School Starts

Tomorrow marks the beginning of this 2014-2015 school year.  I think that I am ready to go...

I have new school clothes and new school shoes.  The room is all clean and neat and organized (the ONLY time this year that it will be any of those things).  I have lesson plans and science labs all set and ready to go.

All that remains is to add kids.  They bring the whole business to life, create the questions, find the solutions, seek out the new ideas and share what they find.  In some ways, the work I do is about setting all of that in motion, and then trying to stay out of their way.  What I give them is the space and time to work and figure out what is out there waiting for them to find it.  I provide the assurance that they CAN do that, I encourage their efforts and cheer their attempts.  I help them mop up after failures, and I sit with them as they plan new ways of tackling problems that challenge them.  It is a mad, messy, chaotic, up and down endeavor, and I love it all.

I am in the remaining hours before we all come together to start a new year.  It is, for me, always a time of nervous, anxious, worried "what if-ing."  As long as I have done this work, I never seem to approach a new year without worrying about the beginning.  So, now I just need the kids to arrive.  I need us to start.  I need us to meet and smile and shake hands and turn together to walk into the new year together.

I just hate the waiting!

New...

This day will take us forward from all that has gone before to all that is yet to be. 

We've been shaken and battered.  We are feeling lost and worn and more than a bit tentative.  We are also excited to be back together, more aware than at anytime in recent months of the wonder and gift of our love for one another.  I don't think that any of us has a clear sense of the road ahead, and so we must begin to walk this new path without a definite view of the eventual destination. 

We cannot rewrite the story, because we cannot go back to the beginning.  The beginning of all that has been is lost in the very far distant past.  Our story, to this moment, is precisely what it is -- for good or bad.  What we can do is begin today, to make a different ending to our story...  And so today is a day that is new, and we begin from right here.

swan

First Words

To begin here seems daunting.  I feel driven to write some of what I am thinking and feeling, but want this to be a place where I can grow and learn.  I do not intend to rehash the past in this place.  In fact, my initial impulse was to import selected material from my previous blogs and use that as a beginning in this place -- but doing that felt false to me.  The past is what it is -- was.  The future remains unknown.  I am only alive in this now, and I want to capture the truth of that as best as I am able.

There will probably be very little that is kinky in what I write here, so should some who knew me from before follow me here, this place may disappoint.  My intent is to allow for introspection and self-examination, and personal healing and learning.  The last 9 years or so have been interesting and rewarding and fulfilling.  Perhaps, going forward into the future (which I hope to leave open), that life may pick up again and move forward in some fashion.  For now, it is not what is happening. 

For the first time ever, as an adult, I am considering a life that may be solitary.  I remain, as of now, in my place within the polyamorous family that has been part of my reality for these last 8-1/2 years, but I do not know if we will survive the current challenges -- and still be all together.

I've never lived alone.  Ever.  I moved from my parents' home to my college dormitory and then apartment -- and there were always roommates.  Then I married, at the age of 19, and began a 27 year long marriage filled with a husband and my children.  Before my marriage officially ended, I was already here, living in THIS family, as different as could be from the mainstream that others know -- poly and BDSM mingled to create a life with relatively few choices to make, and very little in the way of outside relationships.  Beyond my work, my entire life has been wrapped up in this household and the needs and desires and wishes of the man I've called "Master."

I chose that life.  I chose to trust.  I chose to give the control into his hands.  I chose to love in this fashion.

The love remains.  For the rest -- that will perhaps become clear as we move forward.  I cannot be sure.

For all the years that I've been associated with the BDSM lifestyle, I've known about women who had power-based relationships that ended.  It most often has seemed that those endings feel traumatic and devastating.  Women report that they are paralyzed -- unable to move or decide or know what to do.  That does not feel like what I am experiencing.  I feel sadness at the turn of events, and I feel a longing for what was -- for what is gone.  But I am not devastated. 

So.  I am Sue.  Exploring what I think; what I feel; what I want -- and considering the possibilities for whatever comes next.

Sue