Of Shields and Extremes

The last 24 hours or so have been very intense and complicated. I feel compelled to write but I don't know how or what to say. I worry that whatever I write will be taken wrong, taken as a slight or a judgment, or that I want something to change. I don't want any of that. I just want to be honest about my truth and have people read it. This may be a bit jumbled and is a bit long, so please bear with me. 

Last night was the monthly meeting of the M/s group, a thing that is my thing, that caters to how I best like to interact in larger groups and that I've been so happy to have The Emperor [yes, that is the pseudonym I've landed on] come with me to, so proud to be able to show off my Master and companion to the closest thing I have to my own group of people in the bdsm community. When we came home, we had amazing, painful, kinky, sub-space inducing, tear-inducing sex and bedded down to finish the first tv show we had started together, Sense8, while touching and kissing and talking. He said I was perfect for him, among a host of other complimentary things. I think between those three things, going to the meeting together, the sex, and the talking, the boundaries I usually have were completely down. We've had this happen before. One night, at the end of a particularly difficult week, once we got a night together, with time to play, we ended up doing less impact play than had been planned and more up close and personal pressure points work along with some breath play while sitting on the loveseat, our bodies pressed against each other. Soon, all the walls were down, the walls that I had that were not only keeping out the rest of the world and all my pain and grief and sadness but were also keeping him out. 

I spend so much time behind those walls. As I thought about them today, I couldn't help but think of the way shields are talked about in the Anita Blake books. For those who don't read them, it's a series of contemporary supernatural fiction, if vampires and shapeshifters and all kinds of other paranormal and psychic creatures/people lived semi-openly in this society, set mostly in my birth city, with a badass zombie-raising, rogue-vampire-executing curly-haired woman who over the series becomes part of triumvirates of power with other shapeshifters and vampires and feeds off sex as the main character. She uses psychic shields to protect herself from being overwhelmed by other people's powers or emotions. In the middle books of the series, while she is still trying to adjust to the first triumvirate, which is with two men she very much loves but who she struggles to choose between, she shields herself from them, which protects her emotions as she adjusts, but also makes them weaker as a force. Without access to the books, I was trying to look online to find the exact quotes, but I couldn't find any that exactly encompassed what I was looking for. I did find it telling that in one book when trying to describe shields she says that they can be made of any substance in your mind, fire, water, metal, stone, as long as it surrounds you in your mind and makes sense, so that no two will actually be alike. In the books, she envisions hers as a stone wall or a tower. I think that is very telling. Unlike water, which would let more things past but could also envelop things you didn't want in droplets of water, or fire, that would burn up anything that got past it, she envisions a stone wall or tower, like a medieval castle. 

The Emperor and I are just starting to read a book about how to deal with someone you love having borderline personality disorder. Something that I read yesterday has got me thinking. The author writes about how many borderlines by their 20s or 30s start to under-feel more often than over-feel, because what they've learned is that their emotions get them into trouble, are bad or wrong, are not what people around them want, so they find ways to not feel them, which can even be disassociating, though often all that emotion will come back with a vengeance when they can't push it away or disassociate from it. A cause of some friction in the relationship has been that I tend to withdraw from him when I start to get overwhelmed by emotion. I felt like this was a coping mechanism that I have been using for awhile to get some distance from my emotions, since I am usually aware that they aren't justified and I don't want to act on the emotion without thinking, to have things come out of my mouth that aren't true or fair. But now I wonder how much of that is disassociating from all emotion, how much that makes it all the more overwhelming when I have emotions that I can't withdraw from because everything has built up, and how much this is me putting up completely impenetrable shields. 

There is an exchange from the television show Bones that has stuck with me for years though I've only now been able to find the exact quote. The main characters are talking about getting together as a romantic couple sometime in the future. Bones, ever the scientist, says,"You know the difference between strength and imperviousness, right?... Well, a substance that is impervious to damage doesn't need to be strong. ... When you and I met. I was an impervious substance. Now I'm a strong substance.... A time could come when you aren't angry any more and I'm strong enough to risk losing the last of my imperviosness. Maybe then we could try to be together." I have always liked that idea, the strength it takes to allow yourself to be open. But I feel like all these years have taught me that I don't have the strength for that, that I only have the strength to hold my shields, not the strength to allow some things in but keep others out. I am always all or nothing. Open or closed. But being open to let others in is also open to letting me out and I feel like no one wants me to be let out and I'm not always sure that I've very smart about who I let in, or able to deal with the inevitable hurt that comes with that, even unintentional hurt. 

Letting those shields down with him is amazing. I can feel how perfectly we do fit. I can feel how safe I am with him, safe to express my deepest and darkest sexual and kink fantasies without fear of reproach, safe to enact those fantasies that are possible. I can fully feel how we can be the blank canvas that we each paint our desires on. I can feel vulnerable and small and cared for, as well as hurt and desired and pushed. 

But I don't know how to get them back up and being that open and vulnerable out in the world where I still walk so much of it alone is excruciating and tiring. It is probably more difficult to get those shields back down again, because I don't yet have a grasp on exactly how to get them down. They are so automatic that I don't feel them being there. I only feel when they are gone. But I don't know how to get them back up. And I don't know how to make them something that doesn't cut me off from everything, from my emotions and from my closeness to my love, while they protect me from the outside world and from the emotions overwhelming me. 

