The sadist releases the atavistic, the inhuman to strip away the humanity of the masochist – what is left is pure existence. Pain, suffering, humiliation, the dissolution of the self, the collapse of many identities, each left equally without boundary.

The only road the sadist and masochist can traverse together is the one that entangles its way along the boundary of true loss and annihilation. It is only when everything seems hopeless, alien, out of control, like an inner plague, that we encounter life. In those deepest moments even revelation would seem contrived, I have seen in her an end to suffering, an end to duality. There is a certain irony that the triumph over suffering should come from a clear and literal desire to suffer – a compulsion to be in pain – to feel everything without reservation, but that is the reality of it.

Like the working of muscle and tissue so that it can be repaired stronger, larger and more powerful, the depth that the dominant and submissive reach begins the process of a more empowered inner sense. The world looks different as you walk the streets alone watching, listening, everything somehow new and open to you. You want to scream out and shake the people around out of their banality. You want to reach them with a glimpse of that transcendence, so by whatever means they could become enlivened by, not just their senses, but by the part of themselves that they may not even know exists.

Whether you let out the violence, the fear and the anger, or you submit fully to it, to let go is to defeat the ego of the everyday and the normal, is to become able to meet life without fear, but even more than this, it is to discover the grace to live with freedom.