Cycle II · “The Hidden Life” · 08

Her period comes three days late.

It’s not cinematic.

No dramatic music, no collapsing on the bathroom floor.

Just a sharp little cramp, a rust-colored streak on the toilet paper, and her knees going soft because her body finally lets go of a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding for weeks.

She sits there longer than she needs to.

Underwear around her thighs, forehead in her hand, waiting to see if it’s real or if her brain is just inventing good news out of panic.

When it’s undeniable, when the ache settles into something familiar instead of apocalyptic, she laughs once — this ugly, wet sound — and then cries harder than she did the day he said it was over.

Not because she wanted a baby.

Because for a second, she was sure she’d ruined everything she hadn’t even built yet.

She doesn’t get tested.

She thinks about it.

She types “free STI clinic near me” into a search bar twice and closes the tab twice.

Weeks pass.

Nothing burns. Nothing oozes. Nothing smells wrong. Nothing hurts that isn’t supposed to hurt.

So she files it under the story that keeps the rest of her life turning:

Maybe I just got really, really lucky.

She tells herself she’ll go “if anything weird shows up.”

Then quietly decides that if something does show up, she’ll probably just… stop having sex and pretend that’s the moral high ground.

It’s easier to live in maybe than to stare at a result and have to rewrite who you are around a single word.

The sex itself won’t leave her alone.

It wasn’t a horror story.

It wasn’t a dream.

Her body remembers it as something in between:

the way his weight felt on her thighs,

the way her hips answered even when her brain was busy screaming about sperm and futures,

the way her pulse spiked when he said her name like it belonged to him.

She keeps trying to decide whether it “counts” as her first time.

Her brain starts a war every time she thinks the phrase.

First time what?

First time chosen?

First time awake?

First time she said yes with her mouth and her body and her whole nervous system and still walked away feeling like she’d left a piece of herself on the floor?

There are other memories she doesn’t put in the same box. Times when something happened to her rather than with her. Moments she only half-remembers, but her body flinches at certain smells or hands anyway.

Those don’t feel like “firsts.”

They feel like static.

This one feels like a decision.

That’s what she hates most about it.

No one forced her.

She walked in. She asked for this. She closed her eyes and opened her legs and let her whole system say, mine before he ever did.

After, she thought there would be… something.

A message. A check-in. A “that was a lot, how are you?”

Instead, everything just… thinned out.

Less talking.

Less lust.

More gaps where he used to be.

When he finally put words to it, it was some gentle version of:

“I want more than you can give.”

More time.

More access.

More lifestyle.

More something she wasn’t built to hand over yet.

She heard it as:

You weren’t enough for the thing you set yourself on fire to give him.

Now, reading about subs and littles and slaves whose devotion is treated like religion, she feels something in her chest sour.

Because no one ever came back to tell her:

“You didn’t break yourself wrong. I’m the one who mishandled how sacred that was to you.”

No one put a blanket around her and said, “It’s going to be okay. You’re still good. You’re still wanted. You’re not disgusting for needing love in this way.”

The scene ended; the priest left; the congregation scattered; she stayed in the pew trying not to throw up.

In the weeks after, her browser history gets louder.

She used to search soft stuff.

Now it’s:
Gangbangs.
Piss mops.
“Use me” tags.
Whatever extreme version of “love” the algorithm serves next.

Her fingers know exactly where the slider is on the progress bar when the girl’s mascara starts to smear and the camera zooms in on the part where she forgets how to talk.

She doesn’t even always like what she’s watching.

Half of it makes her stomach twist sideways — not from arousal, from… recognition.

But she keeps clicking because:

The more wrecked the girl looks, the more it feels like maybe this is the currency.

She can trade to be loved better next time.

If I can just be that slutty, that compliant, that unbothered by anything, someone will finally stay.

She tells herself she’s “learning what she likes.”

She knows, if she’s honest, she’s also trying to practice not flinching.

If she can train herself to be aroused by worse things, maybe nothing will ever hurt that much again.

