Glory and Gore

I was told that wanting attention was bad. Like a sin, like a dirty little secret that made you pathetic, desperate, unworthy. Good girls didn’t need attention. They earned love by being quiet, by taking up less space, by not asking. So I didn’t ask.

But I still wanted it. And that’s where the trouble started. The neighbourhood pedo always seemed to appear at just the right time—cruising the streets when I’d be walking or biking to the park. At first, it was just looks, then waves, then casual hellos. But the pattern was clear—driving back and forth, making sure I noticed. Until one day, he finally pulled over, handed me his number, and said, 'Call me when you think you can hang out.'

That was how it started. But what was the attention I actually wanted? To be seen. To be heard. To be known. And yet, what had been hardwired early—what had been programmed into my internal compass—was a version of being seen, heard, and known through the eyes of a predator. Through the lens of a pedo, and later, more abusers. So what did that voice inside me say? That being noticed meant being hunted. That being acknowledged meant being taken. That to be known was to be consumed. Because when you’re a little girl who doesn’t ask, the world doesn’t stop offering—it just changes the terms. And the attention I got wasn’t what I needed. It was the kind that sank its claws into me, rewrote the code, and convinced me that being seen meant being used.

Carolyn Elliott calls it Existential Kink—the idea that the things we suffer through, the patterns we repeat, have some deep, shadowy part of us that secretly gets off on them. Not because we consciously want them, but because they match an unconscious imprint we never asked for. Jung would say it’s the shadow playing its hand, running the show behind the scenes.

So was I getting off on it? Did I like what happened to me? No. But did it feed something? Did it fulfill the only version of attention I’d ever been offered? Yeah. And that’s the rub.

Attention wasn’t the problem. Attention was the need. It was the hijacking of that need that twisted everything up. I wanted to be seen, to be loved, to be acknowledged. Instead, I was consumed. And then I grew up believing that’s what it meant to be wanted. That if someone wanted me, it meant I was worth something—even if what they wanted was to devour me whole.

The shame wasn’t just in what happened. The shame was in the part of me that still craved it. The part that had been trained to confuse attention with danger, love with consumption, validation with objectification. The part of me that felt good in the bad, simply because it was familiar. Because it was something.

And that’s what Existential Kink is really about—not glorifying trauma, not blaming yourself for what happened, but pulling the desire up from the depths, looking it in the eye, and saying, I see you. Saying, I get it. I understand why you latched onto this, why you kept finding it, why it felt like home even when it hurt. Because once you see it, you’re no longer bound to it.

I don’t want attention any less than I did as a kid. But I get to decide now. I get to reclaim it in ways that don’t chew me up and spit me out. I get to be seen without being consumed. I get to take up space without apology.

And that’s the real kink—unlearning the shame of being wanted, and finally wanting myself on my own terms.

But what does that look like now? The attention I wanted—to be seen, to be heard, to be known. Maybe that's why I've journaled ever since I learned how to write. Why I still write. Why I started a blog.

I want to be seen—my words seen. I want to be heard—my words read. I want to be known—but known for what? For who I am?

Who am I? Who do I want to be seen as? Who do I want to be heard as? Who do I want to be known as?

Someone who has been through some shit and came out the other side? Someone who refuses to be erased? Someone who owns her story?

I want attention. But not the kind that leaves bite marks on my soul. Not the kind that chews me up and spits me out, hollow and starving. I want the kind that feeds me, the kind I give to myself first.

Maybe that’s why I write. Because here, I am seen without being consumed. Here, I am heard without being silenced. Here, I am known—not as prey, not as spectacle, not as some tragic little girl in a horror story—but as the narrator, the author, the one who decides what gets told and how.

The wrong kind of attention was about being watched, devoured, taken. The right kind is about being witnessed. To be understood, not ogled. To be read, not reduced. To be known, not for what happened to me, but for what I make of it.

I write because it’s the only place I’ve ever felt truly free. Because no one can twist the meaning of my words once they’re set in ink. Because this—this right here—is attention that doesn’t own me. It’s attention I own.

Some girls are born into hunger, taught to mistake consumption for love. But the wild ones, the ones who survive, they learn to feed themselves. They sharpen their teeth on the bones of their past, carve their names into the walls that once caged them. They dip the quill into the charcoal remains of their past and write their own story, refusing to let the ashes define them. They stand at the edge of their past, light up a cigarette, and say—this is mine, but it does not own me.

Words best paired with Glory and Gore by Lorde.