Nirvana

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

When people talk about BDSM in mainstream spaces, the conversation almost always circles back to Fifty Shades of Grey and, more specifically, Christian Grey. Whether it’s praised or criticised, it remains the reference point. For many, he is the image that comes to mind when they think of a Dominant.

Wealthy. Controlled. Powerful. A man with endless resources and the ability to give his submissive a life that feels worlds apart from her own. And because of that, the story is often torn apart.

It’s called unrealistic. An inaccurate representation of BDSM. An exaggerated fantasy that doesn’t reflect how dynamics actually function in real life. And while a lot of that criticism is valid, and well within the right to be as harshly criticized and shunned as it is. I think sometimes we get so caught up in correcting what it got wrong that we may miss the overall bigger picture of what it might have gotten… right.

Because if you strip it down, if you stop analysing every technical inaccuracy of the negotiations, safe words, certain play scenes for a moment and just observe… There is something there.

When people think of Christian Grey, they tend to fixate on the obvious. The money. The gifts. The lifestyle. The grand gestures that feel unattainable in real life. And the overall unrealistic vibe he has.

But maybe that’s not actually the point. Maybe the point isn’t how much he has… but what he’s able to do with it.

Mr Grey’s dominance doesn’t start and end at the door of the Red Room. It doesn’t switch on for a scene and disappear when the moment is over. It extends beyond that space. It follows Anastasia Steele into her everyday life. Into her safety, her comfort, her environment, her sense of stability…It integrates, and that changes everything.

Because for some people, BDSM isn’t something that exists in a contained, separate world. It’s not a role you step into temporarily. It’s not something you experience in isolation and then leave behind when real life resumes. For some, it is woven into their reality. It influences how they move, how they think, how they relate, and how they grow.

And within that kind of dynamic, dominance takes on a different meaning. It’s no longer just about control in a moment. It becomes about impact over time.

The appeal shifts from “how does this feel right now?” to “what does this add to my life?”

Because there is a difference between a Dominant who creates an experience… and a Dominant who creates change. One gives you intensity. Escape. A temporary shift in power that exists within a defined space. The other brings structure. Direction. A presence that doesn’t just exist in moments, but carries into your decisions, your habits, your environment.

That kind of influence doesn’t require a penthouse or a helicopter. Not everyone is looking for a literal “Mr. Grey.” The wealth, the extravagance, the scale of it… That’s not the standard. But what may resonate more deeply is the idea of a Dominant who can meaningfully contribute to your life as a whole.

Someone who doesn’t just take control of your body, but who can guide, support, and elevate your reality. Someone whose presence makes things feel more intentional. More stable. More aligned. Of course, that kind of reach is not without risk.

When someone’s influence extends beyond a controlled space and into real life, the dynamic carries more weight. The line between guidance and control becomes thinner. In the wrong hands, what feels like structure can turn into restriction. And what would feel like leadership can become something else entirely.

And like anything within BDSM, that reality exists alongside choice, responsibility, and awareness. But acknowledging the risk doesn’t erase the appeal.

If anything, it explains it. Because maybe “Mr. Grey” was never really about the money. Maybe he became a symbol of something else entirely. A dominant with enough reach and presence that doesn’t switch off. That allows the submissive to really submerge into her role.

A Dominant whose influence exists not only in controlled moments, but in the spaces in between. In everyday life and in the parts of life that are often left untouched. And maybe, for some submissives, that’s what is enticing about the whole “Mr Grey”. Not the helicopter rides or the big penthouse.

But the idea of being with someone who can build, guide, and elevate… in a way that is felt far beyond the surface and not restricted to a specific scene and a few bruises.

Is safe-wording the end goal? And when I say safe-wording, I don’t mean an orange, I don’t mean slowing down or asking for water. I mean a full stop. A RED. The kind of safe word where everything ends immediately. So the question becomes, when we play, is that what we are working towards? Is the goal to build intensity to the point where the sub has to safe-word?

And then I start questioning myself, because part of me is like, okay, maybe it depends. Maybe you can curate a scene where that is the intention. Maybe you can go into it saying, I want to break you, and breaking means getting to that point where the person has to say red. But then I sit with that properly, and I’m like, is that actually okay? Is that safe? Is that what play is supposed to be?

Because I’ve experienced different versions of this, and they feel completely different. There was a time when I was doing impact play with someone, and I could feel when they were getting close to their limit. There is a very clear shift between pain that is intense but still enjoyable and pain that is no longer enjoyable(or do you continue even if it isn’t enjoyable?). You can feel it in someone’s body, in how they react, in how they hold themselves. And when I felt that shift, I stopped before they had to safe-word. I even said afterward that I knew they were about to safe-word, and that’s why I stopped. They liked that; they said I almost “broke” them, but the truth is I didn’t want to break them [PS! I do not think that “breaking” is the same as when a dom wants to unravel and leave their sub undone]. That wasn’t my goal. I didn’t want to push them to a point where they were no longer enjoying it.

