Nirvana

One of the biggest misconceptions people have about masochism is that it is simply about liking pain. It isn't.

Pain is the easiest part to explain because it is tangible. You can point to a bruise. You can describe the sting of a cane or the ache left behind after impact. What is far more difficult to explain is everything that exists around the pain. The trust…intimacy…vulnerability… relief…surrender. The strange sense of peace that can exist in the middle of something that, from the outside, looks entirely contradictory.

For a long time, I was ashamed of that. Not that I was ashamed of BDSM itself, but because I could not reconcile the morality of wanting pain. I kept asking myself what kind of person wants someone they love to hurt them. Surely there had to be something broken about that. Surely healthy people did not crave pain or find comfort in it.

I spent so much time trying to justify it instead of simply accepting it. If I wanted pain, there had to be a reason.

I convinced myself that pain only made sense if it was connected to punishment. If I had done something wrong, then pain became my penance. It was my way of making things right again. Once I had endured enough, the guilt seemed quieter. The account felt settled. I could breathe again because, in my mind, accountability had been fulfilled. Pain made wrongdoing feel complete. It gave my mind a clear beginning and an equally clear ending.

But as time passed, something changed.

I realised there were moments when I wanted pain despite having done nothing wrong. There was no punishment waiting for me. No lesson to learn. No mistake to atone for. I simply wanted the experience of pain itself…and that was much harder to accept.

Accepting pain as punishment was easy because “we” understand punishment. It has a purpose. It has a justification. Accepting that I simply wanted pain because I wanted it forced me to confront something much bigger. I had to stop asking whether my desire was morally acceptable and start asking whether I was judging myself for something that was never immoral to begin with.

Psychologically, our relationship with pain is far more complicated than most people realise. Pain and pleasure are not complete opposites in the brain. They share neurological pathways, and under certain circumstances the body releases endorphins, dopamine and adrenaline in response to pain. For some people, that combination can create calm, emotional release, euphoria or an altered state of consciousness often referred to within BDSM as subspace.

Not everyone experiences pain this way, and there is no single explanation for why some people are masochists while others are not. Like many aspects of human sexuality, there is no universal cause. For some, it is sensation seeking. For others, it is emotional regulation, intimacy, trust or simply preference.

For me, it is all of those things.

One of the most profound things BDSM has given me is a completely different relationship with pain. I grew up in a home where pain was frightening. It represented unpredictability. It represented fear. It represented powerlessness. Those experiences cannot be erased, nor would I ever pretend they can.

What BDSM gave me was not the opportunity to forget my past. It allowed me to create new associations alongside it. For the first time in my life, pain existed inside trust.

The person delivering it was someone I had chosen. Someone who knew my limits because we had discussed them beforehand. Someone who would stop if I asked them to. Someone who cared about my wellbeing before, during and after the scene.

The pain may feel physically similar, but psychologically it exists in an entirely different world. Instead of fear, there is anticipation. Instead of helplessness, there is consent. Instead of surviving someone else's choices, I am participating in my own.

That agency transformed my relationship with pain. It stopped being something that only happened to me. It became something I chose. That is the greatest act of reclaiming I have ever experienced.

People often assume that because I am a masochist, what I enjoy most is being hurt. And that is true. I enjoy most is what the pain represents. Every strike reminds me that I trusted someone enough to be vulnerable with them. Each moment of discomfort is held inside care, communication and consent.

Pain has become another language of intimacy. It is difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced it because intimacy is usually imagined as something soft. Gentle touches. Warm embraces. Quiet affection.

Perhaps?... Intimacy is not defined by softness, but it may be defined by trust.

For me, pain has become one of the ways trust is spoken. Looking back, I don't think my journey was really about learning to love pain. I think it was about learning not to hate myself for loving it.

Today I no longer feel the need to justify my masochism with punishment, guilt or psychological explanations. I still find punishment meaningful within the right dynamic, and I still understand why it once felt connected to atonement. But my relationship with pain has grown beyond that.

Sometimes I seek pain because I need release…it quiets my mind…it brings me closer to my partner, and my body simply longs for it. None of those reasons requires me to have done something wrong.

So to all the masochist out there, there is nothing wrong with you and you are not broken for wanting and needing pain the way you do 

Xoxo

Nirvana

Somewhere Between Here and Elsewhere

There is a place I visit that does not exist.

I find it in the silence between one heartbeat and the next. In the seconds before I remember where I am. And in the spaces where the world grows quiet enough for my mind to wander wherever it pleases.

