If Master isn't Happy...

We are edging our way toward four years together in June. It will feel , in some ways perhaps, more like an achievement than the years before it were. We've felt this year to be more intensely challenging on so many more levels -- physically certainly, but emotionally and relationally as well I suspect. The pressures have seemed relentless, and there have been long stretches where we have seemed to be unable to do more than simply put one foot in front of the other and hang on.

I know I've read others in the circle of online journals that I wander through, who have struggled with doubts and questions lately. To be sure, I've shared a good deal of my own anxieties and uncertainties here in the last months. I find it interesting to gather inklings of the "solutions" that others who are engaged in power exchange dynamics come up with when things get rocky and the relational weather turns stormy. All of that gives me much to ponder.

Still, when it all comes down to it, for me it becomes pretty simple. When Master isn't happy, nobody around here is going to be happy. Fixing that circumstance becomes my focus and my charge. Whatever I might conceive of as my list of wants, needs, wishes, or desires in the moment, the priorities shift radically when it becomes clear that He is not getting whatever it is that He wants and needs -- the thing or things that would work to make Him happy.

I might believe, intellectually, that the demands placed by that prioritization might be unfair. I may feel stressed and frustrated by the constraints that are placed on my time and my ability to make other choices because of that. In fact, there is not really any "might" to it; I DO feel stressed and frustrated by it sometimes. I am not stupid or unaware, and I know that there are times when the balance is unbalanced: when He has leisure I'll never have, choices I'll never enjoy, options I'll never get to exercise BECAUSE of our power exchange. I know that He takes for granted all the many, many places in each day where His way is eased because T and I simply make things happen in His world without His least awareness of it, and I know that He expects that to continue -- would be annoyed if it did not. I can sometimes sense momentary flashes of anger and resentment that flare up in me around that knowledge -- when I am tired or bored or feeling pushed in some way... Perhaps there are slaves that never go to those places. I am not one of them.

There is the nasty, dark, untold secret of power exchange relationships: they are unequal. Once you agree to move beyond the realm of carefully negotiated, scene-limited, slap and tickle, "we do this because it spices up the sex," things shift and somebody gets to hold the power. That means that there is going to be at least the potential for perceived "unfairness." For those of us who come up in a society that teaches us to value our "rights," I believe that it is quite natural to respond to perceived uneveness in privledge with a sense of unease (at the very least). For me, it can get much more intense than unease. I can get quite seriously bent about it.

That is the reality. It doesn't matter that I know I made this choice consciously, voluntarily, deliberately, freely, and all the rest of it. In the moment, I can still feel the heat rise in my cheeks, and still hear the internal monologue start, and the chatter in my head that drives me to distraction: "It's not fair!" And the indignant sixteen year old, stands there; hands on hips, chin thrust out, determined to stand her ground until somebody gets the message that the whole damned business is just plain unjust and outrageous on the face of it.

Yeah. Right.

Gut level, knee jerk response.

Until the slave voice begins to speak more calmly in the sort of patient, measured tones that work to calm me down, and remind me of who I am and what matters to me.

The truth is that I chose once. I don't expect equality or even fairness. Those are constructs from a different sort of relating. I know that I am safe and deeply cared for. That is what matters to me. I know that, when things seem out of balance to me, I can lay that at Master's feet. He will do with that information what He will. I know that it is not my place to requrie anything from Him in that regard.

It is sometimes interesting and instructive to observe my own impatience and fussiness about it all. I can watch myself grow and change and learn. Slaves are not born whole. There is a process to this becoming.

When I first came to Him, I was so new and so naive and so hungry. The first months, I was unquenchable -- like a desert when the rains come after a long, long dry and dusty time. He often reminds me that it was I who came to Him. How often that sounds like rebuke in my ears. Like accusation. Fault. Failing or flaw in some dark sense. So, recently, I asked Him if it was a bad thing for me to have done. Did He regret me having done that.

No.

OK.

Still, there is understanding between us that things have changed. I've changed. No longer so naive, I am perhaps less starved than I was. Less starved, but no less hungry ultimately. Paradox and contradictions seem to abound. I yearn, and then I struggle. I want what only He can give and then rage at Him when it is given. My dreams are filled with terrifyingly strict bonds that hold me in place for the pain that I dread at His hand. I want and do not want and want even more. All fueled by the frustrations of knowing that, most often, what pleasures will come from the pain I crave will be found only in knowing that He has enjoyed it all, for it remains a rare thing for me to find any physical release. This is a new and added dynamic with which I have found little peace.

Yet it remains my priority to be "His."

These last few days have been dreadfully stressful. Work has been difficult to say the least. The illness that has befallen His father has added an additional layer of worry. I've scrambled to catch up and keep up after our time away. Haven't managed very well with things like laundry and ironing in the face of schedules that have kept us all away from home until late at night each day as we scramble to fulfill our work obligations, visit at the hospital, keep tabs on His mother, and snatch a bit of sleep here and there.

When the shirt He wants isn't pressed and in His closet when He wants it; when there aren't fresh apples in the refrigerator for His breakfast; when I don't manage to somehow wrestle His unconscious, exhausted form into the CPAP in the middle of the night, leaving Him feeling crummy in the morning -- I can sense His irritation, and know that I have fallen short of the mark. Logically, I can come up with a thousand perfectly sensible explanations for all those "misses," but the fact is that my calling and my goal is to make His life good and smooth and easy. Those are my priorities.

I often wish this were sexier; that I were "getting more" out of the kind of BDSM we do. There is a wicked little voice that gets into my head that taunts me with the barb that an awful lot of slavery is "SLAVERY," and it is the simple truth. There are times when I just love the fact that I know the meals that are prepared in my kitchen are contributing to His health and longevity; times when I take great satisfaction in knowing that my efforts to iron His shirts build His confidence in His public life; moments when I crawl into our warm, comfortable bed, and relish the knowledge that I've created a place of serenity and security for our love from my efforts and labor... Still it is work and endless routine, and there are days when I feel the burden for the weight it really is and wish it might lie more easily than it does. How envious I am of the fantasy of endless rounds of sexual service and happy spanking "porn" giddiness."