn’t want to be hurt! I would only hurt people within specified boundaries -- those who want to be hurt.
You’re recognizing the difference now. Your morality is changing, your boundaries are evolving, and you’re coming to realize this might work, aren’t you? Balance out your meditation and prayer with the infliction of violence...the universe runs on chaos and order.
"Well," I sighed to myself, “Fuck.”
The Scene
The deal I struck with my sadism was that it could be practiced but only on my terms. I negotiated an impact scene with a dear friend over the course of a couple weeks. We joked that it was perhaps the most thorough negotiation either of us had done, but I was dead-set on not releasing my entire sadistic streak in my first scene as a Top. Think of it as a playpen for a baby devil.
In the beginning, I started spanking her immediately. The rush of the experience felt akin to my first scene. I joked around at first, being silly about how my hand stung from hitting her so hard. Overall, I was both myself and not myself at all. Halfway through I felt a strange calmness and clarity unlike anything I've felt before. The only things that were always constant were limits, safewords, and was my friend okay.
There were times when the old me burst through my brain like someone who had just struggled free from captors and had very little time to relay a message. When I picked up the paddle she had brought, I weighed it in my hands. I remembered how a paddle felt on me, how the strikes had sent me to another plane when I was a masochist. Looking over at my friend who was well into the scene, I hesitated. Was this really okay? I was actually, legitimately hurting her.
I shook the thought from my head and I reared back with the paddle.
But I still couldn’t seem to bring myself to make a strike. I took a breath, letting her rest a moment. “You want this,” I told myself, “and she does, too.”
I followed through with the paddle which provided me with a satisfying thud. She let out the sweetest, most adorable whimper and I smiled a smile that was my own for the very first time.
We had agreed that the scene would end when I succeeded in making her cry (or her saying a safeword). It was in the moment that her tears started to fall that I knew I had found balance. The sadist vanished instantly, and surprisingly without any effort at all. I put a blanket over my friend and ran to get chocolate and a glass of water, returning to lay on the bed to hold her.
I'm not sure how long we stayed like this, but I felt a deep sense of gratitude to this person. We chatted softly about music and what we could have for dinner. We joked together about my outfit and boots, and at some point we wandered to the living room and found ourselves both in a daze. When we posted photos online, I noticed how quickly people assumed we had been intimate in more than just the ways of impact play. I never once thought that I would have sex that night, and I didn't.
My relationship with my sadism is simply this: I like to hurt people. Women, specifically. After one scene, I can confirm this 100%. I can also confirm that, at least based on this little experiment, my sadism is largely asexual.
I only Top women, because I want to hurt women. I am a sadist. And unless sex is unpleasant for you, odds are pretty fucking high that I will never consider doing it as a sadist.
And Carl Jung was right. I felt more balanced in the weeks that followed. My self-esteem skyrocketed. I felt like a new and rejuvenated person. It was, like a puzzle piece was missing and now was firmly in its place. I don't have thoughts that disturb me anymore because they are just that. I now know I am capable of controlling myself as a Top. The thoughts no longer have the power to scare me as they once did.
The biggest truth that I’ve uncovered on my kink journey has been that shining light on my shadow was the only way I could become whole.
About the Author: SubtleShadow is a queer, poly, sadomasochist and playful kinkster with an insatiable curiosity about the world and a desire to explore all of it.
