Stream Of Words

Every now and then, something happens and I look back at the trail that has been left as I've written these entries over the last couple of years -- at what the stream of words that have poured out here record about the journey to this point.


When the command was given to begin writing a blog, I resisted.

I'd been a participant for a long time, at that point, in the listserve world. I'd gotten started on Domestic Discipline lists. DD is a whole different world, but it is where I found my first entry point into BDSM. It is what came up on the screen when I first got a home computer, sat down and timidly typed "spanking" into a search engine. I didn't know much about BDSM when I first got started. I had a lifetime of repressed fantasies, and a belief that there was something terribly wrong about me. I had no idea that there were others like me... In the beginning, I wrote prolifically to both the 1HouseholdDiscipline and 1DomesticDiscipline YahooGroup lists. I was naive. I asked a lot of questions, voiced a lot of opinions, told my story-- as far as I knew it at the time. I made some connections, thought I knew who and what I was. I grew.



In time, I came to feel ostracized as my sense of self became more aligned with the BDSM label. All too frequently, as I began to self-identify as submissive, and as a BDSM practitioner, I found myself under attack by those who found those things that I found interesting and important -- somehow frightening (if not downright BAD). I eventually left those lists (sort of under duress if the truth be told), and created my own Yahoo list. That list, bDDsm, still exists, but is essentially defunct. Only occasionally does a message come through from one of the very few members. I maintained it for a long time until it got to feel like I was talking to myself in an empty room.


We met on those DD lists. We came to know each other there first. He came to understand the need in me for words, for the untangling of my own thinking through the act of writing -- and as, one by one, the listserves stopped being viable outlets for that, He began to push me to write in this format.


I worried that I could not "compete" in this medium. I knew from the outset that I would never be "hot" in the sex blog set. I fully understood that I would not be one of the ones who wrote exciting or scintillating scene reports; never be the slave that others would want to emulate. I worried that I was too old, too shy, too jaded, too serious, too unwilling to play games to ever be part of the interesting and enticing set that pulls the heavy traffic of readers in the blogosphere. I was utterly convinced that there was absolutely no place for me in this environment -- sometimes it is intimidating as hell to be an aging baby boomer in a world that appears to be completely populated with nubile twenty-somethings.



Still, He knew that I WOULD talk to myself in my head; chattering away about all the various things that worried and irritated and troubled me -- until I'd get myself tied into such mental knots that I wouldn't be able to stand the internal noise level. He understood that I would tell myself all kinds of crazy stories unless I could find an outlet for all those words...


So He told me to write. Just write. He insisted that it didn't matter if anyone read it; didn't matter what it was about; didn't matter if it was "hot." All that mattered, He told me, was that it was my truth, my words, my heart. That was the beginning, and that has been the pattern -- through joy and pain and whining and confusion and boredom and anger and growth and change and endurance and friendship and philosophy and sometimes silliness.


If you spend time here, you know this place is mostly me (regardless how we bill it). My words. My wanderings. My moods. My fears. My ups and downs. If I'm in good places, you get my skipping happiness. When I'm hurting, you know my fears and uncertainties -- or you simply hear nothing at all. The links come and go -- mostly at my whim (except for those ones that are His). This place is like poking around in the attic of my mind -- it really is a matter of listening to me talking to myself an awful lot of the time.


I find more and more that I still read a lot around the circle, but that I don't know what to say most of the time -- and so I don't comment much. The way I understand my place in this life feels so different than most, that I am almost always at a loss as to how to interact in helpful ways. What gets "defined" as slavery or submission (generally) is so far from my reality, that I can get shaky about my truth. Ours is just not "like" almost anyone else's dynamic. I have to really pay attention and stay focused and centered if I am going to stay out of the trap of comparing myself to all the other "kids." That way is a path that I cannot afford to walk. Furthermore, I understand full well, that for me to compare my way to others is not just damaging to my emotional well-being; it doesn't serve others in any positive way either. So I read, and then I move on. And I feel lonely. Mostly.


So.


I'll keep writing. Because He was right. I need to put these words out here. For myself, and for Him. To keep from getting myself all tangled up in the knots. Forgive my quiet times; the days when the words don't flow. Forgive me the lack of comment chatter from place to place. I read here and there. I follow many places. I just can't see myself as a preacher, or porn star, or guru, or poet.


I'm here. I'm His. Always and all ways.


swan