You Have To Hurt Me A Little to Make Me Yearn For Your Love!

[Be****]

I wake up with sweat dripping down my neck, my head feels like a furnace as I run my fingers through my hair to fan it out, the heat emanates out of me, like a loo is blowing out of my skull. I slide out of bed and walk to the balcony, the sun is just about to rise, and there is a gentle breeze. It’s uncharacteristically warm, there is a humid mist percolating over the mountains, obliterating them out of my view. In all the years that I have known and loved this place, I have never experienced it like this—on the edge, on the brink, aching but unable to pour—and I wonder how long it will be before its climatic signature is altered forever.

I shake my hair loose.

It shakes the tears loose as well.

He walks out, onto the balcony, to find me crying. There is a strange discomfort between us, I know he wants to come forth and hold me, and I know I seek his comforting embrace more than anything, but I am not ready, I cannot go there. The dark, angry clouds of my emotion shake and thunder inside me, but they are not ready to show themselves yet. I pretend to wipe my tears, I pretend I feel fine, I pretend everything feels okay but I feel mad at him, and I know he feels mad at me. I want him to help me, he wants to help me but neither one of us can find the right words. It’s not because of anything that happened between us but there is a distance, I'm just disenchanted by the world, and my solitude has shut everyone out. Once, at an elephant conservation centre, a man told me about an elephant who had never seen another of its kind until he was 25-years old, and that story broke my heart, but of late, I find myself yearning to be that elephant. I wish I had never known my kind. I wish I had chosen isolation before they had the chance to make me feel like I belonged, because now I wonder what kind of monster I would have to be to belong with them.

"I love you," he says to me, as he puts his arms around me.

I try to squirm out of his grasp and push him away. I cannot stand to be touched, it feels like rubbing nettles into my eyeballs. I cry harder as I try to push him off me, he continues to hold my arms, I shake my body with a *** I don't usually display. It feels like an alien lives inside my chest, an alien made of unresolved emotions and unusual sensations, it's not like me to not know how I feel about something. It's not like me to not know exactly what I want.

"Please get off me," I beg, clutching my shirt inside my palm, as if I am anxious, "Just let me be alone."

"Enough," he says, quietly, but his tone is coming from a different place, a place of much more call, and much less tolerance.

"I don't want.." I begin to say, as I thrash against him, but he stomps all over my words by slapping me.

It feels so loud, it seems to still the breeze. It seems to stop time in this moment, it feels like a promise, a terrible one, the promise that we will either fix this now, or perish inside this moment. I howl as he drags me indoors, ignoring my defiant refusal of whatever it is he wants to do. Something about this feels very wrong. We carry this idea that overriding someone's resistance is okay when we've agreed to that in advance, even for perpetuity, and that makes us feel comfortable with the idea, but there are some moments of reality so stark that all conceptualisation falls flat on its face. This may be within the realm of that which is acceptable, but that fails to make it any less egregious.

He descends upon me in an onslaught. I see my clothes strew across the floor, but I have no idea how they got there. My hair is choking me. We move from the bed to the table to the floor. His fingers are inside me, they're prying me open, his fists rain down on me, he kicks my jaw. His foot is on my head, his heel is in my back, his knuckles are on my cheekbone, his knee is pressing down on my pelvis. My hair is matted by my tears and falls over my shoulders like a blanket made of itchy wool. All of it, seems to happen in one fell swoop, like a guillotine descending upon a chapter of history. He puts his hand around my throat and ***s me, I sink onto my knees, I feel something melt away in my shoulders, like an easing into the unknown.

"Do not resist me, do not struggle," he says, "Do not even try to breathe until I let you."

Suddenly, I am able to focus on what he is telling me to do, it feels like the only thing that matters in the world. I think, somehow, he has become my emotional touchstone, so long as I make sense on my knees in front of him, the world does as well. So long as I can feel the ache of loving him in my bones, I feel like a real girl. I don't know if that is good or bad, I am sure many a relationship coach could tell me a cautionary tale about dependency, but when you've spent your life being an island, a momentary refuge is so tempting, it feels like it must be okay to rely on someone to help you see past the light.

He lets go of my throat and kicks my shoulder. I feel the desire to push him off me and the desire to stay right here in obeisance in equal measure. I look up at him and I feel the overwhelming desire to start the morning over, to wake up in bed, right next to him, not curled up in one isolated corner. To wake up and wriggle towards him, to put my head on his chest and wait for him to pull me closer to him. A fresh batch of tears falls out of my eyes and onto his hand as he ***s me again. When he releases, I am ready to speak.

"I wish you were holding me right now," I tell him as the thunder drowns out my sobs, "I wish I had let you hold me when you tried."

I know I couldn't have. It doesn't just happen. The pot doesn't just boil over. The rain doesn't just come down. A million little things have to align to make it happen. The vital element. A saturation, must be reached, I must thrash around against myself to allow myself to pour. I must learn that nothing is as hard as the distress he can put me through. For better or worse, I am who I am, and I need him to *** me a little, for me to come for his love.

"You want me to hold you?" He asks, turning my neck up to him by my hair, "It's too fucking late for that."

For better or worse, he is who he is, he needs to *** me a little when I yearn most for his love. He kicks me to the corner of the room, I curl up like a neglected cat, hugging myself through my tears. He sits a few feet away from me and throws his shoe at my head.

"Hold this," he says, cocking his eyebrow up at me, "I've been too easy on you, you've forgotten just how wretched I can make you feel, you've forgotten to be grateful."

"Thank you," I say, pulling his shoe towards me.

I hold the laces in my mouth, and hug the shoe into my chest. Raindrops start to fall on the tin roof, and in mere seconds, the downpour is torrential.

"I have to go outside," I declare, I've been waiting for the rain for days.

He smiles at me and nods his head. The things you need do come for you eventually, maybe you need to suffer through the wait. Maybe you have to suffer through unrecognisable circumstances. Maybe you have to look at things you've known as truth all your life and open yourself to re-learning them. Sometimes you have to seek a new relationship with things so old they feel like the relics of your heart.

"Will you come with me?" I ask him, as I slip into my ragged dress.

I feel different now. I feel smaller, I feel afraid to be alone, I want his presence, to protect me from the lightening and the storm. I want him to validate my ***s of home and justify my need to have him with me.

"I'll wait for you right here, my love," he says, "Some things you have to do alone."

...