Sometimes it begins with the glow of my computer screen. An unfinished email waiting patiently beneath my fingertips while I stare straight through the words and into another life entirely.

Sometimes it begins beneath warm water, my hand tracing the same absent circle against my skin until the world gently calls me back and I realise I have been gone for far longer than I meant to be.

You find me there...Both of you. As though dreaming is simply another way of remembering.

It never begins with grand declarations. It begins with laughter.

With the three of us existing so naturally together that it becomes impossible to remember a life that looked any different. We speak over one another. We steal glances that last just a heartbeat too long. We lean into one another without any hesitation.

Home is not a place...It is a pair of familiar smiles waiting at the end of the day. It is one hand finding mine while the other reaches for yours. It is the quiet certainty that no one is standing outside the circle we have made.

There are days, in this impossible little world, where I want to hide us from everyone.

I imagine a place far far away... with no clocks. A little house where the windows are always open and the air smells of soil and rain. The kind of place where mornings arrive slowly, where coffee grows cold because conversation is sweeter, where love stretches lazily across the hours without ever having to explain itself.

Just us.
The sky.
And enough forever to grow old together.

But dreams have a curious way of changing as they unfold. Because the longer I stay there, the less I want to hide.

Love like this was never meant to whisper.

I want to walk through crowded streets with smiles on our face and a twinkle in our eyes. I want strangers to catch us laughing until we cannot breathe. I want our hands tangled together without hesitation, without apology, without fear.

I want our love to exist in daylight. I want the waiter to smile as he sets three cups of coffee on the table.

I want photographs where none of us are missing.
I want holidays that end with sunburnt shoulders and hundreds of blurry pictures because we were too busy living to hold the camera still.
I want ordinary days.

Just ordinary Tuesdays made sacred because I get to come home to both of you.

Sometimes I wonder if the universe accidentally wrote us into different stories. Three souls who keep circling one another across lifetimes, always arriving just close enough to recognise something familiar before the dream ends.

Perhaps that is why my heart aches when I think of you. Because I am grieving something I have never had. They remain suspended somewhere between hope and impossibility, asking nothing of us except that we visit from time to time.

So I do.
I visit often.
In the pause before I press send.
In the warmth of the shower.
In traffic lights that stay red a little longer than usual.
I disappear into the life where you both exist beside me.

Where we love each other without shrinking.
Where we choose each other over and over until choosing becomes as effortless as breathing.

And then someone says my name.
The email still waits.
The water is beginning to cool.
The traffic light turns green.

The dream dissolves as quietly as it arrived.
But for one beautiful moment, somewhere between here and elsewhere...

I belonged to you.
And the three of us belonged to each other.

It was just the love of the three of us

There is a reality that many women know all too well. We are often hypersexualised before we are humanised. We're seen as exciting. As energetic. As something to experience. Too often we're approached as though we're an adventure, a fantasy, or a body before we're ever regarded as whole people with desires that extend far beyond sex.

That doesn't mean every interaction is like that. But it happens often enough that when you finally say, "No, I want more than this," it feels revolutionary.

There is also this idea that because compatible Dominants can feel scarce, especially ones who genuinely value consent, negotiation and respect, you should hold onto the opportunity in whatever form it presents itself.

I don't believe that anymore…Scarcity isn't a reason to betray yourself. If someone wants something fundamentally different from what you want, holding onto them doesn't solve the incompatibility. It only delays the hurt. Walking away isn't always losing. Sometimes walking away is the first time you choose yourself.

I had an experience recently that has stayed with me for reasons I wasn't expecting. At first, I thought what lingered was disappointment. I thought I was still grieving the ending of a connection that I genuinely cared about. But after sitting with it for a while, why it felt so different.

A dynamic had come to an end. It wasn't the ending I wanted, but it was the ending that happened, and I had accepted it. I was making my peace with it. Then, late one night, I received a message from him. It wasn't an overwhelming flood of texts. It was a conversation. There were references to things we would never get to explore because of how abruptly everything had ended. He spoke about wanting me. He spoke about things he wanted to do to me.

I happened to be awake, so I engaged…And why wouldn't I? This was someone I had cared about. Someone I had wanted a “future” with. Someone I had secretly hoped would reach out and say, "Maybe we were too quick. Maybe we should try again."

So I was receptive. I wasn't shutting the door in his face because I genuinely believed that maybe this was the beginning of rebuilding something.

Then he asked me if I wanted to be his “plaything” He asked whether I would be available when he wanted me. Whether I would come when he called. At the time, I don't even think I realised why the question unsettled me so much. My answer came almost instinctively.

