You Know You WANT It

One of our most recent anonymous critters (the one from Des Moines, Iowa rather than the one from Plano, Texas), wrote this little gem in response to A Hidden Slave's objection to their anonymously nasty input:

If a blog owner sets their settings to accept anonymous comments, then they WANT them

Most of us who write blogs like this one have encountered the occasional anonymous stalker-ish hanger-on who just seems determined to show up day after day to spew garbage all over our comment pages.  I know that we've gone through various permutations of thinking about what to do about the whole phenomenon.  Most recently, we've opted for a "policy" of neglect.  In general, it just feels like battling to keep them out  of here is more trouble than it is worth.

But, WANT these kinds of comments?  Hardly.  We want comments.  I want comments.  It is way better to have feedback and reaction and response to what I write here; much better to know what readers think about what I think -- and so I do WANT comments.  I don't even mind "anonymous" comments that are civilized. You don't have to agree with me, but I am one who expects adults to mind their manners.  Silly I know.  In the end, because I appreciate the input of a lot of decent, intelligent, anonymous contributors, I continue to allow anonymous commenters.  So, to the arrogant bully who declares that we WANT their participation here, I am sorry to disappoint, but you are allowed to be here.  Nothing more.  

Let me be clear.  The anonymous commenter that annoys is the one that is ugly while hiding behind their anonymity.   Those cowards find it easy to say anything to anyone since they don't have to be accountable for their words.  They can snipe at someone elses life, history, background, intent, integrity, intelligence, or character with impunity -- after all no one is going to be able to call their invisible life into question.  They contribute nothing and offer nothing.  You can't engage an unknown and unknowable puff of smoke.  Cowardice indeed.

It is a rare anonymous creep that doesn't insist that they have some sort of right to say whatever they want because, after all, those of us who write blogs like this put our lives out in public.  We do.  By that weird logic, anyone should be able to do anything they want in any place that is public, right?  Doesn't it make you wonder if nasty anonymous commenters are the same cretins who drop trash all over the public space, engage in lewd and profane speech in the line at the grocery, spit on the sidewalk, talk on their cell phone in the middle of a concert or a movie, and on and on and on.  Why not?  After all, its a public place, so there are no limits or boundaries or expectations for polite or considerate behavior -- yeah.

The anony-mice are the internet equivalent to the playground bully.  They swagger and bluster and spread misery everywhere -- all of it  born of their own misery and emptiness.  Bullies seem to have a lot of power, but it is really power that is granted to them by the rest of us.  We can act, as a community, to disempower the bullies; to call them to account for their nonsense; to refuse to be pushed around by them -- and to refuse to allow others to be pushed around.

Of course, as demonstrated in this last exchange, sometimes anonymous commenters can be entertaining.  When they get their toes stepped on, and when their ox gets gored, then they get all puffed up and huffy and bent out of shape.  Then they are quick to point the finger at those who are not, in their opinion, behaving nicely.  Whine!!!!!

I don't know what the rest of us ought to finally, or ultimately do about the bully types, those arrogant cowards who insist that they get to do whatever they want because, after all, we really WANT it.  I just know that, for now, it works for us to not invest much energy in them, except where and as it suits us to do that.  After all, this is OUR place.

swan

“I WISH” Sequel II, A Response To the Always Evocative Anonymous

In response to my last post I heard back from one of the ubiquitous anonymy as follows:

It's too bad you created a situation in your life where you are forced to participate in a program so contrary to your nature. It gives rise to your bitterness and cynicism, which were rampant before your arrest and "recovery". Sustained negative emotions make it harder to avoid drinking (or any other addictive behavor).

AA and its offshoots have helped millions of addicts find peace and sobriety. That being said, I understand that it doesn't work for everyone, for various reasons. I thought the adaptations of the steps as written by the agnostic group were beautiful and don't see why the concept should be controversial.

I am wondering what you intend to do after this next year to maintain your sobriety. I think it's difficult to impossible to do it alone. Have you considered starting your own group? It could incorporate parts of AA or be completely different. If you are committed to remaining sober you will need a plan for accomplishing that.

