Gasp

This needs a disclaimer – this post is about waterboarding, which is undoubtedly edgeplay with serious risks even when done as safely as possible. This post is not instructive on how to do it – it’s about my first experience so clearly i am not qualified to teach it, nor would i want to take on that responsibility, and a single blog post will never be a suitable way to learn. If it interests you then recommend taking classes, doing extensive research, and then making an informed decision on whether you want to even consider this type of play. This post also veered off into some pretty heavy stuff around trauma and suicide – i don’t usually content warn but recommend approaching this one with caution.

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It’s June 17th 2025, and there’s a weird symmetry at play that i won’t notice until later. For now, i’m not in the past. i’m in the here and now, heart rate at 101 developing a new fear of the humble plastic watering can in Mx’s hand.

W/we have a last quick check in about the plan – Mx has a written outline and the approach is far more like a science experiment (admittedly, mad science) than O/our usual play. i have access to safewords and non-verbal safe signals (something W/we usually do not use – but W/we agree that a first time waterboarding scene is no place for CNC), and Mx is not in scary mode. This is going to be scary enough. i remind Them of O/our safety plan for laryngospasm – a slightly elevated risk for me because of my medical history. Then i recline in the chair, and my vision is obscured by cloth. i’m in a beige haze, heart pounding in my ears, and Mx’s hand firm on my chest.

“Starting the first pour.”

Water torture may be new, but torture is not. i’m thirteen, stepping off a plane to the scent of clean mountain air and surrounded by people who almost speak my language but not quite. i’m going to something like a school, i’ve been told. i shouldn’t say school at customs though, there’s a well coached lie for that. i shouldn’t tell anyone too much. But privately we know it’s just a school, a school in the wilderness that will fix the jagged parts of me that my parents can’t control. Those jagged parts that are the cause of all my pain – the violence and the cruelty and the isolated misery that i believe without a doubt are all my fault even as the angry part of me riots against it. One day i’ll learn that my rage is the part of me that loves me at a time when no one else ever has. Today i don’t know anything at all.

Six weeks later i suppose i’m fixed. my teeth are stained, my face is scabbed and peeling, and i step into the first shower i’ve had since i last stood on British soil. Was that just six weeks ago? It feels like a lifetime. The dark gold sand in the lines of my knuckles stays despite my scrubbing, but i can soap away the grime between my hollowed ribs. There is damage i can’t see yet – the cramping in my guts when i eat that lasts for months, the periods that stopped and won’t return for a year, and nightmares that will start and never stop. But there’s no fight in me, i used it all in my escape attempts, and the fight i provoked that finally got me home. The throbbing in my cheekbone feels like freedom – hard won and ugly and terrifyingly temporary if i’m not fixed. But i can be quiet now. i can be good.

i won’t call it torture for more than a decade, but when i do i will understand both my fear and fascination.

The first pour is easier than i expected – but of course, Mx is cautious. This is new to Them too. But even that first sensation, fabric dampening and beginning to cling, the burn of mascara in my eyes and the first trickles of water across my lips, i’m feeling it. Fear rising, the involuntary clench of my hands, the urge to pull away from the hand holding me in place. my body is screaming that it’s in danger even with all the trust and love and desire in my mind. And, in a surprise to absolutely no one, i’m immediately wet – and not just my face.

The second pour brings my first taste of air hunger, my first harsh burn in my nose, my first panicked gasp against soaked cloth tasting cool water and the imagined threat of death. There’s air, i know, but i also don’t know as its restricted flow awakens the animal part of my brain that fights for life and wants to thrash against the threat. i’m not restrained, not this first time, and it’s only the depth of my discipline that holds me in place and in trust as i wait for Mx to give me my first break. They peel the fabric away and i’m laughing, squirming, gasping, carried up by a rush of pure euphoria. W/we already know, W/we’re going to like this. And i want more.

i think i’m dying the first time it happens. Everything was fine and suddenly i can’t move from the couch and every breath feels like fire, there’s a weight on my chest that won’t shift. i’m gasping but it feels like i’m taking in nothing, my vision spins, blurs, and terror infuses every heartbeat.

i don’t die. It happens again. It happens again.

i haven’t told doctors a single word about my mental health since i was thirteen. i learned, see, i’m smart and vigilant and my pattern recognition is off the charts. i see every outcome spilling out from every choice, i’m fifteen moves ahead like a fucked up game of chess. When i was eleven i saw and felt things that weren’t there. When i was twelve i was gripped by uncontrollable rages. i saw every psychiatrist and psychologist and quack homeopathist and we tried hypnotherapy and then a counsellor who asked “is someone sexually abusing you?” and i threw a chair and threatened her and tore up my parents’ cheque in front of her because how dare she ask that question? How dare she make me think the answer? And then i was in the wilderness starving and broken and then i was quiet for years and years and now there’s something ugly in me that i have to deal with alone.