No.

I told him that I wanted more than to be a plaything. That for me, it was all or nothing. Only afterwards, when I replayed the conversation over and over in my mind, did I realise why it hurt as much as it did. For me, being offered the role of a plaything felt like being asked to squeeze myself into a version that I have spent years trying to escape.

I have struggled for a long time with being sexualised. Not only in BDSM, but in my vanilla relationships too. It is so lonely to constantly feel as though people are fascinated by what they can do with your body before they're interested in knowing your mind. There comes a point where you start wondering whether anyone actually sees you beyond your sexuality. That leaves marks… and it changes how you move through life.

So when I was asked if I wanted to be a plaything, I wasn't hearing, "Would you like to play?"…I was hearing, "Would you be willing to accept less than what you've always said you wanted?"…And my answer was still no.

This isn't me saying there is anything wrong with play partnerships. There isn't. Some people genuinely enjoy them. Some people only want scenes without romantic attachment or deeper dynamics. There are people who thrive in those arrangements, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

It just isn't me.

I've always viewed play partnerships as something beautifully contained. Two people come together for a specific experience. Maybe it's impact. Maybe it's rope. Maybe it's service. Maybe it's sex. Whatever it is, it exists within that container, and afterwards everyone goes home, and for many people, that's fulfilling.

For me, it isn't….Because I don't crave experiences…I crave people.

I don't want someone to only know my body. I want them to know my routines. I want them to know what makes me laugh. I want them to notice when I'm quieter than usual. I want conversations that have nothing to do with kink. I want to experience someone outside of scenes, and I want to be experienced outside of mine, vice versa

I've spent too much of my life existing inside relationships where my value was measured by what I could provide physically. I cannot willingly place myself back into something that feels, to me, like another version of that.

What surprised me most wasn't that I said no…It was how easily I could have imagined an older version of myself saying yes. Not because she wanted to be a plaything.

She never did.
She would've said yes because having a small piece of someone felt better than losing them altogether.
She would've convinced herself that maybe, eventually, things would change.

Maybe if she stayed long enough.
Maybe if she submitted well enough.
Maybe if she proved herself enough.
Maybe then she'd become more.

But I don't believe that anymore.

When I responded to him, I tried explaining it in the only way I knew how. I told him that accepting the role of a plaything would feel like taking a child to a toy store, promising them they'll get a toy tomorrow, and then driving past that same toy store every single day without ever stopping.

Could the child survive?...Of course…But every drive past that shop would remind them of what they were promised but would never receive.

That is what accepting that arrangement would've felt like to me. Not because he owed me more or because he was wrong for wanting a plaything. But because I knew I wanted something entirely different.

He deserved someone who genuinely wanted the arrangement he was offering.
I deserved someone who genuinely wanted the relationship I was looking for.

Neither of us was wrong. We simply weren't compatible…and that is okay. It has been so freeing, not accepting incompatibility without trying to negotiate yourself into becoming someone else.

The biggest lesson I took away from this was about me. For years, I have been a people pleaser. I've accepted crumbs because I convinced myself crumbs were better than an empty table. I've stayed in situations that hurt me because at least they meant I still had that person in some capacity, and something was always better than nothing. I've shrunk myself over and over again to fit inside whatever space someone else was willing to offer me.

This time I didn't. This time I looked at something I knew wasn't going to make me happy, and I walked away from it. It wasn’t evil. It wasn’t wrong. It just wasn't enough for me. That is a sentence I never thought I'd be able to say without feeling guilty. I did feel guilty for a while.

There was a small part of me wondering if I should've just accepted it. Maybe I was asking for too much. Maybe I should've taken what was being offered because connections are hard to find.

But then I realised something. I'm not begging for love. I'm not begging for connection. I'm not so desperate to be chosen that I'll abandon myself in the process. For the first time in my life, I realised I was completely okay with the possibility of losing someone if keeping them meant losing myself. That feels so monumental.

That's what I'm proud of. Not that I handled everything perfectly. Not that I wasn't disappointed. I'm proud that I stayed kind. I'm proud that I stayed honest. I'm proud that I communicated my feelings instead of pretending to be okay with something I knew would slowly break my heart.

Most of all, I'm proud that when I stood at that crossroads, I chose myself. I've never really been the woman who chose herself. I've always chosen the relationship. I've always chosen the other person. I've always chosen the possibility that maybe one day I'd finally be enough.

This time I chose Nirvana…And that's the healthiest thing I've done in a very long time.

