I Don't Want To Live This Way-Thoughts on the BDSM lifestyle

For several months now, I have experimented in the world of BDSM. You see for years, ever since I was a small child, I have had fantasies of being tortured. I would *ahem* play around a long to these fantasies. However, they didn't become truly sexual until around the age of fourteen. I was a normal dreamy fourteen old who wanted a knight on a white horse to sweep her away. However, there where those sweaty, secretive nights under the covers, touching myself imagining a dirty old man was raping and torturing me. I loved the idea of pain, yet at the same time it made me feel dirty and sick inside. For you see, this scenario I would enact in my private mind was something that had happened to my from the ages of 2-11, as I was sexually abused by more men and women than I ever will (or care to) remember. Much of my abuse was BDSM orientated. Many people would wonder why I would remember such a horror, and how this is all tied up into BDSM. Now, I have read many BDSM things, and have ultimately come to the conclusion that it is evil.
That may sound a harsh. And perhaps it is. I believe it is evil for the fact it supports sexual abuse and it's after effects. Many BDSM aficionados would disagree with me. Their motto is "Safe. Sane. Consensual." Many people in the community deny being abused as a children, and the ones who admit it claim it has no affect on their current sexuality. I beg to differ from experience. The reason sexual abuse is called such is because it is a direct on a very important part of a person-his or her sexuality. Being introduced to sex at a young age, in what is often a traumatizing matter, has some effect on a person's sexuality, be it little or small. I think people often follow the patterns we where taught as children. Children who are abused are taught sex is bad and should feel dirty. They are objects only to be used. Sex is painful. The abuser often tells the child that they like it, even if they don't. If the child does, greater guilt often happens later in life. These ideas are the very things BDSM promotes, esp. on the concept of submissives and slaves. Many sights have referred to slaves as "only good for their holes", that "they are an object of great value, not a person" that being whipped is pleasurable, that they deserve pain.
Many people after experiencing sexual abuse still believe these things. Heck, I still believe them at times about myself. After all, why shouldn't we? That was what we where told as children. The BDSM community preys upon child abuse victims such as myself. It is commonly known that survivors have violent and sadomasochistic sexual fantasies resulting from abuse. BDSM convinces them that this isn't a problem that needs to be worked out in therapy. They tell them that it is just their sexuality. Thus, the person opens up to a whole new cycle of "consensual" abuse. They ultimately will probably end up more traumatized then they started out as. For they are reliving the abuse with every whipping, with every consensual rape. There are many former BDSM slaves in therapy for all the abuses they willingly suffered.
You see, while I have all these terrible fantasies, I hate them. I still have a dream of someone who will touch me gently. Who will love me for who I am, and protect me. Who would never hurt me. Who would make love to me on the bed, slowly, softly, beautifully. This is what I love, what I enjoy the most. For whether packaged under the name BDSM or something else, it's all abuse. I don't want to live this way.
I want to be loved, and be treated like the person I am. Not an object.
I WILL NOT LIVE THAT WAY.
-A