Some of What I've Learned Heading into 2013

I am actually feeling happy and excited heading into this new year.  Life feels nothing like it did even a month ago. I am happy.  We are happy.  We feel like we are united in a family...our family..... and we want our lives.  Most amazingly I feel like I want my life.  Sure I'd like us to have more money, or even greater health, or a variety of circumstances some superfluous and others more significant, but I can say, without reservation, I am glad for my life.  That is stunningly new for me.  It has been years since I could say this.  I feel like I have a number of realizations as I head into 2013. These are some that come to mind.

I was ill. I was actually physically..... medically ill.  My alcohol issues and the behavior problems they spawned were a result of my gastric bypass surgery.  My terrific depression was a result of a crucial substance in my brain that was deficient (L methylfolate) resulting from the same surgery.   Life is suddenly good again with the replacement of that substance and abstinence from drinking.  Those who told me that I was nothing but a dry drunk, or that I needed to have my character flaws and sins removed by some mythical higher power after weekly confessing alcoholism in religious cult meetings (i. e. AA), or that I had to accept I am powerless in my life, or a whole variety of other superstitious lies were wrong.  I am not a criminal and should never have been treated as one.  I needed and deserved treatment not punishment, public humiliation, and abuse.  Most importantly I was mistaken believing these people and incorporating their beliefs about myself in my self-concept.  Many of the people who did these things meant well.  Some needed to elevate their own feelings about themselves by feeling superior to me.  Whatever their motivation they were hurtful, and are not friends. The government and public officials who did this were, and are, evil.

I am not superhuman. Neither am I subhuman. There are worse people than I.  I try to do good things.  I used to do a huge amount of good things in the world.  In fact that was my career's mission.  Perhaps I can return to some of that in the year ahead.

There are many things I like, value, and/or believe.  A couple of weeks ago chatting with sue she and I brainstormed this list.  My therapist, Judy, had suggested I begin looking at my spirituality and this might be a starting point in that exploration.

• communication
• fine whips
• intimate sharing
• laughter
• tears
• pain
• joy
• breath
• altered consciousness
• dyslexia
• rain
• snow storms
• the road
• driving
• unique intense thought
• Coleridge
• Swinburne
• Dickinson
• Twain
• Elliot
• music
• writing
• Bob Dylan
• JamesTaylor
• trumpet solos
• hand bell music
• percussion.............tympanies
• fighting for good
• politics/intuition
• searching for answers to unanswerable questions
• rebellion
• creating change
• teaching
• seeing growth
• growing

There is nothing exhaustive about this list. But it is a beginning at delineating what matters to me.

Much of my energy has been derived from my eros. That has been, and is still, deeply ingrained in sadomasochism and particularly adult consensual spanking. This is somewhat different than before. I am to a much larger extent a switch. I don't appear much more submissive in my personality, but more inclined to experience that sensual erotic transaction from both ends of the power exchange continuum.

I am less in pursuit of NRE (i. e,. new relationship energy) than I was. There was a time not that long ago that I craved the rush of NRE. Then, I had had that so recently in my life with t and sue that I wanted more of it. It was not unlike an addict wanting to recreate the initial rush of a newly discovered opiate addiction. I don't need that anymore. I struggle to imagine why I would want to have a relationship with any others besides t and sue with whom I have such depth and history. What would we talk about.....do? We three have been through so much, have had such joy but too have put each other through such amazing suffering, anger, and despair yet through it all could not bare to be apart, or to lose the connection we all have together at a transcendent level. Thank god I have them both, still, in my life.

Similarly,I see fabulously beautiful young women and am not at all immune from projecting onto them my erotic fantasies, but also cannot imagine were we to relate, what in the hell would we talk about? What commonality in our history, experience, life passages, would we use as a basis for sharing who we are? What could they afford me that I don't already have in my two gloriously dynamic relationships?

Despite that, too, I do still find that I would like to share what I have learned in my practice of adult erotic power exchange driven SM. I spent much of my life fearing my own identity, feeling huge guilt at how "perverse" I believed my inner most needs were, ignorant of the techniques of adult sensual spanking and related arts., etc. I would like to share what I have learned with others, preferably with my two accompanying me.

Looking back over my life I am, and have always been, polyamorous. I find monogamy sad and ludicrous for me in my life. I respect everyone's choices for their lives, but for me attempting to only feel love once and forever seems so silly and narrow that it is hard to imagine how one would want to live so limitedly, and experience so little.

As I go into 2013 I feel like a Rip Van Winkle reawakening after years of sleep locked in a nightmare. Thank god I am alive!!!!!

All the best,

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.