I'm also fighting with how extreme my desires can be. Even though they scare me, even when I feel like they are wrong or crazy or don't make sense, I am all or nothing, jump a cannonball into the pool instead of sticking a toe in, black or white, push it to the limit kind of a girl. No, I may not be as much of a masochist as others, may not be able to stand as much as others, but when I like something, I will want to push it to its extreme. When you're talking about the kink or the roleplaying or violence, that can be fucking scary sometimes. The things I want in my head can scare me sometimes. Not "oh, I'm embarrassed to tell someone this" kind of scared either. But the "this can get out of hand really quickly and borders on so much abusive and terrible territory, but it is such a turn on and makes me feel wanted and desired in a way that less than this doesn't" way. I don't write this because I want my sex or kink life to change, but in way of explanation, both in what I want and why I want it as well as in why it is scary and why I can feel so overwhelmed by it at times, that sometimes the carefully interwoven fantasy of fear and desire can be so easily unraveled, can so easily unravel me, when the enacting of it pulls just a little at the delicate fabric. This isn't to say stop, but to explain why sometimes suddenly can't breath and am about to cry or want to curl up in a ball or have to take a few steps back to walk it off when you thought you gave me what I wanted, when you just said a few words. Because anything you find worth doing, you find to be worth overdoing. Because you finally trust that you can tell someone your deepest and darkest, or close to, and she'll treasure you all the more for it. Because I want to take what you want to give, what you've wanted for so long to give, but where afraid would scare a girl off. But it isn't you that I fear. It is me. It is that I am not afraid that scares me. It is my own desires that scare me. But please, don't stop.

I'm taking the wrong streets home because you told me to get food on my way home. I don't want to eat. But I figured it would look worse, look more petulance, look brattier, if I didn't eat anything then if I choke down a crappy fast food sandwich. But it would be choking it down.

So early to already be here. Holding you hostage. Making you walk on eggshells. Both of us crashing into those things that angered us so much about previous partners or our parents. So frustrating and hurtful. I would cry if i didn't feel so fucking empty and lost and yet trapped. 

You must feel the same. You took your ball and went home when you could. Maybe it's time for me to do the same. I really hate being just like all the rest. I know i stay too long. Has it already been too long? 

What does it mean when you can find your own way there and own way home but you don't want to anymore? Not like how it did when i decided to look for someone but to really know what it's like to have someone to zip your dresses and put on your necklace, or better yet your collar, on every morning and do the reverse at night? 

Or maybe I'm not supposed to be with someone. The crazy is all the companionship i can take. Much more than any other person should be asked to shoulder. Your partner is yoked to you and shares your load but it shouldn't be that heavy all the time. 

But it would be so hard not to crawl back, over and over. I'm not that strong. The sex, the companionship. I'd have to blot out the memory of the address. Lock up my keys after 10pm. Lol. Yeah, that's it. 

Better go get that stupid sandwich. 

We Used To Be Friends

I went to the ER Sunday after a weekend spent in pain. I was supposed to have Mini-Me for that whole weekend. I only got to see her for a few hours during her brother's birthday party. At least my parents were able to help you get a break on Saturday. I think that you didn't believe I was sick until you saw me on Sunday. Or you didn't care. Help was offered as I left the party to drive myself to the ER, since my new partner, who has yet to get a spiffy pseudonym, was out of town, but I felt the politeness of it. Today when I went to pick up Mini-Me after my follow-up doctor's appointment, you didn't ask how I was feeling or what had been wrong with me. 

We used to be friends. I thought we still might be. I'm sure if I asked you, you'd say that is how it goes when you aren't living together anymore and that I'm not around anymore. To other people, I'm sure it has much to do with me dropping the ball with the parenting in the past few months, as we truly cut the romantic ties and moved into separate spaces. When things became more difficult on me, I broke and wasn't able to step up to the plate like I had planned. I have a feeling you feel like I chose a new partner over my kid(s), over the family we had. I know that I fucked up several times by not being where I was supposed to when I was supposed to. I know that for you and yours the why of that doesn't really matter, just that I didn't. 

But weirdly I hadn't thought it would make us not be friends, make us not care about the other. None of those things that we had in common went away. But you barely answer my texts. I don't hear about the kids, much less your life, not even when I ask. I guess that is what I deserve. My abdication made being a parent a bigger part of your identity than it now is of mine. It also burnt up any shred of care you still had for me. I tend to do that. Burn up that caring with need, even if it is a need I have created by my absence. 

Maybe we were never friends. Maybe we were lovers and then parents and we created what looked like friendship to fill the spaces. I had thought she was my friend too. Until I burned up her care and we realized how little we truly had in common. The more time spent apart though, the more I am unsure why I want to be friends except that ...well, I do that with exes. I feel this need to try to salvage the friendship we had, or that I thought we had, because I make my partner my bestfriend, in a world where I have very few friends to start with, so I don't want to lose that. But maybe your partner never really was your friend. Maybe when you operate the way I do, they are a different third category, the lover-friend? Lend? Frover? Maybe once one is gone, the other goes with it.

Honestly, I don't even know why i want you to care. Because that's really it. I want you to care. Just like I wanted you to care then. Like I wanted her to care. Care in a way that made sense in my head at least, which I've learned is the real trick. If you didn't then, why would you now? Why do I want you to? Why do I still care at all? 

And yet I go to bed tonight wishing I could have that easy conversation with you, sharing about parts of our lives or our minds or the world. Not because I want that romance back or the sex back. But just to have an exchange of a few messages with someone who is like-minded on the topic, or at least knows it. At this point in things, isn't that what friendship is? Or a significant portion of it for us? But that seems gone and I don't even know how to ask about getting it back. I think the answer is either that we were never friends or to go back in time and be someone else then and someone else now. 

Time

The time alone. More properly, what your mind will do in that time alone. That is not a part of the sales pitch for the poly or open lifestyle. When it is brought up, that time alone is framed as a good thing. Time for you to hang out with friends. Time for you to do things you want to do that your partner doesn't. 

I'm supposed to be at my parents' house, exhausted after a long day that had an early start and a nice playful evening with my daughter. I was supposed to get to enjoy being with my daughter all weekend and that would distract me from this time alone. Of the seven nights we were apart, i would be spending five of them with my daughter. The other two I would spend doing things in his house, our house, cleaning and unpacking. 

