Letting go of the cozy stories you've been carrying around is devastating. But there's more room for new stuff after you do it.
Melissa FebosWhen I was a kid, I was told that I had a biological father, but that he didn't have much importance. I had an adoptive father who was present, who loved me, who was up to the task. And he was. So, I didn't question that story, until I was thirty-two, and suddenly realized that I was curious, that he did have something to do with me.
Melissa FebosAt a glance, addiction, sex work, mad passion, and all forms of extreme behavior might look like pushing or trying to obliterate boundaries when, more honestly, they are a search for them. I want to find the endpoint, the place where my own powers end, so I can yield to something that I'm certain is bigger than me.
Melissa FebosI am secretive. Always have been. And one way that secrecy manifested in my early life was that I was adept at juggling multiple social realities: I could get by no problem in many social arenas (including that of high school), but also felt alienated and totally uninspired by everything that happened there.
Melissa FebosS&M is just a set of practices that get classified as a single category, when more accurately they are a part of much larger set of behaviors: expressions of love, and self, and play, and even art. There is no hard line between "vanilla" sex and S&M sex, or any other kind of relation between people.
Melissa Febos