Compatibility matter way much more than JUST liking someone or being attracted to them.

Ruin me, I plead in earnestness.

Ruin me with purpose. With the kind of intention that only belongs to hands that know exactly what they hold. Strip away every version of me that learned to survive on her own.

Peel back every layer built from fear, from pride, from the aching belief that I must always carry myself. Leave only the woman who chose, freely and wholly, to kneel before you.

Hurt me with love. I am not broken. I do not deserve suffering. But hurt me ...hurt me because I am worthy of your attention, your discipline, your devotion.

Let every strike carry more than force. Let it carry reassurance. Let it say, I see you. I have you. Stay with me. Let every ache become another way you tell me I belong.

Bless me with the pain that asks nothing of me except honesty. The pain that quiets every racing thought until there is only breath, only trust, only the certainty of this moment.

Let it drown out the noise I have carried for years. Let it become the only language my body remembers.

Touch me as though this is the first time your hands have ever found me, and the last time they ever will. We both know it is neither. We know there will be other nights, other moments, other echoes of this one.

But within these walls, time is cruelly small. There is only this breath, this heartbeat, this surrender. Nothing before it matters. Nothing after it exists.

Blindfold me, not for my sight, but to teach me that I never needed it to find you. Let me discover you through anticipation, through silence, through the spaces between each touch.

Let every pause stretch until it is unbearable, because even waiting becomes another form of worship.

And when your hand finds me again, let each strike be a promise. A promise that you are still here. A promise that I have not been forgotten. A promise that I may fall apart without fear, because you will be there to gather every scattered piece.

Let each strike also be a warning that love, real love, was never meant to leave us unchanged.

Free me from the shame that once whispered there was something wrong with longing for this. Free me from every chain forged by guilt, by embarrassment, by the fear of being too much.

Let your care become the key that unlocks every door I have kept barred against myself.

Ruin me until I no longer recognise the woman who walked into the room. Let her leave lighter than she arrived. Softer. Braver. More honest.

Let me leave carrying your marks where doubt once lived, your care where loneliness once settled, and your devotion where fear once made its home.

If I am to be ruined, let it be by love so deliberate that it remakes me. Let it be by hands that never confuse power with cruelty, nor pain with punishment.

Let it be by someone who understands that what I ask for is not suffering.

It is freedom.

I dread the night.

It's not that darkness frightens me, but because darkness remembers.

The setting sun feels less like the end of a day and more like the opening of an old wound. As the sky bleeds into shades of violet and black, I find myself delaying the inevitable. I busy my hands with meaningless things. I read another page. I watch another hour pass. I pace the room. Anything to postpone the moment my head finally meets the pillow.

Because I know what waits for me...I know who waits for me.

The silence grows heavier with every passing minute until it settles around my shoulders like a familiar cloak. My bedroom is no longer just a room. It becomes a doorway. A threshold between the life I live and the one I can only visit after surrendering to sleep.

Then I close my eyes. And there you are. Never late. Never early. Always waiting.

My beautiful curse.

You haunt my dreams with a tenderness crueler than any nightmare.

You stand exactly as I remember you. The same eyes that once searched mine as though they were reading a language only they could understand. The same smile that softened every hard edge inside me. You never speak immediately. You simply look at me, as though we've only been apart for a few hours instead of an eternity.

For those precious moments, I forget that I ever lost you.

You walk toward me without hesitation, as though distance has never existed between us. When your hand finds mine, it fits with the painful familiarity of something that has always belonged there. Your fingers lace through mine with practiced ease, and I remember.

I remember that they have held me before, I remember the comfort of your embrace. The quiet conversations spoken without words. The safety I once found beneath your touch.

Nothing in these dreams feels imagined...it is all remembered.

I hear you whisper my name as though it was made only for your lips. Every syllable wraps itself around my soul until I no longer know whether my heart beats for me or for you. If this is madness, then let me lose every fragment of reason. I would listen to your voice for eternity if it meant hearing my name spoken the way you do.

Sometimes we don't speak at all. We simply exist together.

You brush a loose strand of hair behind my ear and just look at me. You laugh softly at something I cannot remember saying. We walk through places that do not exist, yet somehow feel more like home than the life waiting for me beyond morning.

In those dreams there is no goodbye. No ending. No reason to question why we ever drifted apart.  There is only us.

The version of us the night is kind enough to preserve. Perhaps that is why waking hurts so much.

Because for a few stolen hours, I am allowed to believe that nothing was ever broken.

Then morning comes.