We aren't poly but not quite monogamous either. I had offered a hallpass while apart, especially as things this week went worse and worse. Except now there is a new complication so that hallpass comes with strict limits. This week hasn't turned out at all like it was supposed to. At all. It was supposed to be one of the most productive weeks in recent memory. Instead I have gotten almost nothing done. Hell, i didn't even empty the dishwasher. (Sorry Sir.) I am sick and in the worst pain I think I've ever been in, which I can only control if i lay down and don't move around very much, in our bed, alone, realizing in the past few days that I don't have anyone to take care of me. I'm trying to focus on my book, but all I can really think about is the seconds ticking away, between when i hear from him, between when i know what has happened and during which anything could be happening. 

Nope, this isn't in the sales packet. I always tended to keep myself busy during these times so I didn't have to think about it. Because I am me, this time is only twice as nerve-wracking as other time without him, as that time can still be nerve-wracking. (I am oddly comforted by the fact that he deals with the same feelimgs when I am away from him.) I just hadn't anticipated that I'd be alone, in pain, and laid up with plenty of time to wonder about exactly what is happening. 

But I didn't take back my limited hallpass. In the time I've been writing this, he's texted and the companion for his fun has gone home. I don't begrudge him whatever has happened between them, just as i didn't last night. This was not a trap or a trick. I wanted him to have an outlet and I am glad for whatever he was able to have. I much prefer that I gave it, even if that time of uncertainty stretched in my head into some of the longest hours of my life. I don't believe that it changes anything about our relationship. I don't believe we hold less faith with each other. 

But they really should put what that time does to your head in the packet. If only in tiny tiny print, read really fast, like they do on ads for medication. Maycauseanintolerablelengtheningoftimeduringwhichyouimagineeverythingyourlovercouldbedoingwithsomeoneelsebothawesomeandterrible.takeasleepingpillandwatchahappyshowonnetflixtilyoupassoutiffeelingscontinueformorethenfourhours.

The Night Is Dark And Full of Terrors

I love a dark house after everyone has gone to sleep. 

Maybe it is just a love based on familiarity. For most of my life, I have been an insomniac or a night owl, almost always up later than my family. Wandering a house after dark, the ways to guide yourself through a space with only the light from the windows and that one kitchen light that's always left on are well known art forms for me. In long term relationships, when staying in their home or after moving in, there have always been nights like this. Bittersweet nights spent wandering someone else's space, just me and my ghosts and theirs.

Tonight is such a night, though not in the usual vein. Older now, with less insomnia and more things that make what sleep o can catch precious, i haven't done this thing in some time. But tonight i am in pain, sick in so many ways, and cannot abide the bed, or even sitting for very long. He would be with me if I asked. But he needs sleep too. There is also very little he can do for most of the pain. So i have left him to his sleep, however fitful it may seem. 

I like change. I grow restless without it. I will find something new to learn or try or to get trained in when i start to feel restless. But i also can get overwhelmed, perhaps more easily than others. New job, new relationship, moving, new childcare arrangement. All so quickly after a crisis. I am overwhelmed. I cannot cry properly, cathartically, when i need, from pains internal or external. Maybe after a life of solitary tears, i have just run out. 

I wish it was raining tonight as the poetess' words run through my head

but the rain 

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh 

Upon the glass and listen for reply, 

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain...

And yet, i am still soothed. Hydration and meds and movement finally seeming to have settled the worst of it. I am glad for this bonding time with this new dark house, where I am less lonely than i have ever been on my moonlit wanderings.  

Exes

They say that the best revenge is a life well-lived

Last week Wednesday, we had a hard day. We are still learning each other. Some play got away from us just before work and that, combined with my crazy brain's need to verify that what people say or promise is true, oh and the lack of sleep and hunger, meant I kind of lost my shit. We spent much of the morning dealing with it via text and email while at work. Including him telling me that he would drop everything to come get me if I needed it. That if I was in crisis, he would come for me.

We were supposed to go out that night. His ex had just gotten back in town and was going to be having her birthday shindig at the weekly community event that he always went to on Wednesday nights. She had asked him not to bring me with him if he came, period, not just if he came for her birthday party, which he wasn't planning on doing, but if he just went to that bar. I'm sure you can guess his response. I had wanted to go, though mostly for selfish fucked-up reason. He was going to go even though my reasons were selfish and fucked up. But between what we had gone through earlier in the day and how draining that was, as well as the fact that his day doing his actual job was long and fairly training, he did not want to go out.

Earlier in the day one of his friends had said that he should not go to the bar, but that he should stay home and fuck his new girl. Of course later on having forgotten that she told him that, she was mad that he did not show up. Another friend even went so far as to call him a pussy for not showing up at the first day that his ex was back in town at the bar they all went to. Honestly the only part of whether she was going to going to be there that was ultimately taken into account in our decision that night was that we shouldn't take into account that she was going to be there, but that we should decide what we wanted to do with our night based on how we felt and how we wanted to spend time with each other.

In our community, things get sticky with your ex's. I am still friends with my exes on here, even have them on my page. Most anything you write can be seen by anyone. On this social media and on the more mainstream social media, I wrestle often with what to say or do because I am in full view of my ex's on here and of my ex's and their families on the other site. I'm happy, ecstatic about my new relationship, but I also don't want to hurt my ex's, or even upset their relatives, since we are all co-parent children together.

But it begs the question, who do I write for- the new person in my life who I know will be reading this or the person who is much more tangential in my life now, who only wrote what I had written when I begged? 

