The pendulum swings, and yet, equilibrium is a cruel joke.
Balance is an illusion when the scale has always been rigged against you.
Even as I sought healing, as I unraveled the twisted knots of my conditioning, I found myself trapped in the echoes of Her voice. The wounds ran deep—too deep to simply dissolve under the weight of breathwork and ritual. The bruises were invisible but still ached with phantom pain.
I tried to soften, to reclaim the pieces of myself that had been buried beneath the steel armor of Her influence. But how does one strip away what has been so meticulously welded into their bones? How do you unlearn a language that was burned into your tongue before you even knew the taste of your own desires?
The irony? I still craved the control. The dominance. The exquisite satisfaction of breaking something just to see how it might rebuild itself in my image.
I told myself it was different now. That I understood the power dynamics I once wielded so recklessly. That I had evolved.
But the hunger remained.
The urge to test limits. To play in the spaces where pleasure and pain are indistinguishable. To touch the edges of destruction, not out of malice, but to see if I could master it, mold it, transcend it.
Because I am not Her.
I am not the merciless force that destroyed without care. I am the one who chooses. Who straddles the line between dominance and devotion, who walks the razor’s edge without falling completely into the abyss.
Perhaps that is the truest form of power—not in the ability to break, but in the understanding of when to stop.
And yet, the pendulum swings.
It always does.