Anonymous, it is always good you are out there for me. You (and likely others who share your self-identification cowardice) have evoked, or provoked, so much here that has been growth inducing and worthwhile. I would have agreed with you that I was responsible for creating this situation in my/our life but I have been re-educated by my rehabilitation program and by AA to know that is wrong-headed "stinkin' thinkin'" to quote a frequently cited AA/rehabilitation euphemism. You see, I am afflicted with a terrible disease called alcoholism and cannot help myself, and besides you see, the majority of the disease has nothing to do with drinking. I am powerless. The only hope I have is to turn my life over to god ("may I find Him now".....I am required to always say that as a good rehab client.). If I fail to find god, my situation is totally hopeless. Even if I never drink again, the disease of addiction can never be cured. In fact, whether I drink again is irrelevant. "The disease is alcoholism and drinking is only a symptom," is what we are taught to recite over and over. I likely will relapse repeatedly, as part of my entirely predictable disease process, and will likely have to go back through treatment 3 or 4 more times (at $8000.00 to $10,000.00 each time through, unless inpatient treatment is required, then likely it will be more like $50,000.00 each time). There is nothing I can be responsible to do to prevent that. It is inevitable. I AM responsible now, though, to find god and turn my life over to him. Unless I do that I have no hope of sobriety anyway. If I do find god, and go to AA, and provide employment for dozens of rehab. professionals, and court fees, jail fees, and returns on capital investment for treatment center investors (I am buying some of that stock after all this.....it is a gold mine), and of course attorney fees (so far mine are like $8000.00), and then if I go to weekly meetings reciting the Big Book and encouraging others to hold up this end of the economy, I TOO CAN BE ONE OF THE "MILLIONS SAVED BY AA" all praise to my higher power(s) as I know him (never her).

It interests me that I managed on my own, with the help of our T, to quit smoking. I had a terrible nicotine addiction. I smoked two to three packs a day. I had difficulty going twenty waking minutes without a cigarette. All behavior cued me to smoke because I smoked continuously while I did everything. I was hugely addicted. When I even cut back I had huge withdrawal symptoms and terrific cravings……cravings so severe that they affected me both emotionally and physically. This is not surprising. The clinical literature indicates that nicotine is our most highly addictive substance. Its withdrawal is worse than alcohol, heroin, and cocaine withdrawal....all the other addictive substances. Hell, they have documented cases of prisoners whose nicotine habit was so extreme that they starved to death while incarcerated trading their food away to get tobacco. They so valued their tobacco that they quit eating to the point of death to satisfy their habit.

There are no twelve step nicotine addiction programs. There are no nicotine addiction treatment centers. There are not tens of thousands of smokers’ anonymous meetings all over our communities meeting at all hours of every day and night... There are no certified nicotine rehabilitation counselors to help you learn that your nicotine addiction is a disease over which you are powerless, and that you must find god to permit you to find a way to live with it one day at a time. But then there is no legal, and rehabilitation, and health care industry to flourish helping poor helpless powerless smokers, to find a way to get through their lives 24 hours by 24 hours, one day at a time and throwing off hundreds of billions of dollars annually. The interesting thing is that most of my peers in the rehab. program, who have found god to get them past the alcohol/drug addictions they are powerless to deal with on their own, leave the rehab. program as often as possible to suck down cigarettes, as rapidly as they can, just as do most AA and NA (Narcotics Anonymous) members. In fact many of the alcohol and drug addiction rehabilitation counselors I have met, most of whom are addicts in recovery themselves, all smoke tremendously compulsively….despite their higher power’s control of their lives.

I bet before I die I will see marijuana legalized and nicotine prohibition, then we will have twelve step programs and huge religious programs so that god can reveal himself to and remove the horror of the disease of nicotine addiction from those poor powerless souls it has in its grasp. They will have to wake up each morning and pray to be delivered from smoking, and will cycle through jail periodically to renew their motivation to be in “recovery” when they relapse as their disease will inevitably cause them to do.

I haven’t smoked since January 2000. I don’t want to smoke…ever. It no longer even occurs to me. If god helped me do it he failed to reveal himself to me, or I was just oblivious (perhaps that is how I failed to notice my alcoholism withdrawal symptoms and am now not noticing my cravings to drink………..similar obliviousness). I don’t find I have to wake up each day and make a decision whether to smoke or not for the next 24 hours. In fact I don’t think of it at all. Yet nicotine is chemically and clinically a far more highly addictive and insidious a habituation than alcohol and the other drugs we tend to become addicted to. How is it our higher power missed this one I wonder?

Anonymous, yes, I am cynical and negative. I would have thought the result of my situation might have been that someone would suggest that I behaved badly, and need to find a way to correct this behavior, and go forward. That is the antithesis of alcohol rehabilitation and of alcoholics anonymous. You see, I have a disease. I am powerless. There is nothing I can do alone. I can only be saved by my finding God. Without Him, there is nothing I can do.

This would be ludicrous were it not such a huge and well developed travesty and waste.