"Tell me what I said I'd never do. Tell me what I said I'd never say. Read me off a list of things I used to not like but now I think are ok" - Ben Folds Five

I also constantly wrestle with the division of my time. As this new relationship continues to grow and become more important in my life, and as my desire to spend time and energy on relationships that had ended but that I had been holding on to life a life preserver have diminished, I now wrestle with what is spending the proper amount of time and energy on my children and helping my co-parents and what is spending too much time and energy on my exes. So much of my life right now is flooded with guilt because I am getting that wrong, piled on top of the guilt that I am not able to do the things I had planned on doing when I assumed I'd be single forever, smothered in the secret guilty sauce of doing things while caught up in the NRE that I was so upset about someone else doing a little over a year ago. I've written and rewritten this part of this post several times, with more and less detail about the situation. As vague as all this is, I think maybe it best to keep it that way, to protect the innocent, as the old tv show used to say. Or maybe to cover my own ass. Who can tell at this point. More importantly, when did the place I used to come to spill my feelings, the feelings of my loved ones be damned, become just another place where I tied myself in the knots of the things I can't or won't say? 

This week, we aren't going to that event either. The group I like to go to is having it's monthly meeting. He wants to go with me, and it isn't like many of his friends have not said they were going to it as well. I am overjoyed to be able to go with my partner, my Master, when I had for so long assumed I would always be going alone and would never get to share this. I do worry that it looks like avoidance of his ex to the people he knows in the community, even though that didn't enter into the equation of what we would be doing. But how much can we live our lives thinking of our exes? Particularly if they were the ones who ended the relationship, what do you really owe them? What is just living your life as you wish and what are things you should avoid because it may hurt them, even when not meant maliciously?  

Glass Slipper

"Your love was handmade for somebody like me"

So many things others didn't appreciate but I love. Hardest part maybe finding the balance between my desire to serve and your desire to care for. At least now that we've done orientation I know where things are, know about possible projects that I may assist him with. Is it weird that I'm excited about a sweaty day of reorganizing that garage so it is functional for the things he would like to use it for? Ok, ok, I'm weird. It's ok. 

Late a few nights ago, he had me pull things from his play bag. See what was there. See if anything interested me. Let him find something fun for the rest of the night. 

There was a soft cloth drawstring bag with something round inside it. He got a little smile and encouraged me to see what was inside. Inside, all shiny, was a stainless steel ring collar, with an O ring on the front. 

It looked much to small for me, but i brought it back with me to the bed anyway. After he popped out the pin, i moved my braids so that he could put it around my neck. And it fit. I still have no idea how. It had looked so much smaller that the neck of an adult woman. But it had. And it fit just right. 

I know it was bought for someone else. I know that should bother me. But it was bought for someone it didn't fit, like so much of him, so much of what he does. In that moment, it felt like my glass slipper. Just one I didn't even know I'd lost. 

Pulling back

You show someone how to live without you. How to get by on less and less until leaving is more a matter if disrupting the status quo. 

You'll think i pulled back because of him. She fell for a new guy so she is putting all her energy into him. No, i had already had my hand slapped away enough that i still could have put the same small amount of effort into you that i had before. 

But i saw how scared he was of going overboard for me and realized that someone had made him feel like a pest, like an annoyance, like just accepting his attention and love was work. And i realized that was how you felt about me.

So as much as i could, i stopped. Stopped the one or two nice check in texts I'd do during the day. Stopped offering nice things. Stopped offering physical affection.  

You Ruin Everything

I don't really trust my own judgment anymore. There's always someone to say that my decision isn't right. I feel like both sides are right, leaving me doubly wrong but having no clue what to do about it. I just want things to not tense or an argument and for no one to be upset with me about anything. And I am kinda ok doing whatever I need to do to make that happen until I can be in my own space, shut the door, and feel however the fuck I want to feel. Because I can't feel anything right now. Feeling anything is too dangerous. Wanting or not wanting anything is too dangerous. Showing weakness or instability of any kind is too dangerous. Because I did this thing and they can point to that at any time and take away my kids. I'm not even sure how I feel about anything anymore because there are so few acceptable ways to feel. Even then I'm shit at keeping it up constantly. Sometimes the mask slips. It's inevitable really. I feel like I have rarely been trying to make things worse anyway, but now it's a state of constantly policing myself. I write this knowing maybe I can't post it anywhere. There's a decision to be made. I brought up the negatives. Maybe it doesn't help that I'm upset because of other stuff, because of the stuff above. A few hours later, I tried to tell her that I'd go with whatever they decided, and she was clearly upset with me for putting pressure on her. Fuck fuck fuck, you did it again, was all I could think. "You ruin everything." I will hear his voice saying that until the day I die. I didn't try to. I'm trying not to now. But I can't seem to help it. No matter what it is you think I should be doing, I'm not doing it. And I'm so tired right now. 

Are you still a slave if you have no master?

Wore a swishy 1950s-inspired skirt, added my petticoat underneath after I got off work, and spruced up my makeup to go to a meeting of Masters and slaves together tonight. Even though the topic hit home in an uncomfortable way and I felt a bit bad leaving home when others had a ...well, hard doesn't begin to describe it, I am so glad I went. While I've probably only gone to a handful of meetings and I haven't been to one since my maternity leave, it has always been the one I felt most at home in, probably because of it's discussion format. 

But tonight reminded me of all the reasons I liked service and being a slave, not just a submissive. It's different to be around people who are living their power exchanges right there in front of you. Refreshing to see the different ways that plays out, that no one dynamic is the same. It always melts a little part of me when I hear someone on the M/D/T side of the slash talk about their own obligations, duties, and love for the person on the other side of their slash. 

When I got home, I didn't change out of my skirt and petticoat before doing the dishes and picking up the toys. I could tell everyone was wrecked. It gives me an extra bit of pride to do housework looking nice. I used to do it for him. Even though it was also for me even then. Now i do it for me. If he likes it, that's an added bonus. But I'm not serving him. 

