Confidence

My ass hurts. I've got welts and bruises. Yesterday, I got myself whipped and I'm not even sure what all else... I cried and begged and screamed and promised anything to try and stop it. And then I got another dose of the rubber flogger this morning. I'm happier than I've been in awhile. Life is good.

Confidence is important. To go into a space where there is the certainty of personal vulnerability and pain and humiliation and risk requires an internal sense of sure anchoring that keeps the moorings solid. If that confidence is lost, the foundation crumbles and there is nothing left to stand on in the face of the storms that buffet the psyche during a "scene."

Actually, for the masochistic, "bottom" partner in a scene, which is my perspective and role, the issue is really self-confidence. It comes down to trusting myself; believing that I have what it takes to go through the challenges. Self-confidence gives a bit of fearlessness -- that underlying knowledge that, no matter what, I'm sturdy enough and brave enough to get to the other side and do what He needs me to do and take what He asks me to take.

Self-confidence is built out of a whole lot of pieces. Part of it comes from experience; from understanding who I really am -- from observing myself and my own reactions and knowing that I have the strengths and skills that this requires. Some of it is made up of accumulated "successes." Everytime someone like me goes through an intense scene and comes out the other side feeling like it went well, that adds to the confidence that I am somehow "valid." A very real component of my self-confidence comes from the signals I get from Him. When He believes in me, I can trust my own perceptions -- and when it seems that He doubts my solidity or my committment, then I begin to doubt it all myself.

I am not sure how it all looks or feels from His perspective, but I imagine that it is rather more difficult in some ways because He really does love and care for me. If He could simply hurt me, as He might desire, without any particular investment in my physical or emotional well-being, things would be pretty straight forward: do the sadistic thing and damn the consequences. However, there is that love connection we share. It causes Him to evaluate and moderate His actions with my needs in mind.

In the last stretch that has sometimes meant that He opts to go easy on me when He judges that I am struggling at the very edge of my tolerance or endurance. He holds back, and our play gets scaled down in terms of frequency and intensity. That gives my butt a break, but it sets off a whole cascade of other things.

I try to hang on and understand the motivation behind His gentleness, and I can do that for awhile. After awhile, though, I start to question what's going on with Him and with us. I begin to wonder why He doesn't want to play with me anymore. I begin to need Him to just take me to the place where I may not be brave enough to go by myself -- tie me up, if need be, but get me through it. As it goes on, I can turn what is meant to be caring into a negative judgement, and it isn't a very long step until it is a judgement that I come to agree with: "Why would He want to play with me? I'm just not worth the trouble; I'm too wimpy and too boring to be worth the bother." None of that is coming from Him -- I'm making it up in my own head, but once I get on that wheel, getting off of it is next to impossible and I'm on the way to my own private brand of craziness.

So, yesterday, when I signed us up for an upcoming BDSM event involving a couple of nights of public play parties, the damn burst. All of my fears and imaginings were suddenly put right up against the reality of having to play in public and I just KNEW that I was in no way able to measure up.

Suddenly, standing (all ruffled up and wild eyed) in the kitchen, I found myself saying to Him, "we need to find You someone to take into the Dungeon at COPE." Imagine a critter that looked sort of like this:

Yup. Totally freaked out and scared witless. Spitting and hissing and trying to put some sort of "face" on it all. Because I'm not allowed to run and hide.

I know, inside me someplace, that when it gets to this point that what I need is to be beaten. Soundly. Repeatedly. Regularly. But it scares me. I'm not THAT KIND of masochist. I'm the kind of masochist who needs it; craves it; has to have it -- and hates it; fights it; struggles with it terribly. That makes me a particular problem I guess for the sadistic half of this relationship.

But. He knows. He diagnoses really well. He understands that spitting and hissing is a fear thing and that my paralysis around that means that I need His active control to overcome. So... all the restraints were put firmly in place and over my early protests that "I didn't want to do this," He went after me with a level of intensity that I haven't experienced for a good long while. He extracted from me the litany of declarations about whose I am and for how long and how -- over and over. He elicited my cries and my shrieks and my promises. I bled for Him and He went right on. Until He was done and I was calmer and finally steady and sure again.

Until the confidence was back for us both.

swan