What Does a Girl Have to Do?

Have I mentioned, or have you noticed?

• I am crazy in love with Himself...
• I am masochistic to my toes...
• I get off on a good spanking...
• I try, really hard, to behave myself...
• Sometimes, I'm not entirely sure what "behaving myself" might really look like...
• I don't want to be a nuisance, a pest, a bother, a nag, or a chore...
• I tend to over think things...

Yup.  All true.  Add to all of that a bit of relational tentativeness; a bit of uncertainty, and things get, ummmmmmm... complicated.

We've been caught in a complicated backwash for the last few weeks.  He is through the first, acute phase of recovery from His knee replacement surgery.  The first three months are an intense period of physical therapy, and slowly decreasing dependence on pain medication.  There are good days and bad days, but no really "normal" days in the first three months.  The prosthetic is still foreign, strange, not "at home," and it takes time to learn how to rely on it comfortably.  And then, about 12 weeks out from the surgery, things start to settle and feel more normal.  It is easier to get through daily activities, and life begins to spin back into a reasonable routine again.

Remember that last summer He had a total reverse shoulder replacement.  We knew that He needed to have a fully functioning shoulder to be able to negotiate the mobility issues of the knee replacement -- using a walker and a cane for weeks and weeks...  That was the RIGHT shoulder -- his spanking arm.  The medical professionals were careful to tell us that it takes a full year to gain full use of the arm after a replacement.  As the shoulder rehabbed, there were stages regarding His ability to spank:

1. No right hand spanking at all -- left handed only
2. Some very limited spanking with His right hand, but nothing heavy, and not for very long before the shoulder would start to ache
3. Longer and longer periods of spanking with the right arm, but unable to "swing" anything like a flogger or a strap
4. Slowly, over weeks and months, regaining strength, flexibility, and range of motion

We had really just gotten back into some kind of revived and renewed spanking play when it was time for the knee replacement, and a summer dedicated to rehab and recovery.

There has been what you might call a spanking hiatus in our house -- a really, really, really looooooong spanking hiatus.

I'm a grown up, and I get that, in life, things have their place, and the sexy, fun, exciting stuff must sometimes be put away for a season, or two, or three...  A spanking "hunger" does not, after all, lead to starvation.

Now, though, we are through the first months of healing.  He is a week or two away from the end of physical therapy.  He is back to riding His bike and back to walking some.  He is feeling better and better, and I have been anticipating the resumption of THAT part of our lives together.

Oh, but, it isn't that simple.  From my perspective, it was way easier when He wanted to spank ALL of the time.  I never worried that, by asking for a spanking, I was imposing on Him; never felt that it was some kind of obligation or chore that I was laying on Him.  If anything, in those days, I most often worried about how to string together enough "non-spanking" days to heal up between sessions.  Here, lately though, I've wondered how to make it clear that I am ready and willing without creating a demand. Under those circumstances, my brain begins to play games with me.  The pretty steady internal question has been, "What does a girl have to do to get a spanking around here?"  I have begun to compile a mental list of behaviors that might lead to the spanking that I so desperately crave -- without tipping over into some hideous and awful "punishment" thing. Sigh.

Finally, this week, in an IM during the day, I just told Him that.  Exactly that:  That I'd been wondering what I needed to do to get spanked, and that I had a growing list of behaviors that I thought might work the trick. I can't remember exactly what His response was in the moment, but I do know this -- we've had a spanking weekend.  Good sessions both days, and I have a very, very ouchy backside to show for it.  Ain't love grand?

swan

The Tricky Part of Asking for Spankings

One of the most difficult hurdles that I navigated when I was still pretty new to all of this was finding the "courage" to ASK for a spanking when I needed or wanted one. In the early days, it was hard enough to come to terms with the word that described and defined who and what I was -- "masochist," nevermind the issue of finding my way to being active in implementing it by asking.

In time, I got over the "weirdness" of that, and learned to feel pretty comfortable asking.

As He and I connected and grew into our relationship, I moved from an eager and "ravenous" spankee to a place of experiencing significant cognitive dissonance with asking for spankings. Playing with Master meant that whatever I asked for was likely to be ratcheted up to levels I never envisioned. So while the "hunger" remained, I began to temper my requests out of fear and anxiety about what I knew I'd be unable to control or back away from. Asking grew harder to do, and I began to find that I only "asked" as I would become "desperate" in my needs.

