Power Exchange and "living" on and on...

Ours is a relationship that is founded on power exchange. Grounded in power exchange. Built around power exchange.

It is not apart. Not separate. Not able to be compartmentalized. Not discrete from the whole.

We love to the very cores of our beings, and always the energy sparks back and forth between us. Step and measure, gauge and check, test and balance. We are ever aware of one another. Ever present to one another. Exquisitely attuned.

Sometimes that balance is joyous and simple and pure. Sometimes, it is purest agony. Energy makes music, it also burns.

We've reached an edgy place these last few days. We are worn out. Too much has come our way this year: too much illness, too much surgery, too much recovery, too much time spent waiting to be "well." There have been too many demands put on our energies by outside forces over which we've had no control. The slave struggles with such intrusions. The Master purely rails.

We've clung to each other and promised each other that the day will come when we will "have" each other again. We see that day approaching, but we are tired. Like shipwrecked survivors washed up on a rocky shore, we cling to one another and gasp and wheeze. We know we've come this far together. We know how lucky we are to have one another. We are glad and grateful for the gift of the love we've been granted.

Still, we are feeling, each of us, beaten and battered and beleaguered. Not always as gentle or as forbearant as we ought to be. We are a frightened and mortal pair at this point. Staggering along, hoping to make it to safety and sanity soon. Hoping that the hope we've nurtured has not expired while we waited to reach the shore.

Power exchange is not for the faint of heart. That goes double for this journey from middle-age into what lies beyond that (and what shall we call that territory?). How foolhardy then, those of us who opt to do both things at once, together and simultaneously? Good gravy, Mabel!

Patience, good-humor, strength, courage, enduring love, and the blessings of all the fairies -- these are the gifts we most surely will need as the days come down upon us.