I know that supposedly I will have to have a plan and a support group for what I will do after I finish my probation to keep me from drinking, since I am, you know, powerless without the help of god and a support group. Yes, I could form my own support group of other addicts to meet with and compound our powerlessness exponentially, so we can more effectively summon our higher power (I imagine the poor beleaguered higher power dude as busy as he is with everything, is awfully grateful that all of us powerless addicts are gathering in powerlessness groups and covens, to make his effort to save us more efficient). But I bet I won’t. If I feel some overwhelming need to drink that would be avoided by my attending a meeting of a whole group of devoutly powerless people discussing their powerlessness and how god has saved them, AA meetings are still all open and I know where they are. They are generally not terribly unpleasant and sometimes there is some really great humor there. I attended one last week with a woman who recounted her last ever drinking episode during which she went out to mow her lawn in nothing but her high heels, and her matching purse and hat, (this is a somewhat obese, not particularly attractive middle-aged woman) at 2:00 AM. It seems that she tried to convince the police the neighbors summoned (too bad she didn’t have an old fashioned rotary push mower she might have gotten away with it) that they shouldn’t arrest her in that her purse, hat and shoes all matched perfectly, but they just wouldn’t “get it” and leave her alone. In her case I have to say thank God and Praise Jesus that she has been saved……but I digress.

I could attend AA meetings anytime I choose, and there are good people there, and fellowship, and who knows I may just go to some occasionally just because……but my plan is to do what I found effective when I quit smoking. I didn’t smoke. I think what I will do this time is I will not drink………..just as I am now even without having done my step work, and without having had my powerlessness supplanted by God.

Tom

"I Wish" A Sequel By an AA Heretic

I've remained silent here for some while. Sue's previous post "I Wish" has been rattling around in my now almost five months sober brain and this only adds to my ongoing aspiration to, at times, think I'd like to write about all that has, and is, going on with me, but I never can seem to bring myself to do so. It is interesting as I type this, how good it feels to do so. Maybe I will now come to write more as a result of writing this post.

What an interesting series of exchanges Sue's "I Wish" elicited. Nothing brings polarization to the fore like being critical of a cult, and that is borne out here. Having been forced to live within AA now for five months, I feel much more qualified to confirm my perception that AA is in fact, a cult. Unlike other cults, it is not intended to control its members for exploitative ends. It truly is intended to do good for many people who are suffering with drug and alcohol addiction. It is not exploitative unless you are subject to a provider of the huge industry of U S. drug and alcohol rehabilitation services, or one of the thousands of "professionals" who provide treatment within that extremely lucrative system, which relies on, and feeds the cult in collusion with funding and mandates from our courts that everyone who has drug and alcohol involvement in any issue before a U. S. court, receive "treatment" which entails religious conversion. AA as a collective organization truly intends to help and save poor, worthless drunks and help them to experience a life of redemption.....a sort of spiritual do over. It is, as far as it collectively perceives itself, a benevolent and helpful network of souls all working to save others by having them delivered by god.

There is no surprise that the response of the AA hierarchy in Toronto to the formation of non-god based AA groups was to expel them as heretics (thank you, Selkie, for passing this onto us in the comments to "I Wish.") The folks who tried to establish secular non-God based 12 step AA clones in Toronto confirmed the truth essential to AA. AA is about god first and foremost. If you remove God, there is no AA. Every meeting begins with the serenity prayer and ends with the Lord's Prayer. It is not about recovery, or sobriety, or a healthful lifestyle, or healthy families and communities, or any of the many side effects that many of its cult members would cite as the rationale for AA’s value. AA is a religion, requiring huge adherence to participation in worship services, and continual recitation of prayers, maxims, parables, and dicta from its holy scripture, "The Big Book," which is memorized, ritually read and studied, complete with its “How It Works” substitute for the Nicene Creed, and its twelve steps and traditions (proxies for the Christian ten commandments and beatitudes) which begin each and every meeting everywhere AA meetings occur. And occur they do. There are over 10,000 of them about the U. S. with millions of adherents participating weekly most of whom are, or once were, required to be there to stay out of jail or prison.

I have been depressed about my participation in all this. I took all this seriously and allowed them a foothold in my head……..heck all three of us in this family did. I was scared. It kept me out of jail, and my continued ability to have them believe I am a new convert to the cult will continue to have me “free.” My family was scared of me, and for me, and wanted our love to be borne out to our family’s continuing to have a long, positive future. I have been depressed at buying into their dictum that I am nothing but a worthless drunk like all drunks, that my sobriety is not about me but is simply a miracle granted me by god, and that my intellect and analytical reasoning mind are not assets but liabilities, preventing me from wholly accepting the truth of god’s plan for me if I will only pray to him morning and night, and accept his plan for my life into my heart so that I may be saved despite my being captured by Satan in this evil disease.


