A Long Year -- Past

In a comment on the post on "Punishment," kaya asked if the whole week long process leading up to the "explosion" had met the goals that both of us had for it. I admit, I was a little taken off guard by the question. Honestly, in terms of the relationship, I'm not sure that having goals falls into my realm. If pleasing Him is a goal, then yes, but if somehow moving and changing things is what is meant by "goals," then that isn't the way things work. The direction of things really isn't mine to determine.

The question has had me thinking though, because something is definitely different as a result of that week, and the dramatic and decisive ending to it. We are definitely in a better place together, and I am in a far better space than I've been in for a very long time. So, I'm trying to figure out what exactly happened, because I've been at this way too long to be seduced by the "spanking fixes everything" theory.

I do believe that, although submissives and slaves may not actually have relationship "goals," as such, we most certainly have relationship "needs." Something about the "fix" that was prescribed in this case answered to a need that, as I ponder, feels like it has been waiting for a long time...

It feels, to me like I've been "in a different space" with our relationship for at least a year. It's not anyone's fault really. That sense in me has come about as the convergence of circumstances have carried all of us along on currents we simply could not control:

Always, at this time of the year, as the school year comes to a close, I go through a distinctive series of transitions. There are very few careers like teaching. The work is unique in many, many ways. Surely, one of those is the dichotomy of the time that teaching brings to life -- for almost ten months of each year, I am consumed by the work I do. Seven days a week, I teach. For most of the week days, and for a good part of the weekends I am "at work," whatever my physical location, some part of my thinking and my energy is engaged in and dedicated to the work of BEING teacher. Too, in the doing of that work, I am significantly in control, in charge, and the dominant force in my world. Although it is my nature and style to be gentle, respectful, and somewhat seductive in my approach to gaining my students' cooperation in my classes, there is no question about who is the controller in my classroom. Unlike other work environments, inside the typical classroom, the teacher is the sole adult presence. It is (as far as adult company is concerned) largely solitary work.

Then, the school year ends, suddenly one day each June, and I am plunged back into my "not teaching" life for a couple of months. The transition is always "interesting." It was interesting before I came to call myself "slave," and it is sometimes even more notable now.

I carry in memory a time when my son, talking with his then high school age buddies who were commenting on how cool it must be to have parents who were teachers, told them, "OH YEAH! They get three months off, and the other nine months, they have NO life!" I work really hard to make sure that my teaching doesn't take so much of me that I have "no life," but I also know that in order to do that work, I must give a very great deal of my "life" to it, and I know that I am given great latitude during the school year in support of that work. It is precisely because Master and T support me and value the work I do that it is possible for me to continue in doing the work that I love so.

However, at some level, it takes me out of "slave space" to a degree, as the year progresses. It is very difficult to maintain the level of control that is required to manage a busy and active classroom environment for so many hours each day, month after month -- and then remember to relinquish all the control at the threshold of the household each evening and every weekend. When so many lives and hearts and minds lie in one's hands each day, to put that aside is a tricky balance that I do not always successfully maintain as the year progresses and the limits are loosened...

So, school ends, and summer begins. A transition to different routines, different patterns, different time, and different boundaries and expectations. It always creates for me a bit of personal, emotional whiplash. It is both a time of joyful anticipation, but also a time of struggle as I give up the freedom and breadth of my "professional world, and settle into a much more narrowly focused, much more intimate, closely bound and "other" directed life for the summer.

Last summer, however, that shift did not happen in quite the usual way. Almost immediately, as the school year ended, we were gearing up for Master's impending knee replacement surgery. The preparations for that, in terms of our home, our hearts, and our entire intellectual, emotional, and spiritual lives, consumed all of the energy and attention from just about the last minute of the school year until the instant they wheeled Him into the operating room.

There simply was no time to give myself over into His care and protection as would normally have happened in the summertime most years. So I stayed "in charge" to a degree.

Then, He came home from the hospital, and I assumed the role of nurse, and chief physical therapist, and pharmacy technician, and all around step-and-fetch-it. Still, it was me "in charge." I kept track of how often the ice packs were changed, when the medications were administered, how many repetitions of each exercise we needed to get through (and how many times), when the pressure socks were put on and taken off, when the dressings were changed, when the nurses, PT's, etc. were supposed to come... I was seriously "in control" and on top of all the many details.

About halfway through all of that, I got the phone call from my principal telling me that there had been allegations from parents that I'd been "inappropriate" and not teaching effectively. So, began one of the most difficult and challenging years of my almost 15 years of teaching. I spent a good part of my summer contemplating my choices regarding my career, and trying to get my head around what to do when/if I returned to my classroom in the fall. It was painful and agonizing, and frightening.

And still, Master was in the midst of His own very intense and difficult and challenging and time consuming recovery process.

The fall came, school started, the knee continued to heal, we went on as we had been -- watchful and careful and serious... There were more issues: work and family, mostly.

Then my own health issues began to become increasingly more serious. Then His. Then T's.

Then the word came down that the school would close at the end of the year.

We went on. Day by day. The bills. The laundry. The family. The cars. The meals. The work. Life.

Sometimes we spanked. As often as we were able, we made love.

He kept me as close as He was able. I am sure of this. M/s takes work, just as any other kind of relationship dynamic does. When one takes on the care of another person, and this is the committment that a Master makes to a slave, it is a trememdous responsibility. It requires great energy, and great attention, and great effort. Even the most committed of Master's has only so much energy to give. There are limits to what a single human can do. The edges have been within sight for us in the last year.

As long as I've been part of the lifestyle, I've "listened in" on conversations among submissives about what they would do if their Dominants/Masters were not able to physically "do it" anymore. We haven't really been in that position in this passage, but we've struggled. It has been uphill a lot of the way. Not always easy or smooth. We've done it together. It has meant we've had to be patient with each other, and with ourselves. In ways we might never have anticipated in the beginning.

I have tried to be good. I have tried to be strong and brave and patient and calm. Sometimes I have actually been all those things. At other times, I have been terrified.

So, when I think about what feels different to me, having come through this last week, I feel that the summer has finally comel; that the sense of being pulled in close and held tight that I have been missing through all this last year -- has been fulfilled. I am no longer "in charge," and not "in control" of anything. When I lay down at night, and curl into His embrace, it is with the certain sure knowledge that He has me securely and surely anchored in a place where I can relax and settle. I breathe, and feel the muscles that have held so rigid for so long, begin to soften.

Perhaps, that is what He means when He says I feel like His swan when He holds me.

swan