I wake with tears already spilling down my face, reaching across cold sheets that have never known your body. The silence is deafening. The room is empty. You are gone, as though dawn steals you away before I can beg you to stay.

Every morning I mourn someone who has not disappeared from the world...Only from mine.

What a cruel existence, to fall asleep in anticipation and wake in grief.

Yet every evening I return to this bed willingly. I smooth the pillow beneath my head like a sacred ritual. I welcome the darkness because somewhere beyond it, you are waiting for me.

Perhaps I am no longer sleeping.

Perhaps I am simply visiting the only place where our souls are still allowed to find one another.

And oh...

How I ache for the day you stop haunting my dreams and begin haunting my reality.

The day I wake with your arms wrapped around me instead of memories.

The day your heartbeat replaces the echo of my own.

Until then, I will keep returning to the only place that has ever been merciful enough to give you back to me.

Every night, I lose myself just to find you.
Every morning, I find myself only to lose you again.

My haunted love.

I am nothing.

I am no one if I am not his.

I am nothing if my devotion has nowhere to rest, if my heart cannot pour itself into him, if the love I carry is not touched by him.

I am nothing...

Yet somehow, I am still everything.

Everything he has awakened in me.

Everything reflected back through his eyes.

Everything that becomes softer, stronger, quieter in his presence.

I am his reflection, not because I disappear, but because I choose to stand where his light reaches me.

I ache to belong...to him

I ache to be his.

To wear my love without shame.

To surrender to him without fear.

To be chosen every day, just as I choose him.

Without that, my lungs still fill with air, but each breath feels hollow, as though my body remembers a home my heart cannot find.

My breath feels useless.

Because I long for a life where every breath is shared with the one I call mine.

I am nothing...

What am I, if the breath in my lungs is not drawn for him? If my heartbeat does not answer his? If my hands cannot reach, serve, or worship?

Then let them stop.

For what is breath without purpose? What is a pulse without devotion? What is a body that cannot belong?

Strip me of my name, for it means nothing. Strip me of my voice, for it only learned to speak when it spoke to him. 

Strip me of my will, for I have no desire greater than surrendering it.

Leave me empty.

I do not long to be seen.

I long to disappear so completely into him that no one can tell where I end and where he begins.

Let them call it madness. Let them call it obsession. Let them whisper that I have been bewitched, brainwashed, lost.

Perhaps I have.

For I have searched every corner of freedom, and nowhere did I feel as alive as I do wearing the weight of belonging to him.

I am nothing.

Nothing without his will.

Nothing without his voice.

Nothing without the quiet certainty that every breath belongs to him before it ever reaches my lungs.

I am nothing.

Nothing without him.

Nothing beyond him.

Nothing before him.

And yet...

In becoming nothing,

I became entirely his.

To Love
To love is to know someone.

To know the shape of their days
without needing to ask.

To know what time they wake up,
when they take lunch,
when they are probably stuck in traffic,
when they are most likely laughing,
when they are asleep.

To look at the clock and think...
It is 10:43.
They are probably in a meeting.

It is 18:17.
Maybe they are cooking.
Maybe they forgot to eat again.

To love is to carry little pieces of another person's life
inside your ordinary moments.
To know what stories they tell too often.
What they order at restaurants.
What silence means from them.

To know the difference between
"I am okay"
and
"I am okay."

To love is to notice.
To notice the way they change.
To notice when they are quieter than usual.
To remember things they never asked you to remember.

To love is to know
that one day you may have to let go.
Not because the love was not real.
Not because anyone failed.
But because people leave.

Sometimes through distance.
Sometimes through endings.
Sometimes through death.
Sometimes simply because life keeps moving.

And to love is to understand this
before you begin.
To know that one day
you may mourn.
Not only the person,
but the routine.

The good morning texts.
The inside jokes.
The reaching for your phone.
The instinct to tell them first.

To love is
To mourn the connection.
To mourn the version of yourself
that existed beside them.

Whether it lasted three weeks,
three months,
or three years.

And to know that short love
is still love.
That love does not become less sacred
because it ended.
To love is to stand in the doorway of impermanence
and walk in anyway.

To say..
I know this may hurt me.
I know one day I may grieve this.
And I will love nonetheless.

Maybe one day
I will write a poem called To Be Loved.

Maybe one day
I will know what it feels like
to be known this carefully,
to be remembered this softly,
to be chosen this gently.

But for now...
this is a poem about loving.
About me loving someone.
And maybe that is enough for today.

