How Chronic Pain Almost Killed My Kink by Heather Levy
“Imagine taking the strongest edible ever and floating in a warm pool of oblivion”
Personal Essay by Heather Levy
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I love pain. From my earliest memories of tweendom, I was always drawn to pushing my limits, searching out the electric thrill pain sparked in my brain.
What started with finding ways to choke myself while masturbating quickly turned into pouring hot wax on my inner thighs and pinging my wrists with thick rubber bands throughout the day. If it didn’t cause permanent scarring, I likely tried it.
Writing about masochism is not new to me. My debut crime novel, in many ways, is a messed up coming-of-age story for my pain-obsessed protagonist. Several years ago, I wrote an article detailing my first visit to a local BDSM dungeon right in the heart of the Bible Belt. My husband and I got to witness blood cupping, knife play, and electrostimulation, our eyes wide at all the various methods to inflict pain with pleasure.
It was exhilarating to see so many others, all body types, socioeconomic backgrounds, and abilities, enjoying their sexuality. I’m far from alone in my kink.
It took years of privately, then later publicly, writing about kink, for me to understand and accept my desires without shame. There are several misconceptions about the BDSM lifestyle I routinely encounter, namely that my partner abuses me or that I don’t have full control over my own sex life (spoiler alert: I do). The only thing I haven’t had control over was a creeping chronic pain which developed soon after giving birth to my second child.
What started out as fatigue that forced me into bed for days, barely able to lift my head, transitioned to include joint swelling, low-grade fevers, insomnia, and a new kind of pain making me want to strip out of my body to escape it.
Some days, I couldn’t make a fist without crying much less want to have sex. My first thought: how will I continue to write? My second: is my sex life over?
After many years, I finally found a good doctor who would listen and run tests. Her conclusion: I have moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. At first, it felt like a death sentence. No, this autoimmune disease alone doesn’t kill, but it’s sure as hell made me want to die on many occasions.
And, in a way, I felt my sex life dying, or at least freezing into a scoop of vanilla ice cream—no fudge, no sprinkles, not even some whipped cream. My husband was afraid to inflict more pain on my body when my RA pain often shattered my ability to perform even simple tasks.
A friend once said to me, “but I thought you loved pain,” and I wanted to slap her face. Instead, I smiled at her. “It’s not the same thing,” I told her, but I could see she didn’t get it.
The easiest way I can explain it to myself is in terms of control. With pleasurable pain, I’m dictating what’s done to me and know my limits. Chronic pain, however, doesn’t care about limits; it dominates not only the body but the mind. It’s mentally exhausting, not only in managing it but in managing other people’s responses to it. I found myself apologizing in advance to people just in case I had to flake out of doing something, including sex.
More than anything, my sexual confidence waned. I didn’t feel sexy, and I didn’t feel in control of my sexuality like I had for most of my life.
Then I remembered something. I first came across the word algolagnia during research for my book. It’s the physical phenomenon where a masochist’s brain interprets pain signals differently, something researchers quantified through brain imaging. In the BDSM world, the word used is subspace, a euphoric state of mind most masochists, including myself, hope to achieve while receiving pain. Imagine taking the strongest edible ever and floating in a warm pool of oblivion and you’ll get the idea.
I had been so fearful of creating more pain in my body that I forgot all about subspace. Maybe it could somehow help my chronic pain. But would it be worth the risk to reintroduce kink in my life?
Naturally, my husband was dubious. He had seen firsthand how my chronic pain debilitated the strong person he had married and promised to care for, in sickness and in health. Adding more pain to my existence seemed contraindicated to his laidback, logical mind, and I had to admit he had a good point. I also had to admit he was not a natural sadist, and our lifestyle did not come easily to him. He didn’t realize until then how much I needed to feel a sense of control, however I could get it.
So, we stepped into the unknown together. We started small at first—some light impact play, not with a cane or even our favorite leather floggers and certainly not with a riding crop. Just hands. At this point, my RA medication controlled many of my more limiting symptoms like the joint swelling, but the pain is always there under the surface.
When I tried to find subspace again, it was like wading through thick smoke and never finding fire. What used to be an inevitable outcome of impact play with my husband now seemed like gambling with how my body might react. I could be bed-bound for days for all I knew. To this day, I still don’t know what activities might trigger a flare of my condition. Yet, I knew I had to at least try. I wasn’t ready to give up such a huge part of my sexuality.
The first time I experienced the slow burn of subspace again, it was like shedding my skin and muscle, the deep ache of my bones somewhere in the faraway distance. I was both broken and whole, fully immersed in the sensations of experiencing pain while also detached from its limitations. I was in control again. I could take the pain, both given and already within my body, and reconfigure it into a calming balm.
Since that first time, it hasn’t been an effortless process, finding that part in me. There are times when I want nothing more than to evade my chronic pain, and no amount of kink will get me to subspace. And that’s okay because I already know I’m capable of finding it again.
I’m not going to suggest BDSM for every person experiencing chronic pain, but I’ll say it’s an option and there are many people seeking it out and even blogging about it like Kate Sloan. It gives me hope to know there are others finding creative ways to take back control through their pain, that we don’t have to compromise our desires.
For me, I will always push my limitations with pain, just as I did as a teenager figuring out what I liked and disliked through trial and error. The only difference now is that I trust my body more than I did then. I’m not going to give up on its ability to surprise me in pleasurable ways.
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Header image courtesy of Eva Penner. To view Eva’s Photographer Feature, go here.
A born and bred Oklahoman, Heather Levy is a novelist and graduate of Oklahoma City University's Red Earth MFA program for creative writing. Her recent work includes the short feminist fiction piece, “You Should Smile More,” published in an anthology by Muzzleland Press. WALKING THROUGH NEEDLES, a Pitch Wars selection, is her debut novel out June 2021 through Polis Books.