Sometimes I get to do little things for him. He asks me kindly to refill his coffee cup or bring him something. As much as it would thrill me more for him to be a little less nice, I know he doesn't want me to get the wrong idea. But in the end now I do these things for me, and for the master that is yet to come, because I don't want to let me skills get rusty, because being in that mind quiets things and makes me happy. Even if we enacted a strict protocol from now on, I know he can't be my Master and doesn't really want to be a Master in the way I want/ need one. At most, he is just gently holding the lead until someone who truly does want that and can step up to it comes along.

The question that has plagued me since I left the meeting is "is a little slave girl still a little slave girl if she is not so little and not anyone's slave?" Many people mark slave as their role in their profiles. I never changed mine. I think I didn't want people,  particularly D-type people, getting the wrong idea, that I was everyone's slave. I still chose submissive as my role, though even then I am not submissive to anyone except the people I have that negotiated with. Maybe if we're talking or dating you can push that a little, but I'm not going to say Sir or Ma'am to every single D-type or look down or whatever other protocols i might do for my D-type. And I'm still not sure I'm a slave at heart versus a submissive. For me, they go hand in hand for how I want to be with my primary partner. I want the power exchange we have during sex and play to spill out into our everyday lives too in ways that are beyond sexual but entail my service to him or her and his/her care and discipline of me. I like having the trust in a partner that allows me to give up my "no." But I'm still not sure that means I'm a slave, especially if I won't engage in service outside of a relationship and I don't have one. 

I need to go to sleep. Or back to sleep. Woke up to pet him and then babies woke up as I wrote this. Just wanted to muse. 

No One Is Thinking About Dating Me

Recently a newer friend of mine has me convinced that if i just keep putting out there what i want and keep working for the things i want and being more positive and looking for happiness and contentment in the little things all the while, that I'll get those things, especially when looking for a new partner.

Feeling sort of rejected tonight and not having anything recently pan out, I'm feeling a bit sad sack about things, realizing he and i never talked about how you feel like you deserve those things. No, not deserve.... more like you're too fucked for someone to want those things with you and not in ways you can really easily change.

First of all, i require an intense amount of attraction and high desire for play and sex to be felt on both sides. That's super rare and something that can't be forced on either side.

I'm not young enough or in good enough shape to be widely desired. The former will just kkeep getting worse and the latter I'm not doing a good job of changing right now.

I'm too crazy for any remotely healthy person to want to be with. And i can manage really well for shorter period of time but i freak out easily over minor-ish things, even if i now have most of those freak outs shortened and will handle things after the freak out. But i know that it is stressful for those around me.

I push back too much for someone who isn't really a brat. Especially at first. But also when I'm angry or frustrated or bored or i want you to play rough with me so i try to make you angry to get it. Wow that sounds pretty bratty. I think it drives off people. Now maybe those people wouldn't want to or be able to handle me long-term of this drices them off, but it kinda sucks. It feels like i act too bratty for many Doms to still be interested.

I'm not disciplined enough or subservient enough or proper enough to ne a good slave to most Masters. Nor do i desire micromanaging.

I regularly wear 1950s style clothing. (In fact, bank of america might buy me some pedal pushers and a cardigan soon.) But I'm not traditionally feminine enough, nor a good enough cook and seamstress and iron-er to be a good 1950s housewife type.

I'm not free enough to be good at poly but I'm not monogamous enough to be monogamous.

I don't have enough free time to really feel like I'm doing things justice.

I forsee lots of tearful lonely nights and a long time of masturbation, hopefully with some sublimation going on.

The Master in my Head

Sometimes I can feel you with me. You're always right behind me. Slightly taller than me. Larger. Stronger. A solid presence that I can lean back against when I feel I'm too tired or sad or lonely to do this anymore. Nameless and faceless for now, yet still reminding me that there is someone I am to belong to but I have to take care of myself until then. I imagine the words of love and validation you will whisper into my ear, your breath on my neck quickening my heartbeat. "A heart I swear I'd recognize is made out of my own devices."

I am probably not as well behaved as I hope to be when we are together. But until then your presence that is sometimes so real I can almost feel your chest against my back and almost hear your words reminds me to be a good girl. Go to work. Pay my bills. Spoil myself a little but not too much. Work hard but also cut myself some slack. Take a deep breath before reacting to anything because those people are going through things as well, things I don't know about and might not understand. Try to treat others with the compassion that I will want to show you, that you will sometimes need as you will be human too and fuck up just like I will. To push myself to still believe that we may meet and to put myself in places and situations where that is more likely, like community munches and socials. To take advantage of some fun and sex and play but to not settle for a relationship that isn't you. "Ready and waiting for a heart worth the breaking." 

Even now, you're here with me. But you're urging me to do some real work instead of daydreaming so I should get to it. 

I'll be waiting but please don't take too long.

Often is the Question Asked "Am I a Bitch?"

I know that I may never find a primary partner, another Dom or Master, much less someone who would marry me. It will be difficult to find someone who meets the things that I am looking for, who is willing to put up with the life that I have, and who I have amazing physical chemistry with. Knowing this, I also know that I may be the one taking care of myself mostly by myself for a very long time, if not forever. I feel like often that means I come off like a bitch in pursuit of taking care of myself. 

It sucks that every time I want to pat myself on the back for doing what is right for me, I end up wondering if I'm coming off like a bitch. Maybe that's the nature of the beast. Maybe a man in my shoes worries that he ends up coming off like a dick or an asshole when he does the same thing. I also know that it doesn't come off as very submissive or like someone who would be a good servant, which probably also doesn't serve me well in finding a Dominant partner. 

But no I will not call you Sir, or some variation of Sir, unless you are MY Sir, we are playing and that is agreed upon, or you can make me. Or it's a part of the name you go by. But I'm not going to call every Dominant I meet Sir (or Ma'am) just because of the side of the fence they play from. 

No I will not send you pictures just because. If we are talking to date or we are dating, sure, but even then, no I will not send you pictures that are any dirtier than are already on my profile. 

