My Body is Not Mine: Eating Disorders and Kink
Welcome back B. Mercy to the blog. Today is the second of her two-part blog series on eating disorders and kink. Read the first post here.
My body is not mine.
That’s what throbs through my body, subconsciously, when I kneel before a toilet bowl.
In a bulimia crisis moment, my body is not mine. In this terrible moment, my body belongs to doubts, hate, lies, and bad pain. The urge to purge is so strangely seductive. Kinksters know how humiliating, painful, and taboo behaviors can have that dark allure. Addicts and self harmers know that same pull.
In this moment I’m driven by layers of urges and none of them are good. I don’t want to look this way. I don’t want to weigh this way. I don’t want to curve and bulge and squeeze. My mirror and my mind clash hard. My insides twist and make me think I feel sick to my stomach. I want release in such a warped way.
When you stick your fingers down your throat, when you make yourself purge your insides, there’s a mix of violent physical reactions and a flood of soothing endorphins. We’ve each had a moment where it just feels really good to toss our cookies. It eases pain, nausea, worry. You’ve had those moments when you can’t hold back—your body has its own ideas about what it needs to do. It’s gross but it somehow feels worth it.
But when you purge, you don’t throw up just the once. You’re manipulating your body’s reflexes. When a wave really gets going, you stay over that bowl heaving and gagging until there really isn’t anything left. That sour unique taste of bile fills your tongue for a good while before your reflexes finally relax. Your whole abdomen clenches hard, trying to force out anything left. It’s violent. It’s mutilation. And that’s what my disease, what my bad pain wants.
And the exercise is useless because it isn’t exorcising any demons. It’s fucking up by body. My teeth, stomach, throat. It tastes horribly foul. It creates a mess in the bathroom with all the spatter of digested food and juices. It only compounds all my deep dark terrible thoughts: I am disgusting. It’s like being imprisoned and locking yourself in a tighter, meaner cage because you’re so afraid of the cell you’re already in.
These are moments where you can be so wrapped up in the physical and mental sensations of mere seconds that everything else fades away. Kinksters know these moments well. So do those of us who have self harmed. There is symmetry in the places I’ve been in the midst of a bulimia crisis and in the midst of utter submission.
It’s appropriate. The battle against an eating disorder starts in the mirror. You have to divorce what is actually in the mirror vs what you think it means. In kink we tend to think of things as mirrored, interlocking parts—pleasure and pain, dominance and submission, control and agency.
My body is not mine.
That’s what throbs through my soul, subconsciously, when I sit on a toilet before my Sir.
In this intimate moment, my body is not mine. The urges are both mine and not: he’s the one who likes watching his submissives pee, and my desires are to increasingly (and safely) submit. This used to be something I never thought I could ever do. There is so much shame attached. But that’s how we kinksters flip things. Shame can be seductive. Shame can be engaged with in a way that isn’t harmful but actually healthy.
I sit there, totally nude, on the porcelain seat. He cups my chin in his hand. There’s of course the need for natural physical release hanging in the air here. But there’s another sort of release that I’m just on the cusp on. Here is something that one is always supposed to do in private. It’s supposed to be disgusting. And letting yourself be seen in the midst of this every day natural bodily function is a societal sin of the highest kind. But if I break that taboo… If I submit to that level of exposure… There’s a freedom there that I’ve been coaxed into tasting.
Something clicks and I release. I pee. There’s a sigh that escapes my lips. We all have had that moment where we’ve had to ‘hold it’ and then finally get to ‘go’. But this goes beyond that. There’s the subspace tingle that settles over me. I’ve achieved a new level of submission to my Dominant. I overcame a challenge (and no minor one at that). I’ve pleased him.
But this goes even further. I sometimes think that just my clothed body is disgusting. And my naked one even worse. And my body contorted in all sorts of ways for kink and sex, a total nightmare. But how could any of that be meaningfully true now? My partner requested for, observed, and smiled at me pissing. He is, assuredly, not getting caught up on how many stretch marks I have or how round I am. And if he isn’t, why should I?
I have found greater self confidence, better self healing, by being approved of in the eyes of another. My various Doms’ approval of my body has helped to cement my own approval of my body. Being told I’m sexy doesn’t sound like a lie or delusion anymore. I can trust a Dominant to bind me, hurt me, humiliate me. So I can trust them and believe them when they say: I’m not disgusting. I’m beautiful inside and out. I don’t ever deserve to feel the way I do when I purge.
Hurt can be seductive. And that can fuck you up. But the beauty of kink is how we take twisted things and give them another twist. Pain doesn’t have to be some dead end road. You can take the darkness and make it healthy, take the humiliating and make it desirable. The gross can be fun. The private can be open. Agony and shame can be healing.
About B. Mercy
Bittersweet Mercy is a bi and bold millennial who tries to save the world under one name by day and at night writes, performs stand up, and plays under aliases. She is greatly enjoying her new life in the DC area.
