don't touch me, i'll cry
Everyone knows trauma can pull you out of your body. But what's the best way to get back in?
In one of my (many) incomplete novel drafts, I created a universe where people can pay to place their consciousness into a brand new body. Borrowing from the concept of the immune system “rejecting” newly placed organs, in the book I explain that mind and bodies need to be fully synced urgently after every body swap to avoid disastrous consequences. Curiously, one of the ways this syncing can happen is through orgasm. The logic behind this option is a simple one: we all know that trauma displaces you within your body. You leave and float elsewhere as bad things happen or as you remember them happening, if you remember at all. We know that pain takes you away from yourself and brings you to a place of disorientation and incorporeality. But what about pleasure—does it bring you back? Does it tether you more firmly to the world, to your flesh, to the physicality of your lived experience? Theoretically, if pain can separate, then pleasure ought to unite….right?
That’s how it works in my story, at least, and I wish I could confidently say that’s also how it works in real life.
There are so many science-fiction stories that talk about the idea of replicating one’s sentience and tucking it someplace safe for later use. There’s this fascination with the idea of leaving a digital copy of yourself behind or preserving the body indefinitely in anticipation of a future revival. Naturally, this raises questions about where the “self” is stored. Death makes it clear that the self is something more abstract than our physical form: the presence of the body is not equivalent to the presence of the soul. (Soul = spirit = sentience = self ?) Even sleep suggests this, as each of us do tuck into some metaphysical realm as we dream, and in those moments we are not quite “here” in the traditional sense. You might speculate the soul is somewhere in the brain, but where exactly, scientists and doctors have yet to determine.
In a way, it’s funny how many ways there are to separate self and body. Trauma is the gold-star exemplary method, but it can also be done with drugs, drowsiness or sensory deprivation. Truly, when you think about all the ways there are to disturb this sacred connection, it almost seems as if the self wants to rip away: Rather than staying firmly rooted into the Body’s earth, the Self is more like a wiggling leaf always threatening to give into the wind of the mind, yearning to be an aimless floater. Our best defenses against this severance emphasize mindfulness and movement: create a greater awareness of your body and its needs, engage with it and the world instead of running away.
To be honest? I find mindfulness challenging. It feels unnatural, kinda fake. I find it tedious. Breathe in for four seconds—hold—exhale for five seconds—hold. Repeat. Three things I can touch, two things I can see, one thing I can hear….Enough! I can’t meditate, sorry; I have anxiety: I have a whirlwind of competing thoughts, I do not want to be grounded in the cage that is my body, I want to be free. Maybe I don’t know how to recognize joy or pleasure or peace because within me there is only turmoil. My only hope is thus a longstanding distraction. The body is a canvas is a prison is a stranger is a key is a promise is a ritual. But is she ever “me?”
beauty…
Not to get too hysterical about the genderness of it all, but I am a girl, which is to say I was raised to look at my body with scrutiny and I was made to understand the pros and cons of having one early. I was still prepubescent when it was first made clear to me what kind of attention beauty could buy you, the kindness and adoration it afforded me to be seen as worthy in the eyes of others. Rather than feeling deflated by this, I was empowered. The clarity was resounding. In the years that followed I was made aware, in different ways throughout my adolescence, of the allures and the dangers that hovered around me, surrounded me in shadow.
Eventually I came to understand the ways I could manipulate how I was perceived. I learned how to flirt, how to speak with my eyes. I learned how to laugh. I coveted a certain type of figure that I was not lucky enough to have been born with but this deficit was my catalyst to learning how to dress, how to play with shape.
In my twenties, I took dance classes because I knew movement was central to confidence as much as it was to sensuality and I wanted to be good at all of it, though I wasn’t successful. As a buffer, I figured out which recreational substances pulled me out of my mind and which ones kept me stuck. I was often beautiful, in that theatrical way, never in that effortless gliding way, but I was in control nonetheless, and I understood intimately the power that held—I relished it and I mastered the recipe so I could always eat my cake and have it, too.