No I will not date you just to give you or a relationship with you a chance. It doesn't matter if I think you are a nice person or would in general be a good partner. If I don't think we are going to be a good fit for each other or I don't have that chemistry with you, I'm not going to make myself go further into a relationship that I already feel isn't going to work. I'm not going to make myself have sex with someone just because they are a nice person if I don't want to have sex with them. 

No I will not play with you so you can gain experience. Maybe it is unfair to rule someone out because they don't have experience, because how are you supposed to get experience if no one will play with a newb Dom. But my higher priority has to be my safety, my physical, mental, and emotional safety. I don't want to be your experiment, the car you wreck because you didn't take driver's ed. I also don't want to top from the bottom or be your teacher. I think that all long-term couples grow and learn together, but you can't be starting from 0. 

No I do not have endless amounts of time to chat or go on dates. Even after I catch NRE, if I do catch NRE, I am still bound by the life I already have and I would also like to keep some of my alone time. I have to schedule dates and overnight sexytimes in advance. 

Yeah, I probably just need to invest in more and better sex toys. It's gonna be awhile.  

My Proxy Is Mine

My new skirt, blouses, and dresses from the vintage store finally came in. Because I've lost some weight, the dress I bought in the bigger size is too big and I'm going to have to take it back. I'm trying not to gain the weight back, which will be hard in a job where I sit on my ass all day. But I haven't had a soda or candy bar all this week, walked to and from work one of the days. I'm back to wearing a bare minimum of makeup most days. If it wasn't "that" week, I'd be wearing matching bra and panties most days. I did something different to my hair today and it's freshly dyed. I swished into the last day of the first week of my new job in a new skirt, feeling like a million bucks, super hopeful about all the things coming up in my life. 

But I still want ...a Daddy or a Master or something. I miss that validation. I miss that praise. I miss that discipline. I miss feeling like there is someone there to rein me in if I were to need it. Not that any of that happened as often as I may have wanted it to or as most men who claim to be Daddies or Masters or whatever claim that they do it. But I still miss it and I still want it. 

I thought that I could date. I think that I was wrong. Or maybe it's just going to have to happen like it has always happened. Lots of things that went nowhere until finally there's that person who I want to fuck and marry and stay up talking to every night all in the same person. Not that that has really ended up all that well for me up until now but that is the only way I'm going to get over this whole "the thought of a stranger touching me makes me want to curl up in a ball and not let anyone touch me ever." In between those people, I used to be able to do some rando sport fucking but I think that might be a thing of the past. Or a thing where I at least have to want to fuck them in a bad way, bad enough that my pussy talking overpowers my brain talking. I have had that work out ok. But I can't just go out on a date with someone I thought was ok from online exchanges with the plans of fucking them after a cordial meal and not get squee'd out when it comes time to do it. I also can't go out on a few dates with a guy who is nice enough, great on paper, wants the same things I do, but who I don't want to jump right then because it will also end badly. I used to be able to give it the old college try, fuck them a few times, but then I'd have to admit that I really wasn't feeling them and break things off. I'm also too squee'd out about those people touching me for me to go through with it. He fucking ruined me. 

I just worry that I'm going to miss one of the few people who fit what I am looking for and are looking for someone like me and a situation like I want. And I don't want to get so complacent with whatever secondary relationship I have that I just decide I'll never have a primary relationship and give up looking or being open to it. In the past, it has been way too easy for me to get bogged down in that "I'll always be alone" mindset and just stop looking, or let it make me feel desperate when I did attempt to date, which is never a good look. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. It's too early to date. Take time to be by yourself. Get over you last relationship. Except I am going to be taking time for myself, ya know when I'm not watching a kid or kids or working or whatever, and my "last relationship" will just be changing, not be over. I feel like my life is always changing. At what point has it stopped changing enough for me to date? After I've moved and settled in to my own apartment? After we've developed a new routine with the kids? After we've developed a new new routine because they've gotten a house? After we've developed a new new new routine because I bought a house near to wherever they end up? After I've finished my book? After I've finished several books and can quit my job and live off that money? After I've started hanging out with my old friends more? After I've decided I don't really like those people anymore and am back to mostly just being around me? After I've started going to some bdsm community events and started trying to make friends there? After I've gotten really involved there in what little free time I do have and have no time for dating? Please tell me, when is the appropriate time to date, especially in a poly context where I have other non-primary relationships going on and maybe the person I'm looking for does too? 

When I swished in to work today, I wasn't wearing a collar. My collar. How I miss it. I wasn't even wearing a necklace though when I have, it's been my own pearl necklace, given as a gift from my grandma to my mom and then to me. "My proxy is mine. You'll deal with me directly." (Neko Case) Who knows? Maybe he's wondering the same thing and we'll meet when we've forced ourselves to go to a bdsm event or when we've put up an ad, knowing that we'll have to deal with turning down the princes/princesses who aren't for us but knowing we won't find someone unless we're willing to do that. Maybe my person isn't a man at all or isn't on the gender binary. If I ever find it, it will be worth the wait. Even with how it has ended up being, he was. My next love will be too. 

Right idea

Maybe she has the right idea. Don't tell anyone what is deep inside. Don't act like anything bothers you. If you're hurt or angry, you're tired but things are fine. Saying things only causes more problems, more drama. Maybe then people will keep loving you. Maybe your needs and your hurts won't cut away at their love for you until there's nothing left. It's not like you feel better right now having been honest or taken them at their word that they wanted to know. Because you're always worse when things are bad with them and it never seems to come out like you want it to, a combination of "see, it hurts me too when we fight" and "what about that other option you mentioned?" No, it's always using it to make them feel bad or manipulate them. No one really wants to know. 

Update On a Naked Neck

It's not really naked today.  I'm wearing my own pearls, not the pearls of my old day collar.