Experiencing sex now that I am older and a bit more conscious and self-aware will continue to be an interesting experience to say the least. And I want to discuss how I have now come to view sex. This will be a lengthy read, so buckle up. 

 Women are often raised to accommodate and to prioritise other people(Primarily MEN). To show love through giving, through caring, through putting ourselves second. Meanwhile, men are often encouraged to pursue what they want and prioritise desire more openly, especially sexually.

So pleasure becomes strange. You become comfortable giving but are unfamiliar with receiving. You become comfortable being wanted but uncomfortable wanting. You become comfortable being touched but disconnected from being felt...and so the cycle continues 

And I think that contributes to why it took me so long to realise that my experience during intimacy mattered too. I also think this connects to something that I hear women talk about all the time, which is that intimacy starts in the mind.

For many women, desire is deeply connected to the brain. You may not necessarily be in the mood at first, but the right words, the right atmosphere, the right emotional connection, feeling desired, safe, chosen, all of those things can create desire.

That is why presence, foreplay, and attention matter. Intimacy starts before anyone takes their clothes off. And I think this is also why people say we have lost the art of kissing.

The art of making out, touching, and simply being close to each other. Everything feels so outcome-driven now…every kiss must become sex…cuddle must become sex…touch must become sex.

I remember watching a tik tok of a woman talking about how she eventually started hating kissing because she realised she was only kissed before sex. Every kiss became an indication. Every cuddle became a lead-up. She realised she was never kissed simply because someone wanted to kiss her.

Underneath intimacy, a lot of women want four things among many other things. To feel loved, desired, sexually wanted and understood.

For the longest time, I did not even understand what cumming was. I knew what sex was in a general sense, but orgasms felt completely separate. The only time I ever experienced cumming was by myself and never with another person. So naturally, I developed this belief that cumming was not really something that happened during sex. It was not something I expected, and eventually it became something I stopped caring about, or so I thought.

When I first started having sex, I was having sex because my partner wanted it, not because I necessarily wanted it. So whether I came or not was irrelevant because I was not centred in the experience in the first place. Looking back now, the pattern feels obvious. He would cum, and that was the ending. That was the goal. My experience was secondary, and because that was all I knew, I accepted it.

One of the hardest things to admit when I look back, is that there genuinely felt like there was no difference between if he was using his hand or some fleshlight suction cup to jerk himself off and when he was inside me. The only difference was that I happened a body, a face, tits, and emotions attached. I was not being experienced as a person. I was not being touched because someone wanted to feel me or know me or enjoy me. I was simply there as part of somebody else’s release.

After enough experiences like that, you stop expecting your pleasure to matter because it was never part of the experience to begin with. You stop evaluating sex by whether you enjoyed it because enjoyment was never presented as something that belonged to you. So I never measured “good” sex by whether I came. Not because I thought orgasms were meaningless, but because for most of my sexual experiences, orgasms were not even part of the conversation.

As I got older, something shifted. I moved from having sex because somebody else wanted to, to having sex because I wanted to. But interestingly, my understanding of good sex still never became centred around orgasms. It became centred around connection.

When I think about intimacy, I do not think about the climax. I think about connection. I think about the difference between holding hands and having someone buried deep inside you. I think about breathing the same air, feeling their skin against yours, feeling their warmth, their heartbeat, their sweat, their weight, their reactions. I think about feeling someone be present with me and allowing myself to be present with them.

It feels grounding in a way that is difficult to explain unless you have experienced it. It feels like choosing each other in real time and reminding each other through touch and closeness that you are both there and fully experiencing one another. 

I remember one moment with my ex that made something click for me. We were having sex, and I remember lying there and looking at him and realising that he was not with me at all. His eyes were closed. His head was tilted back. He was holding me, but not because he wanted to feel me. He was holding me because he needed something to hold himself up. Even his breathing felt disconnected. You could tell he was focused on building himself up to cum.

And I remember lying there and realizing that I was not enjoying what was happening. It was because he was not there with me. We were not sharing an experience or creating something together. He was having an experience, and my body simply happened to be involved in it.

That became one of the clearest moments in my life where I realised I never wanted to feel like that again. Because there is a difference between someone having sex with you and someone doing sex to you.

That “with” matters because that is the difference between feeling like a participant and feeling like a body.

Sex is not entirely about cumming, because orgasms are fleeting. They happen, and then they are over. What will play on repeat days after is the feeling…the experience

Xoxo

Nirvana 

Why People Are Missing the Point About the Top Billing Auditions?

