Grumpy

When the school year winds to a close, I get wrapped up in a lot of emotionally intense "stuff." Most of it I don't really pay attention to. I've taught for so many years, that it is simply the rhythm of my year -- this gathering in the new ones, learning their ways and personalities, coming to love them and care for them and nurture them and invest in their success, only to let them go again in the spring and send them on their way to their futures. I've done it over and over and over, and it always catches me off guard. Because the letting go always comes at me when I am most tired, most drained, most ready to have the work be done, I am never ready for the sea of emotions that I find myself swimming in as the last day comes sweeping down on me. It always leaves me surprised and fragile.

Add to that mix, a few other oddball life stressors, and I can get wobbly. Last weekend was a perfect example.

It was a long weekend because of the holiday. That should have added in some element of ease and relaxation.

But I had a HUGE special project/event with my kids on Friday. We'd been weeks preparing for it and the logistics of pulling it off had left me strung out and stressed. When it was over with, I was wiped out.

I'd been trying to handle more of the household routines because of T's post surgical recovery status. We tend to forget how much we work in tandem around here until one or the other of us is "out of commission." The work load gets way heavier under those circumstances, and by the weekend, I was really missing my sister-heart.

There was the graduation event for Master's youngest on Sunday afternoon. It is the sort of "family" thing that puts me into a situation where I am there but necessarily apart. We managed to navigate the huge crowd with both T and grandpa being less than fully "mobile," and we didn't lose either one of them in the process. We got the boychick officially graduated. TAH DAH!

And, we played everyday. When my nerves are jangled and my emotions are running high, I struggle to convert and eroticize painful stimuli. It all ends up tapping right in to all my emotional turmoil. By Monday morning, He was full into His sadistic glory, flirting with the possibilities of switching me, and playing one of His favorite games of presenting me with impossible choices in the midst of a session. Having made the first choice between the rubber strap and a paddle, He then turned it right back into another choice of "which paddle?" The damn burst and I came completely apart -- backing out of the original call for the paddle and opting for the rubber strap if it would mean I didn't have to make any more choices... Anything. Anything. Please. It was simply more than I could sort out anymore.

When I calmed some, He paddled me, and we made love, and I was still just this side of hysterical. And angry. Furious about the game whose rules I cannot ever decipher; about being pushed to the edge and then another edge and then pulled to the edge yet again -- all for no good reason except that He can. Knowing that it is what I committed to and agreed to and chose, and angry just the same.

It is the dark side of slavery. The part that is hard to talk about. The times when it isn't fun, pretty, sexy, easy. The kind of space where I come up hurting, angry and hating Him and hating the life. And doing it anyway. Because I know it is really all good and true and what I am and need and believe in.

I do wish the days this week were easier, lighter, less demanding -- so that we could find our way back to something better than how we left things on the weekend. I wish we could come together in a better space. It is doubly hard when life keeps us running in spaces where things have been so tenuous.

swan