I would very much like to just curl up in front of never ending bad tv but I can't. I have children and obligations and I can't get lost in my own sorrow.

I'm sad and I'm scared. But most of the time I don't feel like it's as bad as I did feel like it was.

Friday night he and I talked. We still have so much love for each other but know that nothing is working like this. His biggest push was just that I can't live with them anymore. We need to work out child custody and the wheres of living arrangements the three of us, with flexibility for our lives, but I will always be welcome in their home to be with the kids, presumably even if it's not my night, as long as we make the arrangements. He and i have hopes to go back to the secondary relationship that we think was working pretty well for us before I became pregnant.

I'm trying very hard not to give in to despair. It would be easy to do. It would be what I usually do. But everyone still needs me. Even if the ultimate goal is us living apart and having some sort of shared custody that works well for us, that doesn't mean that we don't still need each other in the arrangement we have right now, and won't need each other in the arrangement to come. And we're paving a new way here. Or at least we hope so.

One of his big points is that he wants us to do this before we hate each other. While we can still amicably work this out and be around each other. It will be a different sort of getting over him that happens if then with other couples who just break up. And it is something that I had to do with her as well when it came down that we were never going to be romantic partners. It is messier and weirder. It especially will be for him and I if we keep some of the sex and play but not the expectations of a primary relationship. But if we are actually invested in creating a larger extended family that can still be around each other and workout then it's what needs to happen.

Because child Arrangements have to be worked out with the three of us, those ideas are a little less defined in my mind. But I do have hopes for my own romantic life going forward, that I will one day find a primary who fits the things that I want and need and I fit the things that he wants and needs. A part of what I will be looking for is him fitting in with my family. Since I came along, he has talked about the fact that we need to add a husband to the family next. In his mind this person might not even  be sexually or romantically involved in our family, but is someone who wants to add their family to ours. Of course in my mind, this person would be a husband of mine who is sexually and romantically involved with me but who is invested as much as we are in having this larger extended non-traditional poly family.

Of course I know that this is going to be very very hard to find. Any of that will come secondary to taking care of the kids and sometimes to taking care of the larger family, since I don't think that we not living with them or having him as my primary means that I do not have any obligation to them, it just means that we have different obligations to each other. I also know that it is going to be hard to find all of the things that I want in a single person. Obviously there will be things I have to compromise on. And I know that it's a little intimidating to have someone like me in general but someone who's looking for the things I am, someone who wants so much.

I don't really know how to end this. Just that things are taking a shape. I'm mostly ok, though sad & scared. I'm hopeful that it will better though.

No collar

I feel naked without the collar. It's going to take some time to get used to. I have felt its weight for the better part of year, no I guess a little over a year now, and I hadn't expected it to come off so soon. And I still feel like if i could have it back, i would, though with the expectations that it entails to both sides.

It's hard to write because I don't want to say something that will sound bad against anyone. I still have so much love for everyone, especially him. On the other hand I have to write. That's who I am. I feel like I have lost so much of who I am in these last years, given it away to make room so that I could earn my place, that I have to keep some of it.

Really hard when in your heart you feel like you would have done anything for some one and still feel like you would do anything for them, but you also feel like the both of you are left with no real choice. At least without completely breaking everything you are and believe in. I have to keep reminding myself that they feel just as strongly as i do about these things on their side as I do. It's hard when both sides feel like they've given so much only to have what they gave be seen as unimportant to the other person and, in the end, not save it.

She seems happy though. Happy to be rid of me. He doesn't seem happy yet but he will be. I'll be just another crazy ex-girlfriend, but one who left him with an obligation, one he still has to deal with. I hope maybe some day he can be happy to be my friend and I his, maybe be able to have the great sex without things getting too muddled. He can be in the floozy box he should have been in all along. I hope that they can get back what they once had, long before me, long before a lot if things. Maybe she can be with one with two livein loves now and it can be even better.

I want so badly to be wanted and have someone else that worries about me. Not in a Negative way, but someone who cares enough to wonder about what I'm doing or to worry if I'm not somewhere on time. but I'm feeling like right now I'm someone that everyone wants to just get rid of. I know that seems backwards because i brought up leaving first. But that's what i always do when it feels like someone wants me out or it's at that impasse.  Because it's too hard for others to sat it, so I'll say it & do it. I don't know how this works for regular people .In the end, I know I need to make myself someone that I worry about. Maybe that I'll find someone who worries about me, who I won't feel that way about.

I Feel Something So Wrong By Doing the Right Thing

I switched jobs. It was supposed to be the right choice but it hasn't turned out that way so far.

I was working 50-58 hour weeks, only one day off half the time. I was exhausted. I was a complete bitch. When I did get to hang out with the kids in the morning before work, I was falling asleep. He said I needed to find a new job months ago.

I found one. I didn't think I'd like it but it would get me experience closer to what I'd like in a different job. It was day-ish hours. It was only 40 hours a week. It paid less money. A lot less money. But I used to be able to get by on that kind of money. I had done some quick math that said I could get by on it. I asked them for their opinions. They were supportive of whatever I did and I should do what would make me the happiest.

I agonized for a really long time, going back and forth, especially since there was another position at the employer I was at that I had applied for which at the time said it would be less hours, though still 2nd shift hours, and more money. (Turned out that the hours probably weren't going to be any less so I didn't get the job when they finally did hire people, since I made clear that I didn't want to work 10 hour days.) What I really wanted was someone to have a real opinion as if it was there life too, as if it was also their happiness and financial well being that was attached to what job I took. You know, because to them it was OURS, not just mine. I wish someone had expressed their own opinions on how they thought they would feel when the childcare burden shifted or when I was home at a different time. I tried to ask and I felt blown off every time. It only mattered what would make me happy. But when you have kids and a family, it isn't always about that. Sometimes it's about setting yourself up best for the future. Sometimes it's about just sticking out shitty situations. It's about so many other things than that. And having a partner or partners were we could be completely transparent and honest about things from exact finances to how we felt about household burdens and everything else is what I want and what I don't know how to have.