So Top Billing is returning, and they took to social media and told South Africans to take to the media and post their audition. Following that, Bonang Matheba encouraged people auditioning for Top Billing to “be themselves” and “be authentic.” However, despite her advice, most of the auditioners ignored the "be authentic" tip, and there has been a lot of backlash surrounding the audition videos people have been posting online.

A lot of people have been criticizing contestants for sounding “too polished,” “too sophisticated,” or for putting on what people are calling a “presenter voice.” The general criticism seems to be that these contestants are not being authentic because “this is not how they speak in real life.”... But I think people are missing the point entirely.

The first thing people are ignoring is that nobody speaks exactly the same way in every environment. People have customer service voices, interview voices, workplace voices, and professional voices. The way somebody answers the phone at work is usually not the same way they speak to their friends. Call centre agents do it. Receptionists do it. Corporate professionals do it. Even the way people structure emails versus text messages is different.

Everybody understands that different spaces require different forms of presentation. So why does that suddenly become “fake” or “performative” when people are auditioning to become presenters on national television?...Especially when the television show they are auditioning for is literally Top Billing.

Top Billing has always built itself around luxury, elegance, sophistication and aspiration. The show has never presented itself as an ordinary reflection of everyday South African life. It is polished homes, expensive aesthetics, designer fashion, wealth, wine estates and curated lifestyles. Even the presenters themselves have historically reflected a certain level of polish, sophistication and professionalism because that is part of the brand identity of the show itself. So contestants changing the way they present themselves is not happening randomly. They are responding to an existing industry standard that the show itself has spent decades establishing and rewarding.

Unfortunately, South Africa still heavily associates English fluency and polished speech with intelligence, professionalism, sophistication, and class. That did not happen by accident. Those standards were built through colonialism, apartheid, and decades of exclusionary social structures that positioned whiteness, private schooling, and proximity to “proper English” as markers of value. So while people online are mocking contestants for changing their accents or sounding more polished, they are also ignoring the reality that the media industry itself still rewards those exact performances.

That does not mean the standard is correct. But pretending the standard does not exist is intellectually dishonest.

A lot of these contestants understand that they are entering a space that already has invisible expectations attached to it. Expectations around speech, presentation, aesthetics and professionalism. So when people adapt themselves to fit that environment, it is not necessarily because they are being fake. Sometimes it is simply because they understand what kind of person historically gets accepted into those spaces.

I also think people are misunderstanding authenticity itself. Authenticity does not mean behaving exactly the same way in every context regardless of environment. If that were true, then professionalism itself would not exist. Media is performative. Television is performative. News anchors perform professionalism. Radio hosts perform charisma. Reality television performs relatability. Lifestyle television performs aspiration. Top Billing is probably one of the clearest examples of aspirational performance in South African media because the entire show is built around selling a polished fantasy of luxury and sophistication.

Even Bonang herself only became publicly more relaxed and openly vernac later in her career once she had already established herself within the industry. Earlier in her career, she also had to conform to the polished media standards that South African television rewarded at the time. That is not criticism. It is simply the reality of how these industries function. Authenticity becomes easier once legitimacy and success have already been secured. Newcomers do not always have the same freedom to do that.

Another thing people are ignoring is that these opportunities are not nearly as equal as they present themselves to be. One contestant may be filming on an old phone in a noisy environment with poor lighting and unstable internet access while another contestant has access to high-quality equipment, polished environments, editing software and media exposure. Presentation itself is influenced by access, money and environment. Yet people reduce the entire conversation down to “you’re forcing your voice” while ignoring all the structural inequalities that shape who appears polished and who does not.

And despite all of that, people still found the courage to stand in front of a camera, record themselves, and publicly try. In a country struggling with unemployment and limited opportunities, I think we have become far too comfortable mocking people for attempting to put themselves out there. South Africans constantly talk about wanting people to be ambitious, entrepreneurial and proactive, but we also contribute to a culture where trying publicly is treated as embarrassing unless success is already guaranteed.

At its core, I think people are criticizing contestants for performing sophistication without acknowledging that South African media has always rewarded that exact performance. The issue is not that contestants are fake. The issue is that people want to pretend these standards no longer exist while still consuming and rewarding the very media spaces that continue to uphold them.

Xoxo
KNirvana(someone studying a BA in Communication Science)

Okay, I need to admit something that might make me sound a little insane, but whatever, this is a confession, so we’re being honest. I have the biggest weakness for older men. And not just “a few years older,” I mean older 🫣. The kind of man who has actually lived life. The kind of man who has years in his voice and stories in his eyes and hands that look like they’ve done things in the world. 

