drop is real

There will be those who tell you they do not experience it, to that I say, you’ve located the ability to manage it so that it has minimal impact on your life – but it is reaL.

For our purposes here, drop is the physical and/or emotional disconnection and rehabilitation needed after a S&M scene or a BDSM event.

For me – I rarely experience drop in her most severe forms these days.

Drop for me can be physical but it is the emotional impact of doing those things I do that is toughest to walk back from in my world.

When I first explored S&M with my first love, I dropped all of the time.  I didn’t know what it was then.  While he might have known, he didn’t interpret what my reactions were as drop.  Perhaps he did see it as drop, and chose not to manage it with me.  That is a question for him and he’s not here to tell his story at the moment.

My affection for him and connection to him was always intense. When we added S&M elements to our lives, shit got real.

Our day or night was filled with sex, and leather, and intensity and the drop would start as soon as it was time to part ways.  It began with tears.

How on earth was I supposed to go back to “normal” when I’d spent hours in the abyss? I called it the Nexus – a tribute to my nerdom – that place where bliss was endless and pure and I would destroy worlds to return.

I didn’t have a child then to ground me, and it seemed logical to abdicate my life to live in that bliss.

After the tears, after my return to normal there came lashing out and venom.  There were blatant temper tantrums and subtle manipulation.  I wanted more and the person who could give me more was him, he wasn’t acting swiftly enough to give me more and the cycle continued.

When I ventured out into the public BDSM world I didn’t drop after S&M.  I was getting the needed physical releases of pain my body craved, without the emotional attachment and I needed only to manage my physical injuries.  That worked very well for me.

I know how to manage bruises and cuts.  I don’t manage my emotions very well. Bottoms all over the Internet were proclaiming the need for tops to provide after-care! They wanted hugs and blankets and water and Teddybears, and I wanted no parts of that.

It seemed silly to me.

I was very selfish then.

I recall a conversation with my then friend B. He expressed his need as a top to hold his charge after, to cuddle, to connect.  I realized then what was off for me.

I chose to have the S&M without the emotional connection.  It was safer for me.  It didn’t require the need to come back in the same ways I needed to come back from my early explorations.  While I never chose to make that emotional connection it found my doorstep anyway.

Return to a prior relationship brought me back to drop, and I suddenly got it. I knew why after-care was needed.  I could bring myself back without it, but I found that I still had one leg in the Nexus, another in reality and straddling was painful.

As a unit we figured it out, but when we were no longer a unit I had decisions to make.  Since then I understand that drop really only happens for me when leaving a positive event.

Drop happened after the first Weekend Reunion, and this year it happened again.

Inbetween those events was the now defunct BlackBEAT and even with the chaos of that weekend, there was no drop for me.

After my first Weekend Reunion I dropped because I’d not prepared myself for what came next. There was no way to prepare for being back  in the bosom of my kinky brown family.  There was no way to prepare for being back in that place where my relationship fell apart where my Nexus disappeared.

The drop this year was also something I couldn’t prepare for in many ways.

This annual trip is a rejuvenation of sorts for me. I get to let loose and it enables me to come back “home” and be who I need to be for Bonnie and Clyde.  I came home this year to no Bonnie. no Clyde.

My drop this year was more about what was missing at home than what I gained at my retreat. It is why I am still managing my drop.  I have to manage being away from Daddy, and my spoon, and my extended kinky family…….while also being away from my son and mother.

I am still battling.

It is not simple.

 

Aphrodite Brown