It happens again, and i give in. i go to the doctor. i downplay it as much as i can, guarded and prickly, and leave with a referral for CBT and a prescription for propanolol. i meet a therapist who deviates from CBT as much as she is able, but admits she can’t scratch the surface. She has me take an assessment for PTSD and tells me she can’t diagnose me, but based on my scores i should be referred to someone who can. The GP is reluctant, and i don’t push for it, because i think just surviving is enough for now. One breath after another. One a little easier than the one before. Breathe in, breathe out, and sometimes those panicked gasps in the silence of the nights when i remember.

The chair has taken U/us as far as it can – my neck is sore but if i’m really honest with myself it’s not the pain that drives me into the bath – it’s the craving. W/we’re taking this slow but that doesn’t mean i can’t chase just a little more, that reckless edge of my masochism tempered by Mx’s responsibility. i lie almost flat, now. my skin is beaded with droplets of water, and my bra and underwear are soaked and clinging like a second skin. The fabric in Mx’s hands is smeared with my mascara and i’m breathing heavily, breathing hard, for as long as i’m able to breathe.

“Now.”

The warning is shorter, sharper, hotter. The fabric over my face contours to every feature, holding my eyes closed, hollowing between my lips as i take my last gasp before the pour.

There’s intimacy here – my hand on Mx’s arm, groping blind until They guide me to Them. my near naked body squirming under Their gaze, vulnerable, raw, needy and afraid. The softness of cool water on my heated skin in stark contrast to my choking, gagging, whimpering as those same gentle droplets turn to fire and a fist around my lungs.

They pause, and i rock forward, spluttering water across my chest.

It’s June 17th, 2017. White feathered wings in the dark, a glimpse of something beyond, and i gasp. It’s fire in a chest that already got so used to stillness. Still in the dark, i vomit violently, i haven’t eaten real food in days but thick slime splatters my chest and then the light comes in all at once, cold and grey and ugly. i’m alive. The needle is still hanging out of my hand, congealing blood mixed with the dregs of bitter honey. i was gone before i even finished the hit. i wasn’t supposed to live long enough to regret the waste.

i’m angry in the hospital, angry in my bed for days after, and angry in the hopeless months that follow. But in between the rage and misery little fragments of light start to break in, moments of wondering what if this didn’t have to be forever, or ended with another attempt? What if there was a third option. What if i got to live?

i’m alive. Cloth clinging to my skin, nose burning from the water, each breath a heaving, choking gasp. i’m thrashing, fighting for my life – my fucking life that i clawed back from the brink and pieced together like a fucked up mosaic of razor sharp edges and ugly wounds. mine. The pours come – longer, closer together, and i learn to trust the thread of my own breath as it runs through them. i taste water but i taste air too and i remember who i am. i am someone who survives. i have survived it all, i have survived myself and come back to life in more ways than i can count. i gasp. i live.

There’s euphoria in the spaces between, in the drip of water into the bottom of the bath, the brief moments of unrestricted breath. i laugh, unhinged and wild. i resist the urge to slip my hand between my legs, hearing Mx’s firm “hands off” without Them having to say it – They’ve said it enough times before. Every part of me is awake, nerves sparking electric under wet skin, each breath feeling like a gift, a reminder that i am still here.

i’m still here. i breathe through withdrawal, each breath a struggle as an invisible vice grips my chest. i breathe through recovery, burning out hard in the rooms of the twelve step meetings that start with so much hope and end with so much disillusionment but through it all it’s my life i fight for and reclaim. i breathe as i process trauma, shame, and anger so white hot it feels like it could burn the world. i breathe, and let it go.

i breathe into a new life – one that fulfils every part of my twisted soul. i breathe through impact, and learn how to exhale pain and inhale joy. i fall in love and into submission and that breathes life into me in ways i didn’t know it could. It ends and i want to die, but i don’t, because i’ve learned now just how much i can survive and what beauty there is on the other side of that next breath.

Its not the wilderness i go to this time, not really, but its far from my city life and that’s what i call it as a near-stranger from the internet drives me out into dark hills under bright stars. Wilderness is not an ugly word now – it’s my sanctuary in Mx’s car on the way to unleash my pain in best way i know how. They beat me and i breathe through, i scream through, i gasp back to life again and again. i come back for more, and find even more than i knew was possible. i leave that place behind where i broke, where i died, where i came back to life. i breathe, and i live.

“What do you need?”

Mx helps me to sit up in the bath, and passes me a towel to clear my eyes. i grin back at Them.

“Am i allowed an orgasm please Mx?”

i rarely ask – i will fuss and grizzle when They leave me waiting too long but the truth is i love the denial, the frustration after play that keeps me wound up for days until They decide to touch me. But right now it feels like an emergency. They agree, and in the bedroom They absolutely spoil me until i’m a gasping mess again for entirely different reasons. W/we lie together, dampening the bedsheets, holding each other close, breath slowing as W/we float in the afterglow.

i don’t think for hours, and when i do it feel it all at once. The past, the future, the shattering and remaking of it all again and again and again. i drink coffee in the kitchen and cry quietly, not sure what i’m feeling but knowing that something new has shifted – a piece of me has opened, a weight has been lifted. Today, i breathe a little easier.