I know the whole conversation around age gaps. I know people say it can be unhealthy, I know people talk about power dynamics and manipulation and all of that. I’m very aware of the flip side. But even knowing all of that, there is still this feral little part of my brain that just lights up at the idea of an older man looking at me with interest. Something about that contrast does something ridiculous to me. Me being loud and bubbly and chaotic and very much a twenty-something woman who laughs too much and talks too much and has way too much energy, and him being older and calm and steady and experienced, just watching me like I’m this bright, chaotic little thing that wandered into his life and made everything more interesting.

A part of me likes the power imbalance part; he’s older and wiser, and I am this so-called timid doe-eyed girl. And he could easily manipulate and brainwash me to be his absolute plaything. I want that. Him having that power over me, just the thought makes me hot and bothered. And yes, I know that sounds like extreme Daddy issues. But more than it being something that makes me hot and bothered, it also stems from just wanting to be cared for and seeing restraint and intention. That he could very well take advantage of the situation, but doesn’t, is a whole other satisfying aspect as well. 

Also☝️ may I add that the song **Sixteen going on Seventeen** from the Sound of Music further perpetuated this 😅 although i may be exaggerating a bit. But one of the lyrics was "You need someone older and wiser...Telling you what to do" ...which yes I absolutely do

I may sound completely unhinged because I think of the most dramatic things, like that my youth almost feels wasted if there isn’t some older man somewhere enjoying it. I know how crazy that sounds, but that’s genuinely the fantasy part of it. Like, what is the point of being young and vibrant and full of energy if there isn’t some older man looking at me like I’m sunlight? Yes, that sounds ridiculous and vain and maybe even slightly twisted, but I can’t help it, I mean I can’t let my perky tits, tight coochie(all coochies are tight btw but you get the gist), and plump booty go to waste. I like the idea that my energy means something to him. That my loud laugh and my silly personality and the way I bounce around the world actually bring joy into his life. I like imagining him looking at me like I’m this bright, entertaining little chaos that he secretly loves having around.

Then there’s the experience part of it, which, if I’m being honest, is probably one of the biggest things. Older men just move differently. They talk differently. They carry themselves differently. There’s this confidence about them that feels incredibly attractive. They don’t rush. They don’t panic. They don’t overcompensate. They just exist in this steady, grounded way that makes me feel like they actually know what they’re doing. And the thought of a man like that looking at me, with all my chaotic energy and dramatic personality, and thinking I’m adorable instead of too much… that does something to my brain.

I don’t know why this specific detail always pops into my head, but it does: the hands. There is something about imagining an older man’s hands that makes the whole fantasy feel real to me. Not soft hands, but rough hands. Hands that are a little calloused because he’s lived and worked and built things and experienced life. The kind of hands that feel steady when they hold me. The kind of hands that feel strong when they guide me closer. There’s just something about that detail that makes my brain melt a little.

I’m being completely honest, there’s also that little taboo edge to it that makes the whole dynamic even more exciting. The unspoken understanding between us, that he’s older and experienced, and he knows that I like that about him. And I know that he enjoys the fact that I’m younger and full of life…so taboo... Him knowing he has years of experience and confidence behind him, and me knowing I’m bringing this bright, energetic, chaotic energy into his life. The contrast of it is what makes it interesting. Him steady and grounded, me loud and bubbly and dramatic.

When I imagine the dynamic, it almost makes me laugh because it feels so obvious how it would look. Me talking too much, getting excited about random things, laughing too loudly like I always do, and he's just watching me with that calm, slightly amused smile like I’m the most entertaining thing in the room. Like he’s seen so much of life already that having this loud, energetic little woman around actually feels refreshing to him. Like after years of seriousness, he suddenly has this bright, chaotic girl around who makes everything feel lighter.

I think that’s the real truth underneath all of it. It’s not really just about age itself. It’s about the feeling of being adored by someone powerful and experienced. Someone who has lived enough life to recognise joy when he sees it. Someone who looks at my loud personality and my dramatic energy and my excitement about everything and instead of thinking it’s too much, he just smiles and pulls me a little closer, as if I belong right there.

So yes, maybe when I talk about older men, I sound a little feral sometimes. Maybe I exaggerate and say ridiculous things about my youth being wasted if an older man isn’t enjoying it. But if I take away the drama and the jokes and the chaos, the real confession is actually very simple. I like the idea of being the bright, chaotic little source of joy in an older man’s life, and I like the idea of him being the steady, experienced presence in mine.

Xoxo

Nirvana