…and the beast:
Because I have a grasp of how to manipulate my body in these specific ways that make it easier to navigate society, I’ve always wanted the idea of “mind over matter” to be true. But there are too many ways the body supersedes my power. How many times have I rolled my eyes at my bladder for urgently calling me to the bathroom at the sound of rushing water when I was fine moments before, trying to hold it in until my lower half threatens to burst? How many times have I tried to suppress a coughing fit to avoid the embarrassment of being uncontrollably ill for a full ten seconds among company? How many times have I denied myself food or sleep because I was too engrossed in a task to bother with catering to such annoyingly human physiological needs? Who among us has not tried once or twice to postpone or induce a period to accommodate our schedules? Who among us has not said, “It’s fine, I’m okay, don’t worry about it,” only to be overruled in the heat of passion and shut down because you lied—again—and this time it was just too much?
La Petit Mort: The Little (Ego) Death
The first time it happened, the first time I floated away from myself and stared back at my body in the midst of a sexual tryst: blank, in a bed, underneath an earnest but hopeless man, I thought, “ah, poor thing.” I gazed upon myself with tired eyes. Though I had never before been in this room or this state and the hands that were touching me belonged to someone I’d only met briefly before, the moment felt eerily familiar and my mind flooded with a memory that felt distinctly not my own. I wondered if I was experiencing a past life or a new type of deja vu. I couldn’t tell.
Laying there, I felt defeated. From the concern in his eyes I understood I had ruined the mood. I had wanted it to be okay, everything that was happening, and I’d tried. My goodness, I really did try. Wanting to continue, apologetically I asked him to pretend I wasn’t crying—I told him I was okay, because I wanted this to be true, and I wanted to be in control, and I wanted to suppress whatever internal mechanism was overruling me and reveling too much in its power. But I just couldn’t do it, and we had to stop, and I felt guilty and vulnerable, and in hindsight I don’t even think I was ‘me’ back then, at the time, and it’s a revelation I only came to recently—that the splitting happened that first time, too, though I didn’t have the vocabulary to really articulate it.
I experience a thing known as “post-coital dysphoria.” It’s been happening to me almost as long as I’ve been sexually active but only in the last year did I find out there’s a name for it. Here’s a definition:
Post-coital tristesse (/triˈstɛs/; PCT), also known as post-coital dysphoria (PCD), is the feeling of sadness, anxiety, agitation or aggression, after orgasm in sexual intercourse or masturbation. Many people with PCT may exhibit strong feelings of anxiety lasting from five minutes to two hours after coitus. Although there's not one set cause of PCD, it may be due to a hormonal shift. During sex, dopamine levels rise significantly, contributing to feelings of excitement and pleasure. After orgasm, prolactin is released, which can counteract the dopamine surge, leading to a potential mood shift. Feelings of shame around sex or a history of sexual assault are other possible causes of PCD.
Put plainly, sex makes me cry. Crying is one way I might orgasm with a partner. I actually have three (3) identifiable types of orgasms that I’ve experienced:
There is the laughing orgasm (this typically results from me receiving oral—I erupt in a fit of giggles as if I were being tickled).
There is the “paralysis” orgasm, a particularly cumbersome response, where my body goes tingly-numb the way it does when a limb falls asleep. I cannot move my arms or my legs or the muscles of my face, which means I cannot talk so I cannot say “stop” or “wait!” Instead I have to flail pathetically or do some other gesture to first get my partner’s attention, and then after that we just wait for it to pass. Sometimes it takes a few minutes. Sometimes it takes ten. A true roll of the dice.
Then, lastly, we have the crying orgasm (PCD), where my body becomes so overwhelmed I shed involuntary tears. I am a prolific crier outside of the bedroom, so I am already familiar with what it means for tears to well at the witness of beauty or from an abundance of joy. Sometimes the crying is only in a technical sense, the way a tear rolls down with a yawn if you’re tired enough. But there have been times when it is full-on sobbing. And with the sobbing, I am trapped in a sinking feeling of panic and confusion. What’s more, an alarming new symptom has reared: my crying repeatedly triggers a dissociative episode where I seem to emerge from this experience not as me, but temporarily as a younger and frightened second self.
rituals of separation
I haven’t figured out yet how all these things fit together. I know that I was always a dissociative type. I always experienced that disconnect, and I know it probably stems from trauma. Okay cool, nbd.