But being free has nothing to do with spending several hours each week worshipping The Big Book and testifying that I am a grateful recovering worthless drunk, who is sober today because I have been saved by god from the demon of drink.

I have to pretend to buy this for 33 more weeks in my continuing care group after I recover from my surgery. I can’t participate for some weeks after my surgery, because as it was once explained to me by one of the treatment counselors, “They can’t have me in here (i. e., any aspect of the treatment program) while my brain is poisoned by drugs of any sort, and the pain medication I will be on after my total shoulder replacement qualify and will “poison my brain and prevent me from receiving the truth.” It astounded me as she presented this to me with a totally straight face………she who is supposed to be an educated mental health professional -- but these professionals are the priestesses and priests of the cult and believe this, or at the least support it without question or equivocation.

It is clear I cannot drink, nor will I again. It is clear the only way for me to get through the legal aspects of this is to pretend to become a staunch adherent of the cult for 9 months further after I recover from my surgery and I am determined to do so.

I do feel devalued and worthless as I go forward from here. As I listen to 12 steppers, some of whom commented on the previous post, they make it clear that the only hope I have for a future is adherence to AA’s dogma, discipline, and lifestyle, or jail. I find myself more convinced that, if those are my options, I will chose not to continue to live.

Tom

I Wish...

Master is in the midst of His court-ordered rehab and "recovery" program.  Each week, He attends a continuing care group -- phase two of the intensive outpatient rehabilitation program that meets on Tuesday mornings.  He is required, as a condition of that program to attend two AA meetings each week -- one on Thursday evening and one on Saturday afternoon.  In addition, He chooses to meet with His therapist on a weekly schedule.

He goes to continuing care and to AA, and He really does work to participate fully and consciously in the goings on -- even though there remains a very great part of the whole business that is entirely contrary to His belief system and His intellectual understanding of the world and universe.  He has learned that He does not need to try to battle with others about their acceptance of all that AA religiosity and cliched mumbo jumbo, but He often feels oppressed and beleaguered by the pervasive "god" based responses He gets to whatever He expresses.  If He struggles, if He is sad or depressed, if He is confused or frustrated, if He is scared -- the forever and only answer seems to be to "pray and turn it all over to god."  He comes home from meetings and from group feeling worse than He was when He left home; and they make it clear to Him that His feeling that way is His fault because, in their view, He isn't "doing it right."

I want to be supportive and I want to help Him through these days and weeks and months, and I am frustrated that the resources which we are required to use to navigate all of this are so completely unresponsive to the FACT that their view of life doesn't work for Him, or for us.   He comes home and He seems so sad and so wounded and so hurt by it all, and I just want to grab them all and shake them.

Tonight, as I lay in bed with Him snuggled in beside me, reviewing the last couple of weeks and all of the times He's been disappointed and rejected by groups that are supposed to be "helping" Him, I found myself formulating a vision of what I wish could happen the very next time someone lays that "pray and turn it all over to god" voodoo on Him.  I wish it could all go something like this...

AA groupie -- All you have to do, for whatever obstacle or worry or pain you are experiencing, is pray everyday and turn it all over to god.

Master -- I don't pray.

AA groupie -- GASP!  What?!?!?  How can you say you don't pray?

Master -- I don't pray because I don't believe in your god.

AA groupie -- but you have to turn your life over to your higher power.

Master -- My higher power is the Great Blue Heron totem and the spirits of the Mohican people from whom I am descended at the very root of my being.  I have learned who I am, and I intend to learn to follow their ways.

AA groupie -- How can they help you learn to be a good old drunk?  How will they help you when you relapse?  I think you are just fooling yourself into believing you are something better than the rest of us -- but you will regret that thinking.  You are nothing but a drunk and that is all you will ever be.

Master -- No.  I am not a drunk.  I am sober.  I have chosen to be sober, and I intend to remain sober.  I am not a drunk.  I am a man, and I am in full possession of my faculties.  I am healthy and strong and good.  I made mistakes, but I have learned and I will live my life in keeping with the strength and majesty and wonder and beauty of the Native spirits who speak to me across the centuries and the powerful totem of the Great Blue Heron.  I do not begrudge any one of you the path that you have chosen, and I wish you well, but I will follow my path to my own life and the reclamation of my sanity and my power. 