Then I passed through the very difficult transition of these last couple of years. It has been a time when I literally did not know (most of the time) what my needs or wants really were. I spent many, many, many months feeling like I was living in a body to which I had no reliable connection, and with which I was completely unfamiliar. I became very unsure as I learned that I couldn't trust my physical or emotional responses. My orientation to pain, through all of that, shifted crazily up and down and all over the place. Mostly, though, I fought to stay "in the game."

As I've healed and recovered, I've begun to regain some of what seemed lost. I find myself wanting and needing the connection that He and I only achieve through spanking -- much more than I have for a long while. So, I've begun to ask again now and then.

Except it is a complicated emotional and intellectual wrangle for me. I get caught in the "slave" thing -- or what I think of as a "slave thing." Here's how it works:

In order to ask for a spanking, I have to first identify that I need a spanking. It isn't as easy as it sounds -- I still have some level of ambivalence about pain these days, and I still have to consciously pay attention to my sexual/physical responses -- they are usually very subtle. What I once experienced as enormous and earth-shattering, now, most often, feels very soft and quiet -- like lovely music playing somewhere just at the edge of perceptibility.

Then, I have to work my way through an evaluation of whether it is "OK" to ask Him for a spanking. I tend to go through all sorts of mental gyrations with this part: "What if He really doesn't want to spank me? What if, because I ask it, He ends up feeling obligated? What if He'd really rather be spanking someone who is younger, easier, less complicated, BETTER at all of this? What if -- What if -- What if?" In my mind, I wrestle with not "topping from the bottom." I know He loves me, and I worry that He might agree to spank me, even if He doesn't want to. That would stand everything about our dynamic on its head, and I don't want to do that. I'm never sure if I'll be able to TELL (if I ask) whether He wants to play with me, or is only doing it out of love and a sense of some kind of obligation. It is the dilemma of "telling Him everything," and then figuring out if He really NEEDS all of the odds and ends of my longings and fears.

But... I most often come to the point of being soooooo starved for His touch and His control, that I give it over and tell Him the truth. So, it was that I sent Him an email on Thursday morning:

I love you. I am wishing I could just be home with you. I miss you and feel like it has been too long since I was able to just let things go and settle into being with you. I need spanked and I need to be loved and I just want you.

He replied that He, too, had been longing and wishing for these things with me, but that we had both been so tired lately, that He hadn't "gone there." Perhaps, tonight, He told me, we'd be able to "go there."

I traveled through the rest of my day, anticipating. I started with a migraine in the afternoon, but treated it aggressively in order to be "ready" for our afternoon/evening together. By the time He arrived home, after giving a presentation at the University in the small town to our north, He was unfortunately, tired and strung out and barely into relating much less anything else. He had eaten a late lunch at a Chinese restaurant and was really not hungry, although, since I was "starving," I did convince Him to eat some meat and vegetable fondue with me. And we cruised through the evening, while I did that thing in my head, where I convince myself that I had no right to ask in the first place, and certainly no right to expect an affirmative response. I'd about talked myself to the point of acceptance that there would be no spanking, when He decided on a late night spanking. Of course, by that time I wasn't in a very good "submissive" head space. I'm never good at sudden shifts in emotional direction.

So, Idid get my spanking, but it was out of the range of what I'd thought I'd needed. But, then, in the middle of the night (1:30 AM or so) I was suddenly outrageously horny. Put a well spanked masochist to bed and you just have to expect that sort of thing :-).

At any rate, He has declared that there will be daily spankings for the next week -- until I am not feeling underspanked anymore. That falls into my brain and causes me to begin "interpreting" His intent. I am such a problem child! Part of me wants to believe that He really does like to spank me still, and is glad to be getting back to that way of life for us. But then, the wicked, mischievious voice begins to whisper that He is really trying to create a reality that is so aversive that I won't ask again for a really long time. Oh good grief!

This is exactly why it is much, much better for me to turn over control to Him. I think about things too much. I analyze and worry and fret and interpret too much. I get all twisted up in knots. When the control is in His hands, I can fuss all I want --it won't change anything. I'll be taken along to the place where I come to some kind of peace again... with myself, with Him, and ultimately, with us.

swan