Hard on Purpose (Push It)… (2-9) – Commentary

Commentary (The Receipt)

If you got through the first paragraph of this piece without clenching something, congratulations: your nervous system is either very chill or very used to being here.

Hard on Purpose is doing three main jobs at once:

  1. Giving language to people who are genuinely, unapologetically into impact.
  2. Drawing a neon, unmissable line between “kink” and “abuse.”
  3. Admitting that there’s a kind of love that looks, from the outside, like two people have completely lost the plot.

This isn’t a tutorial on “how to hit someone.” It’s a translation of what some people mean when they say:

“I want you to slap me.”

“I want bruises.”

“I want you to hit me harder.”

Not everyone means “trauma, but make it sexy.” A lot of them mean:

“I have all this old, non-consensual hurt sitting in my body, and I want to rewrite it with someone I actually trust.”

The opening is written to make even impact people blink a little. “Some people deserve to be hit. Hard.” is not soft language. That’s on purpose. It forces the question:

  • Who are those people?
  • Under what conditions?
  • And who the hell gets to say they “deserve” anything?

The rest of the piece is the long, careful answer.

What this piece is really talking about

On the surface, it’s about:

  • slapping, whipping, pinning, dragging, hair-pulling,
  • bruises, fingerprints, echoing slaps,
  • tears-on-the-floor, mascara-down-your-face levels of intensity.

Underneath that, it’s about:

  • using impact as a language for presence (“you’re here / you see me / you’re not going anywhere”),
  • taking experiences of being hurt without a say, and recasting them as “this time I chose it,”
  • the weird, specific way some people’s brains file “this hurts and I want more.”

It’s also about shared control.

From the outside, a heavy scene can look like:

“Big, mean person hits smaller person. Smaller person must be broken.”

Inside, the power math is different:

  • the top has control over what happens,
  • the bottom has control over whether it happens at all.

If they pull the plug, it ends. If they say “yellow,” things change. If they say “no,” everything stops. That’s the container this piece keeps pointing back toward, even when it’s talking about tears and bruises.

Why the huge “NOT THIS” list?

Because culture loves to blur the line between “kinky” and “violent,” especially around rough sex.

So there’s a whole wall of:

  • family violence,
  • partner abuse,
  • being hit in anger,
  • surprise choking,
  • being cornered or blocked from leaving,
  • threats, intimidation, filmed breakdowns,
  • “discipline” that’s just someone dumping rage on your body.

That list is long on purpose:

  • to give survivors enough examples to go, “Nope, that thing that happened to me was not kink.”
  • to make it very hard for anyone to read this and go, “See? This essay says my non-con bullshit is hot.”

If the impact isn’t chosen, wanted, and backed by the ability to stop it, this piece is not defending it. At all.

Brains are little freaks

There’s a short psych section in here because you can’t talk about impact without talking about the body.

The gist:

  • If you feel unsafe, your brain reads pain as:
  • “Something is wrong; fix it; get out.”
  • If you feel seen, chosen, and held, your brain can (not always, but can) refile pain as:
  • “This hurts and I want more.”

Same nerves, different story.

When actual masochists and impact lovers are asked why they like it, the answers tend to sound like:

  • “It clears my head.”
  • “I like the intensity.”
  • “I like the power exchange.”
  • “I like doing it with someone I trust.”

Notice what’s not in there:

  • “I like it when people ignore my safeword.”
  • “I like being hit until I’m scared.”
  • “I like being punished for saying no.”

That’s the dividing line this piece is obsessed with:

  • Kink = pain inside a container of choice, trust, communication, and aftercare.
  • Damage = pain wrapped in fear, obligation, or “I didn’t think I was allowed to say no.”

Once safewords stop working, once “stop” becomes a debate topic, it’s not impact play anymore. It’s just abuse with props.

Tops, bottoms, and who this is for

If you’re more on the bottom / sub / masochist side, this piece is offering:

  • a way to explain what you want beyond “idk, I’m just fucked up,”
  • language like “good pain vs bad pain,”
  • permission to like impact without having to hate yourself for it.

It’s also quietly saying:

“If your experiences of roughness have mostly been non-con, it makes sense if you’re scared. You don’t have to fix that by jumping into a scene.”

If you’re more on the top / Dom / Daddy / Master side, this piece is:

  • a love letter and a warning label.

A love letter, because it admits:

  • there is something hot about being trusted to leave marks on someone who wants that from you specifically.
  • part of the kink is knowing “I could go further and I’m choosing not to.”

A warning label, because it spells out:

  • if you skip the boring parts (limits, health, signals, aftercare), you’re not edgy — you’re just dangerous.
  • if you treat someone’s nervous system like a chew toy, they will carry that in their body long after the scene is over.

It also calls out a specific risk: doing this with someone who loves you.

  • That’s where the deepest, most devotional scenes tend to live.
  • That’s also where the deepest confusion can grow if things go sideways.

“If impact isn’t your language…”

This piece is loud and unapologetic about impact, but it still makes space for:

  • subs who want control and structure but no bruises,
  • Doms who can’t stand the idea of hitting someone, even with consent,
  • people whose “yes” lives in words, service, worship, or other forms of power — not in a raised hand.

The line:

“If impact isn’t your language, that’s fine — your body gets to want something else.”

is doing a lot of work in one sentence. It’s your out clause.

This isn’t “You’re not a real sub unless you like to get hit” or “You’re not a real Dom if you never swing.”

It’s:

“If this is you, here’s a map. If it’s not, cool — your nervous system’s dialect is still valid.”

What to do with it

You don’t have to do anything with this piece.

You can:

  • sit with the part that resonated and do nothing.
  • notice the parts that made you clench and decide, “Yeah, this isn’t for me.”
  • send it to someone you’re in a dynamic with and say, “Some of this is us, some isn’t — can we talk?”
  • or just file it under “evidence that I’m not the only one who feels this way,” and move on.

Hard on Purpose isn’t here to recruit you to a kink.

It’s here to say:

  • wanting impact doesn’t make you broken,
  • not wanting impact doesn’t make you boring,
  • and the only part worth fighting for is your ability to say yes or no and have that actually matter.

On the companion track: “Push It” – Garbage

“Push It” is not a subtle choice, and that’s exactly why it belongs here.

The whole track lives in that strained, grinding space between “this is too much” and “do it again.” The distorted guitars, the pulsing beat, Shirley Manson half-praying / half-snapping into the mic — it all feels like a nervous system riding the line between overwhelm and craving. Which is basically what this piece is about: intensity that could tip either way, and the deliberate choice to stay.

Lyrically, it’s a tug-of-war with pressure, impulse, intrusion, and desire. Sonically, it feels like a scene: slow build, sharp hits, breaks that almost give you rest, then another wave there before you’re ready. It’s not romance-core. It’s consensual chaos with a rhythm.

If “Hard on Purpose” is about choosing impact and owning what it does to you, “Push It” is the soundtrack of that choice — loud, messy, relentless, and somehow still controlled enough that you keep leaning in instead of walking away.

Cycle II – Coming of Age · 09 · Commentary (v1.00)

Commentary · 09

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