I also know that my experience of depersonalization (the feeling of floating outside of yourself, witnessing yourself in 3rd person) during sex has usually been in response to me ignoring my own needs and consenting to encounters I did not actually want to be having. But I don’t know why the crying happens, because it has happened with partners I loved and consented to being with. There was no coercion or discomfort beforehand or during. But still I would cry, usually from pleasure, and I would try to make light of it.
But now sometimes when I cry, it isn’t from pleasure at all. Something strange and darker is happening: I keep inexplicably and involuntarily switching to a a version of myself regressed in age. She’s curious and confused, scared and vulnerable. And she is me. But she doesn’t belong there!
When this happens, I feel betrayed by my body and my mind and sometimes even my partner. It takes so much effort to calm down. It’s also hard to switch back to being normal right away, so often I end up just falling asleep because it’s the quickest fix at my disposable. Thankfully, I wake feeling Just Like Me again, every time. But I don’t like constantly going through this. It doesn’t always happen, but it’s unpredictable. I have no way to tell in the beginning if I’ll be normal after sex, if I’ll have ‘regular’ PCD, or if I’ll “split.”
I never really considered myself to be a person with “multiple personalities.” However, I have identified as a little1 for a long time and understood a part of myself to exist that was small and delicate and private. I would talk about it in confidence with friends who could relate and I’d mention this part of myself as a disclaimer to new partners so they’d know how to treat me. I didn’t make a big deal of it, but I knew it was there. Just as I knew something was there all those times I had edibles and again felt like I was not Me but some other version, though not Little Me either, and to quell the anxiety that arose from this I would console myself with the reminder that the Real Me would take care of everything tomorrow or in the morning, that she would be smart and know what to do.
It’s hard to reconcile with the idea that I might be made up of more than one “self” and it’s even harder to deal with this with an audience while I’m naked and confused. It’s also weird to think back to my past experiences and realize this might’ve been happening then, too. It’s uncomfortable to be at the mercy of my body and to be vulnerable against my will without easy tools to control it. It was already annoying to have to give a disclaimer before intimacy about PCD. It’s not fun to be further reliant on aftercare to keep me from getting too hysterical. I feel mentally ill and I feel like a Problem no matter how much reassurance I get that I’m not. And therapy is great, and necessary in my case, and I’m glad to have access to it, but let’s be real: 45mins a week at a time is not an immediate fix for an ongoing, almost routine occurrence. So, in the meantime, I’m living through it all and trying to give myself grace.
It’s a shame that even sexual pleasure can be a triggering experience personally. I wish it worked for me the way it does for the people in my unfinished novel, as a means to integrating self and body.
bodies are our first homes
I live in my body as one lives in a house full of strange rooms and locked closets. I try my best to make this place feel like home. I invite people over and I smile nervously at those padlocked doors as I usher my guests into grander ballrooms with crystal chandeliers. We don’t talk about the basement. We don’t go “decluttering” in the spring. No, we lock a door, we find a new unfurnished room to occupy and decorate, and we stare out the window longingly on quiet days, like normal people. Yeah, occasionally I dream of gutting the whole thing and starting over somewhere else, but I don’t. I make cosmetic changes without altering the structure. Sometimes I do imagine running away but I always stay put, because in the end I like the security of at least having a home, even if it isn’t always our favorite place to be.
𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ♡⋅⋆⭒˚｡⋆.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅₊˚⊹♡⋆˙⟡⊹₊ ⋆ ᡣ𐭩⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪-`♡´-✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩𖥔 ݁ ˖ ✦
thank you for reading 🥀✨
Little as in “little girl,” as in DDlg.