But when it was the other way around, it didn’t go like that. It went past that line and kept going until I safe-worded. And afterward, there was pride in that. There was satisfaction in the fact that I reached that point. And that made me pause because it raised another question for me. Is that something to be proud of? Should a dom feel proud that they pushed their sub to the point where they had to safe-word? Should that be something that brings you joy? Because my immediate answer is no. It doesn’t feel right to me at all.

And it wasn’t just that one experience. There was another time where play went so far that I was bleeding, and the response I got was happiness, like breaking me was something to celebrate. And that was just wrong to me. Because I don’t want to be broken. I’m already broken enough as is. I don’t want play to be the place where I get broken more. So now I’m sitting with this question even deeper, asking whether playing to the point of safe-wording is actually okay, even if it is intentional, even if it is something that was discussed beforehand.

For me personally, playing with the intention of making me safe-word is a hard limit. And I think the reason it feels so strong is because of what that intention represents. It means you are finding joy in pushing me to my limit, which I do not like, and I don’t like that. I don’t like the idea that someone gets a thrill out of pushing me to a place where I have to stop everything.

There’s also another side, and it’s the question of limits, especially hard limits, because it ties directly into everything about pushing intensity and playing to the edge. If we’re talking about how far a dom can push during play, then naturally, the next question is, where does that pushing actually stop? A hard limit is supposed to be a clear no, not a maybe, not something to work toward, not something that can be negotiated over time. So when someone says they want to push you, and that pushing starts to move toward something you have already defined as a hard limit, it starts to feel like that line is no longer fixed.

- Where does pushing limits actually stop, and who is the one deciding that stopping point
- Are hard limits ever meant to be explored under the idea of growth, or are they supposed to remain completely untouched
- If something can be slowly worked toward over time, was it ever truly a hard limit, or was it a soft limit that was misunderstood

At the same time, I can see how it becomes complicated, because sometimes people set hard limits out of fear, lack of experience, or not fully understanding themselves yet, and under the right conditions, those things might actually shift. But even with that, I don’t think that shift should come from a dom deciding it for you. If a limit is going to change, it has to come from the sub, from their own curiosity and readiness, not from someone else pushing them toward it in the name of growth.

- Who actually gets to decide when a limit can be revisited or changed, the sub alone or the dom as well
- How does a sub tell the difference between being pushed in a way that benefits their growth and being pushed in a way that benefits the dom
- When someone says they want to push you, how do you know if that intention is genuinely about you or about them

Because at the end of it, it stops being just about how far someone can push you, and it becomes about why they want to push you there in the first place. And if a clear no can start to feel like something that can be moved or negotiated, then the entire dynamic starts to feel unsafe in a way that is hard to ignore.

I also think it is worth mentioning that this is not for anything; the context of said limit is also important…eg Anal is my hard limit…but if my dom wanted to train me and work me through anal, etc., I would do it vs my dom making me do anal because he is just so hung up on stretching my ass out. So I am not talking about the nuanced scenarios; I am talking overall.

I remember talking to someone who emphasized so much that they wanted to push my limits. And I understand that concept. I understand that a dom can push you to grow, can challenge you, can expand what you think you’re capable of. But I don’t think that means pushing you to your limit. There is a difference between pushing your limits and pushing you to your limit, and that difference matters. One feels like growth, the other feels like an endpoint, like something someone is trying to reach.

It wasn’t just about pushing limits either. There was an emphasis on wanting to hurt me, and not in a way that stays within enjoyment, but in a way that would go past that point. It felt like the goal was for me to tap out, for them to say that they got me to safe-word. And that’s where everything in me resisted, because it didn’t feel like it was about me anymore. It felt like it was about them.

And that brings me to something deeper that I keep coming back to. I hate feeling like a conquest. I hate feeling like a challenge, like something someone wants to overcome. I have always told myself that I will never be with someone who sees me as a project or an experiment. I’m not something for you to test your theories on. I’m not a guinea pig that you can push and poke just to see what happens.

And the reason this hits so deeply for me is because it connects to something bigger in my mind. It reminds me of colonialism, of how people went into places, found something new, something interesting, and decided to take it, dominate it, show their power over it, and then leave once the thrill was over. The excitement was in the conquering, not in what came after. And the place that was left behind had to deal with the damage.

That is what it feels like to be treated like a conquest. Like you were the thrill, the challenge, the thing to be overcome. And once that moment is achieved, the energy shifts. And I don’t want to be the thrill. I don’t want to be something someone gets excited about just because they think they can break me. But I digress.

So when I bring it back to this idea of playing with the intention of making someone safe-word, it starts to feel less like play and more like a display of power. It feels like domination for the sake of domination, not for connection, not for care, but for proving something. And that’s what makes it feel wrong to me.

So when I come back to the original question, if a scene is created with the intention that the sub will safe-word, I have to ask whether that is actually okay. Whether that is safe. Whether that is something that should be done at all.

Because for me, it doesn’t feel right. It feels like the intention behind it matters, and when the intention is to push someone to that point, it feels like it shifts into something else entirely. Something that feels more like conquest than care.

And I don’t want to feel like I am being conquered.

So I’m left with questions rather than answers, and maybe that’s where I am right now. Still trying to figure it out, still trying to understand where the line is and what feels right for me.