And as things sit right now, I made the wrong choice. I don't like the job and very shortly I won't be able to completely make my bills. I'll be a little short every month, if I'm ONLY paying my bills. That doesn't count extravagances like flat tires and doctor's visits. I'm going to go back to looking for jobs, though I'm not sure how it will look that I'm looking again when I've only been with this company for a month. I've been lazy as well. I was going to use the time I now have after the kids go to bed to work on a novel or two. I have ideas for cheesy erotic bdsm novels that I could self-publish on amazon but I'm often really tired after cuddling mini-me to sleep and I often just want to hang out in the same room as the Professor and watch tv or read the internet. It's also been difficult to get down to writing. I can't find the headspace at work because they listen to crappy pop music all day long and I can't listen to my headphones and listen to podcasts or other audiobooks or my own music to let my ideas percolate through all that new knowledge and experience.

But I haven't even been blogging. I know it was a choice that I made but .... well, everything I wanted to say felt like airing dirty laundry. Some of it was stuff that I hadn't said to either partner yet, sometimes things I felt like I couldn't tell them. While it was my own decision though, it has made me feel so small and boxed in. I used to write often speciifically so others could read it, because I felt like I could explain things on the page much better than I could vocally. But the Professor stopped really reading what I wrote long ago. I was too wordy and he just wished I would get to the point. If he ever reads this, that's what he'll say too. There stopped being any point to writing for him to understand me better or better understand how I was feeling or how I thought about things. So then writing about us just became airing our dirty laundry. When you're in a relationship that you know others already criticize or in a group where people are going to blame anything that goes wrong on that ("well, of course it's not going right. you're poly/kinky/etc"), you can start to feel like you can't show the weaknesses there because it will get blamed on that. Or at least I do. I don't want to show my partners as bad people just vent about how things are, that things aren't perfect, figure out how I might fix them, just like anyone would in any relationship, gay or straight, kinky or vanilla, poly or mono. I've let the criticisms from both sides get in my head so much that I just shut down, pulled myself inwards.

But I'm done with that now. While I'll still try not to hurt people, I'll write what I want and when I want. When I know someone could do something to help a situation, I will tell them, even if I know they won't do it because I am just enough of a bitch that I want them to have to say that they don't want to help me or themselves enough to do that simple thing. I will take responsibility for when I'm acting like a bitch or when I start a fight or when I had a bit of an attitude, but I won't let other people blame me for every fight, for their attitude, for their bitchiness. I tried not saying things, sparing other people's feelings and make excuses whenever I could, but I'm done now. Especially because I'm done with others sparing my feelings. That always gets thrown back in my face, like I asked to be spared. I didn't. Others just didn't want to deal with me being emotional or upset, even if maybe I wouldn't have been or maybe that was what I needed because I didn't know I was doing that thing that upset/angered you. Maybe I should give you the same chance that I want. Though these seem to be my famous last words, I'm not sure it could feel any worse that what I"m already doing.

So Far Away

I had just been thinking about you when I heard her stirring in the other room, waking from a bad dream.

I had been thinking about walking out onto the coblestone street at 2am (SO late to 12 yr/o me) in your little college town as rain started to drop onto the dusty street. We had been up all night painting your little apartment as well as the stairway up to it, part of whatever deal you made for a cut in deposit or rent. You were always doing things like that, trading work for reduced price.

Then i had thought about how far away everything with you feels now. That night was over 20 years ago. You've been gone five years? Has it been five years now? My life is so different than it was, than any life we'd have known. I wonder how you'd feel about it. I imagine trying to talk to you about it, like when i was 18 and you'd call me and drink, getting more honest with each beer. Maybe i could be honest with you too. I wonder if you could understand the things that mean so much to me now and help me sort through the things that confuse me so much, tie me up in knots. You taught me how to try to cut through those knots for other people. Maybe you could do it for me. Maybe i already know and just don't want to do it.

And then she cried in the other room. The little girl who bears your name. I could have let her dad, who graciously didn't argue when i wanted to name our child after my dead relative who he'd never met, get her. But i was right here and still awake. I wish i could ask your mom, my grandma, questions about kids and about how i was. I wish i could see you laugh about the ways she's like me and marvel at the ways she's not.

I miss you so much and wonder what you'd think about all this. Could you understand the man i love and how we love each other? The complicated relationship i have with my female partner and co-parent? How the knot of them and the children leave me paralyzed and ambivalent and bouncing back and forth all the time? I hope you could. I wish i could know if you could.

Killing Us

And there's the crux of it, again and again and again. We give to the other what we can, what we thought was best, what we thought would help them. We feel like we gave a great deal and suffered for it in the end. Then we find out that wasn't "enough." They wanted something different and felt unloved and unimportant when they didn't get it. All that we gave means nothing. But what they say would have made them feel loved or important are things we couldn't give at the time or maybe ever. They are things we don't have within ourselves. So we feel like we are told we didn't give enough when we gave all we could. All those fights last fall and I felt like she does now. She feels like I did then.

I'm so tired. I'm so sad. In my more rational moments, i am aware that it's not anyone's fault, or maybe it's both our faults. I don't think he can have what he wants. I think this is killing us. I know it's killing me. We need a different way. Maybe that's giving him back to her all the time. Maybe it's just complete avoidance of each other. Maybe....

He'll be mad. He wanted us to work on this together, work on this ourselves, but i think that's not really an option. We can't get past this cycle right now. Feeling like this I'm not sure how we can like each other, much less love each other. In the past year, she had to deal with what was possible not being what she had hoped for. I think he and I need to too.