Fangy?

There are as many "reasons" and explanations for participation in BDSM as there are people who do it. Not only that, but I suspect that, if a person gets into it and does it for awhile, the reasons and rationales might very well change and evolve. I think that has been true for me. But then, I think that could be said about an awful lot of things in my life. I've learned. Along the way.

In the early part of my wandering out into this, I looked back along the way I was traveling pretty frequently, noting the mile markers and the signposts -- keeping track of the distance traversed and noting the changes. In the beginning, that looking back to shore was instructive. It was also, I think, reassuring. I needed to know, at the outset, that I hadn't gotten out so far that I couldn't find my way back. I know that I'm mixing metaphors, but I wanted to keep track of the "bread crumbs" I had dropped on the trail I was following. Somewhere along the way, I quit watching the trail behind me, and simply began walking into the future. At some juncture, the past became less important than what was ahead of me -- and, as well, less important than where I was in the moment.

I had an acquaintance many years ago -- not really a "friend" -- but someone with whom I associated fairly regularly in the context of my worship community. He identified a group of women within the meeting as a particularly strong and "vociferous" bunch, and came to refer to us as "fangy" women. We took it as a descriptor that was honorable.

I have been wondering about that fangy-ness lately in the context of our M/s relationship and power exchange in general. I am quite certain that, in coming into the place of "belonging" to Master, I have not lost ANY of what is my essential self, and that SELF is capable at an essential level of a definite wildness. I know about my fangs, my claws, my rangy nature, my wariness, my inclination to go to ground when pushed too far... Those drives run deep in me and I embrace them because I worked hard to come to own them for myself in years when I lived hidden and solitary in the midst.

He owns me not because I am tame. He owns me even though I am wild. Not every man would take on a wildish sort; it takes a certain confidence and surety. Easier, I imagine, to snag a "girly" without the drive to snap and tear when driven to the edges...

That wild nature shows up in a variety of ways, but is often mistakenly labeled as "negative." Far too often, women and girls are taught to be nice, complacent, polite, soft, forgiving, quiet. When their honest pains and hurts and injuries cannot be addressed openly, when they cannot express the real emotions of their lives, damage occurs. I believe that there are legitimate and valid "negative" emotions (lists sometimes vary, but this will do):

apathy, grief, fear, hatred, shame, blame, regret, resentment, anger, hostility

I freely own my emotions -- all of them, and I most enjoy reading those who claim participation in this lifestyle and still claim the full range of their emotions. I rejoice when I know that kaya and morningstar and danae and magdala are all fully "on the path," and still fully capable of joy and rage and grief and silliness and all the rest of it. I wonder, sometimes, if the "sluttiness" that is the unending (and sometimes tiresome) fare on some blogs is a cover for genuine human emotion that is too scary and too raw to deal with in the undisguised form, and so it gets dressed up in fetish garb and paraded around on a leash. Maybe not. Maybe I am imagining things.

I do know that I've been genuinely, fiercely, legitimately (at least I think it has been legitimate) angry lately. Angry with the medical establishment that leaves women with so few options for managing difficulties with our reproductive health except to opt for surgery that amounts to castration; angry with my surgeon who gave me evasive and misleading answers to my very direct and urgent questions about my eventual sexual function post -surgically, angry that there are so few treatment options for women in my circumstances and that those that do exist are "off-label" and therefore not paid for by any sort of insurance coverage; angry that because of my lifestyle situation, I cannot even talk about my pain and fear and sadness with anyone outside our family...

I've got a recent email correspondent who suggests that my anger needs to give way to forgiveness. It is the "wisdom," that finds favor in some circles, that holds that anger harms the one that is angry as much or more than it harms anyone at whom it is aimed. If that is your belief, I honor it for you and advise you to stop reading right here...

...because I am of the opinion that all of that is just so much happy horseshit.

I am angry because I cannot have orgasms anymore -- and I was doing that just fine last year this time thank you very much.

I was told by people who were supposed to know, and who I had to trust, and who I questioned carefully on the subject, that I would not lose anything significant in that arena -- and they LIED to me. Did not tell me that there was a significant risk of ending up without my sexual functioning intact. Did not warn me that I might never, ever find my way to sexual vitality again, or that, it might only come at significant effort and cost... I am MAD AS HELL!!! I intend to stay mad just as long as I feel like being mad. I doubt very seriously that forgiving any of the aforementioned folks will restore my orgasms. To tell you the truth, if I thought that gnawing their legs off, WOULD bring back anything approximating normal female sexuality to me, I'd be having leg of doctor for dinner -- in garlic sauce, with the best red wine I could find!

Anyone who wants to pray for a more forgiving spirit for me, knock yourself out, but don't send me any notes about it. Please.

Actually, as I think about the whole business of this particular exchange, I have a variety of reactions:

• I again realize that the act of blogging exposes me to friends and supporters, but too, it opens me to those who have reactions that are not always aligned with me and with us exactly. Many who read here must find that they are made uneasy by the situations that are laid out on this screen month after month after month. Some judge, some snipe, some exhort, some feel the need to try and "fix" things, some probably just watch in horror, some are openly critical, every now and then there is even that mouth breathing bottom feeder sort... I know all of that intellectually, but am continually caught off-guard by it as well. When I write, I am usually just thinking out loud, working stuff out for myself. I never anticipate the reactions that come back, especially when it brings people in who cross over my boundaries. I know that I am most likely more sensitive to that than is really reasonable. Writing makes me seem way more accessible to people than I actually am. I don't know how to warn people ahead of time how prone I am to snap if you push me too hard or too fast -- how prone I am to take offense at presumptions and arrogance.
• I find that I am extremely protective of parts of who I am, and most especially the parts of me that growl and snarl and snap and bite. I need that wild and angry part of me -- that feels like something that I have earned and learned over a lifetime of growing up, and I am not willing to lay that down, or have it judged wrong or wanting. It feels righteous and strong and healthy. I am willing to have it held and curbed by a strong hand, under the right circumstances, but not groomed into "French poodle" sissification. In the end, I bend to only One. He's earned the right, all others best tread lightly. If you don't have claim to the territory, do not even go there.
• I am proud of my darkness, of my rage and my sorrow and my regret and my fear. Just as I am proud of my joy and my wistfulness and my dreaminess and my gentleness. When there is lightness and sweetness in my moods, I don't feel embarrased. I do not apologize for the sunny bits. Those parts of who I am nurture and support and dance, even as the feral, fangy edges prowl the shadows. It is all me, and all as valid and valuable.

I don't know where all of that ends up. I don't know if it matters. I don't know if it makes any sense. I guess I believe that it is not my anger that is at the root of my depression. I could be wrong. I will find the way our of the darkness. And when I come out of it, I am sure -- I hope that I will still be wild and fangy. And I will still be wildly angry (perhaps) at those who betrayed my trust last December. I'll survive this, scars and all, and grow and thrive. But forgiveness is for those who would be food.

swan