On Letting Go
Just let go! Those words ring in my head on a regular basis, as any mantra that has deep meaning typically would. Letting go are some of the hardest words that a control freak like myself can ever hear and the process of doing so is a concept so foreign that it’s difficult to even approach with a plan of attack. But regardless, to let go is an exhilarating and beautiful process that rewards us with a freedom that we’ve oftentimes rarely, if ever, experienced. When we hold onto things, we are clinging to them both out of a fear of releasing them and a lack of knowledge of what to do without them. It seems inconceivable to be without those things to which we desperately cling.
For me, my baptism by fire in the letting go technique came with exploring my sexuality through fetish play, something that informed my sexual identity at a young age. I had always been intrigued by the act of tickling and being tickled and couldn’t explain why. I had a special interest in feet as well and was drawn to them on men at a young age. Personally, my feet are a major energy center. My interest in them and my elevated interest in the act of tickling was how I knew from a very young age that I was gay. As I became an adult, I began to explore these interests further, but typically on the giving end of it. It wasn’t until I got tickled for the first time while bound, that the stars all truly aligned for me in the most transcendental way possible. I made a choice to be brave and finally let a friend tickle my feet while I was unable to to stop it. My friend gladly would have stopped if I had been in true distress, but fortunately, I never needed him to do so. As the nerve endings on my feet got stimulated and excited, my laughter grew, the sensations intensified and my stress, anxiety, fear and overt need for control were released in an almost magical way. This is how I fell in love with getting tickled, especially on my feet, and why I believe that there is an elegant and therapeutic quality to the tickling experience. While tickling may be considered a kink or fetish, and for many it has a sexual impetus, I believe that this intimate act of touching another person and stimulating laughter and other physical signs of reactivity can be a magical transformational process in which one can feel the shackles of life’s everyday burdens and obstacles not only loosen but fall entirely to the wayside.
Through the act of being tickled, I learned to overcome something that had held me hostage for years if not decades. I released my white-knuckle need for control and my intense desire to micromanage and even more nefariously, overthink EVERYTHING! It’s a beautiful lesson and one that I will never take for granted, just as a I will never forget what imparted that lesson to me in the first place. I simply took a deep breath, trusted my friend, removed my shoes and socks, and let him tickle my bare feet until I was laughing so much that everything painful and challenging in my life melted away. And every time I’ve been tickled since then, I’ve experienced that same joyful release of tension and struggle. True magic happens on the other side of that journey!
