what do you want?

I'm craving. Something. There's an apple sitting next to me, and a big part of my brain is saying "Just go ahead! Eat it!" Another part of my brain is explaining "You know better, you just ate a very large meal. The only thing eating that apple is going to do is push you into uncomfortably full territory, and you'll feel guilty about eating when you're not hungry to boot." Instead of my usual MO (eat the apple anyway, feel guiltier because I knew consciously that I didn't really want it), I'm sitting. Asking myself, "What do I want? Right now, in this moment?"

Is it food? No, I'm pretty sure I don't want food, I can't identify a particular salty or sweet or savory desire, beyond just the mechanical satisfaction of chewing and swallowing.

Am I thirsty? I don't think so. I did just drink a restaurant huge glass of water, and 1.5 of diet coke to boot. I'm pretty sure I should be decently hydrated for the moment.

I did have a moment in class today, thinking about kink. A bit of a return to the end of my last post - what do I want in kink? It started when our professor was describing her father, his last days in the hospital before he passed away, and how despite all of his professional and personal accomplishments, in the end he was reduced to being an old man dying of xyz conditions. And that even though his daughter has been a nurse for decades, he still got pressure ulcers. They didn't kill him, he was going to die anyway, but they made the end worse than it needed to be. She explained that now when she takes care of a patient, she prioritizes those "routine" care procedures, because now she thinks of her father and does it as almost a service to him. Excellent integument care, every time.

At that point I could feel myself tearing up. It's been 3.5 years since my father died. There are so so many things that I wish I had done differently, things that fill me with guilt and regret. Shame. I know I have to deal with these emotions, that I need to find some way to get them out, to feel at peace so that I can move forward and provide excellent care to every patient I encounter, regardless of if they do or do not remind me of him in some way. My first thought was about going to the mental health center on campus. My second thought was about getting someone to beat me.

It made me wonder about what that would look like, what I would need for that to actually be helpful. Right now my emotions, my tears, are so close to the surface. Very little would be required to break that grip, and as much as I want to let go, I also don't want that to be my first impact scene with someone - a few smacks and then a flood of tears in front of someone I hardly know and certainly don't want to ask for comfort. So how do I approach someone with the intention of building trust in order to ask them to be willing to take on this burden of my emotions? To help me let mental pain out in this odd-but-slightly-more-acceptable way than just randomly crying?

It feels like there's a bubble in my chest, that I'm sitting on top of trying to hold it in place, to make my body re-absorb the gas and diffuse it away, but the bubble is really oil and my blood can't emulsify it and it needs to be let out some other way. Catharsis. Release. I'm reluctant to ask GF for this, because then I'd be telling her the story of what happened and that's such an emotionally vulnerable place for me. More than talking about my orientation, or sexual history, or depression, or pretty much anything else. I know she'd probably be willing to try, but I feel that she'd be nice, too afraid to push in the same way as someone who isn't in that kind of an emotional romantic relationship with me. The way I want to be pushed. In general in kink, but particularly in this situation.