The questions that keep coming up for me are these. Is safe-wording ever supposed to be the goal of a scene? Is it okay to intentionally play to the point where someone has to say red? Should a dom feel pride or satisfaction in that? Where is the line between pushing someone’s limits and pushing them to their limit? Is finding joy in breaking someone actually healthy, or is it something else entirely? When someone says they want to push you, is it really for your growth or for their own satisfaction?

Xoxo
Nirvana

Trigger warning: discussion of abuse

From primary school all the way through to matric, we all had the subject called Life Orientation/Skills. In those classes, we were taught about safety, about boundaries, and about what to do if someone hurt you, general things like self-esteem, how to deal with peer pressure and bullying, etc. We were taught that if someone touched you inappropriately, if someone made you uncomfortable, or if something happened that felt wrong, you were supposed to tell someone.

Tell a teacher….Tell an adult…Speak up. Protecting yourself meant speaking up

Me being the young, naïve girl I was, I was not aware of the dynamics that existed in my family. I grew up in a home shaped by religion, conservatism, and a very strong sense of family loyalty. In our household, some things simply were not spoken about, and some things were never supposed to leave the house…Family matters stayed in the family.

For a long time, those two lessons existed side by side in my life without me realizing how different they were…Until one day they collided.

I was still in primary school when it happened. I remember the day clearly because I was wearing my netball uniform. We had a match later that afternoon, and the period before all the netball girl where told to go change into their netball uniform, and the next period was LO.

During the LO class, we were reading a story about a girl who had been abused and raped by her uncle, and how she overcame her fear and told her mother what had happened to her. As the teacher went through the story with us, it hit home. Because something like that had already happened to me.

A few months back, we had been at a family event. It was getting late, so they decided to send all the kids home with one of the sober uncles. One of my uncles was extremely drunk and was just causing a ruckus, so they decided to send him back with us. When we got home most of the kids went to sleep, but my cousin and I stayed up to watch Tv. Then the drunk unlce came up to us and demanded that we give him the money we received that day as gifts to him so that he could buy more alcohol. When we both refused, he resorted to violence and groped us.

We were young. We were scared. And he made it very clear that we were not supposed to tell anyone.

So when I sat in that Life Orientation classroom, in my netball uniform, listening to a story about a girl abused by her uncle, I started crying. I couldn’t stop it. The story was too close to what had happened to me.

After the class I went to the office. Someone asked me why I was crying. I told them it was because something like that had happened to me before. I thought I was doing exactly what we had been taught to do in Life Orientation.

Speak up.
Tell someone.
Ask for help.

Instead, that moment became the beginning of something else….The school contacted my mother and called her in. When she arrived, she was angry. Not about what had happened to me, but about the fact that I had spoken about it at school.

To her, the problem was that I had taken a family matter outside the family. My uncle denied everything. And because my cousin who had been there with me was scared and said that nothing had happened, the situation turned against me.

And my punishment for it…was that I had to write out a letter to the teacher, saying that I lied about the whole thing. I had to sit with the same teacher I had trusted enough to speak to and tell her that I had made the whole story up.

After that, I was sent for counselling. But the counselling was not about helping me deal with the abuse. It was about dealing with the “lie” everyone believed I had told.
That moment taught me something very clearly…The lessons we learned at school did not apply inside my family.

At school, silence protected abusers…At home, silence protected the family.
Years later, something similar happened again within my family. When I tried to express that another family member was hurting me, the response did not center on what I was experiencing. Instead, the conversation once again turned toward how speaking about it might affect the family. I remember hearing concerns about embarrassment and how it would look if others knew. In that moment, it became painfully clear that the lesson I had learned as a child had never really changed: protecting the family’s image mattered more than confronting what was happening.

For many children, this kind of silence becomes a lifelong lesson. When a child learns that speaking up leads to denial, anger, or pressure to take their words back, they begin to question their own voice. They learn to measure the cost of honesty. Over time, silence starts to feel safer than truth.

This is why conversations about abuse cannot focus only on teaching children to speak up. Many schools already try to do that. Programs like Life Orientation teach young people about boundaries, safety, and the importance of telling a trusted adult when something is wrong.

But those lessons only work if the adults around them are willing to listen.
If a child finds the courage to speak and the response they receive is disbelief, punishment, or pressure to stay quiet, the message they internalize is not one of safety. The message becomes that their voice creates problems rather than solving them.

In many conservative and religious households, reputation and family loyalty carry enormous weight. Respect for elders and protecting the image of the family are treated as core values. These values can create strong communities and deep family bonds, but they can also become harmful when they are used to silence children instead of protecting them.

Respect should never mean ignoring harm…Family loyalty should never require a child to hide abuse…Faith should never demand silence in the face of suffering.
Children should never feel responsible for protecting the reputation of adults. Their safety, their wellbeing, and their voices must come first.

Breaking that silence is uncomfortable for families and communities. It forces difficult conversations and challenges long-held beliefs about privacy and loyalty. But those conversations are necessary if we truly want to create environments where children are safe.

Teaching children to speak up is important.

But teaching adults how to listen…and how to respond with protection instead of denial…is just as important.

Xoxo
Nirvana