Maybe you can porn your way into being unbreakable.

The post uses words like:

“religion”

“altar”

“god leaving the building”

She feels her throat close around all of them.

She didn’t just have sex.

She converted.

For a few shiny weeks, devotion was her entire belief system.

Her day was measured in messages, in how fast she answered, in how well she performed on command.

She memorized his preferences like scripture.

She bent her schedule, her sleep, her nervous system around his time zone and his moods.

And then he stepped back, gently, kindly, “for both their sakes” — and left her alone with this wide, echoing, silent church inside her chest.

No aftercare.

No debrief.

No translation of, “This is about my limits, not your worth.”

Just her, and a god-shaped vacancy where his voice used to be.

She reads the part about submission not being a prop, not being a kink accessory, and her first instinct is to argue:

Of course it is. Look at you. You literally turned yourself into a prop he used once.

The next paragraph hits harder:

“Submission is how you love.”

She scrolls back up and reads it again.

Because that is what it felt like.

Not a game.

Not a costume.

A way of saying, “Here, take the part of me that decides who I am and tell me I’m yours.”

She didn’t sign a contract.

She didn’t kneel in person and swear an oath.

But she did lie awake at three in the morning refreshing a chat window, waiting for a green dot, hoping today would be the day he said some version of:

“You’re mine. Officially.”

That’s devotion.

Even if he never stamped it with a title.

The section about aftercare sits in her gut like a stone.

Aftercare, for her, was:

Refreshing his page.
Pretending her chest wasn’t bruised.
Holding her own hand in the dark.

No warm voice.

No “you did well.”

No, “I know exactly what you did for me and I’m not going anywhere.”

Just silence and the sound of her own brain trying to retroactively explain why she should have known better.

Reading that aftercare isn’t clinginess, isn’t extra, isn’t “too much,” she feels something tilt.

If what happened to her had been a scene inside this essay, the writer would have called what he did negligence.

She has never used that word before.

She’s always used:

Dramatic.
Needy.
Intense.
Stupid.

All aimed at herself.

The idea that someone else might have been the one in over their head — too small for the size of what she gave — feels illegal to think.

The part that lands hardest is the invitation:

“You are allowed to say,

If you can’t hold me afterward, you don’t get to break me open.”

She reads it three times, thumb hovering over the screen.

If she’d had that sentence earlier, would she have used it?

Probably not.

She was busy proving she wasn’t “too much.”

Too demanding.

Too dramatic.

Too anything that might scare him off.

She decided she’d rather bleed in private than risk being told she was asking for too much of something he never promised.

But now, in the quiet, she realizes:

He never promised because she never asked.

And she never asked because she thought needing that kind of care made her weak or childish or unsexy.

She doesn’t know yet what she’ll do differently next time.

She only knows this: the next person who wants access to the part of her that kneels — really kneels, inside — is going to have to prove they understand that devotion is a long-term lease, not a weekend rental.

By the end of the post, her shame feels… different.

Less:

“I’m disgusting for wanting this.”

More:

“I handed cathedral-level devotion to someone who only came in to light a candle and leave.”

She still blames herself.

Of course she does.

But there’s a new file opening in the back of her mind, slowly, one she’ll keep coming back to:

Maybe I wasn’t broken for loving like that.

Maybe they were just never big enough to hold it.

She closes the tab and stares at her dark reflection in the screen for a long time.

For the first time since the condomless “it just happened,” she lets herself think a thought that isn’t a punishment:

If she ever does this again — sex, service, true devotion — it’s not going to be because someone talked her into proving how dirty she can be.

It’s going to be because someone looks her in the eye, sees how high-voltage she really is, and says,

“I know what this means.

I’m not going to disappear.”

She’s not ready to belong to anyone again — not yet. But she’s not done wanting, touching, or being touched, and she keeps promising herself she’ll know better next time, even while the part of her that rushes in is already picking up speed.

Cycle II · “The Hidden Life” · 08

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