I doubt that conversation will happen that way.  It probably isn't prudent for Him to do that with these narrow minded and sometimes vindictive and nasty folks.  He is in a position where He has to play their game for the next number of months.  Still, I wish I could hand Him that script -- or one very like it -- that would give Him back His voice and His vision and His life.  The words they are teaching Him are destructive and untrue.  I want to give Him back His best and truest self.  Sadly, I am only one woman.  Sadly, I am labeled as a "normal" by those AA groupies.  I don't talk the talk and I won't walk the walk, and they would declare that I am a codependent mess.  I've worked really hard to see the world the way they see it; to translate their weird religion into something I can use.  It doesn't work, and it is destroying the Man I  love and serve.  I am done.  I will tell Him the story that I believe from now on, and I will not echo their nonsense any longer.  If that is wrong in His view, then perhaps He will tell me that.  Until that happens, my voice will be heard around here.

swan

Shoulder Replacement

We are getting closer to His scheduled shoulder replacement surgery -- scheduled for Friday, June 17.  The needed medical sign-offs are beginning to be completed -- today we got the cardiologist to confirm that there is no evidence of a heart attack, and so we are good to go from that end of things.  Tomorrow, He has an appointment with the primary care doctor, and hopefully hopefully that one (the doctor who will be replaced as soon as we get through all of this business) will now be satisfied and just sign the necessary release. 

T has approval for time off from work, so she and I will both be able to be around for the day of the surgery and for the week following.  If all goes well, it is possible that He'll only spend one night in the hospital.  The recovery and rehab from this surgery is lengthy -- 3-4 weeks of total immobilization and then months and months of physical therapy to help Him regain as much use of the arm as possible. 

The surgeon is very clear that the reasons for doing this reverse total replacement of the shoulder joint is ALL about relieving His pain.  He is very careful to delimit the expectations we might be harboring around the actual use of the arm.  So that will take some time to get clear.  He never was into rock climbing, and He's not a golfer.  The big question for us (which we have not actually asked the surgeon), is "how long will it be before He can swing a flogger?"  Probably six months or more, but maybe someday...

However that all goes, for right now we are focused on getting prepared for the actual day of the shoulder replacement.  Wish us luck.

swan

Cherry Blossoms?

I've never really been crazy about tattoos. 
My kids both have "ink," and I always tried to remain neutral about their choices in that realm -- but the truth is that I always thought they were just perfect exactly the way they came into the world.  I never thought that the tattoos improved their looks one bit. 

So.  It was a surprise to me when, in response to a post that kaya made about searching for a suitable tattoo a little while back, that I got caught by my very own intense tattoo frenzy.  Me.  Wanting.  This tattoo (or one very like it):

I somehow cannot get that lovely piece of bodyart out of my head.  Probably an old lady fantasy.  But wow.  Just wow!

swan

M/s and the Dangers of Ego

Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent. ~Sigmund Freud~

Morningstar reminded me of a piece that has floated around the BDSM-oriented parts of the Internet for years and years.  Written by a fellow who goes by the name of Jonathan Kay, the 128 Basic Slave Rules would be laughable except that I imagine they are taken seriously by a fair number of people as they try to figure out how to live this lifestyle and actualize their own inner drives and erotic needs.  To be fair, Kay doesn't prescribe his rules for anyone, nor does he suggest that anyone try to follow all 128 rules.  Still, I'd think a person would be hard pressed to find a dozen that don't presume that the Master will be viewed as "god-like" by the slave who devolves to object through the training the rules suggest.  I'm really not interested in pointing out all the "Oh, please!  You have got to be kidding" elements of the 128 rules.  I am, instead, thinking about the risks (for both partners) inherent in the perspective represented there, and yes, I DO think I have a bit of hard earned wisdom to share.

The "rules" are meant to teach women who would identify as slaves to define themselves and learn their place and role within a BDSM Master/slave relationship.  If one assumes that partners, entering into something as intense as an M/s relationship, are mature, self-aware, competent, loving, responsible, sane, intelligent people (and I understand that may be a bit of a stretch) -- then it is reasonable to believe that they have a lot to offer to each other and to the relationship between them.  Ideally, they know one another well, and have spent time learning about things outside of the sexual and erotic realms encompassed by scenes within the context of BDSM.  Both partners would, presumably, take the time to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, character, temperament, reliability, integrity, and trustworthiness of their opposite number. 

That, of course, would be what happens in a perfect world -- but we humans are notorious for our ability to walk right into a potentially "perfect" situation and turn it into a spectacularly fucked up mess.  Driven to some large degree by ego, we do the dumbest things.  We do.  One of the ways WE do that, inside of an intense power exchange relationship, is to make the mistake of forgetting that the players are human.  One may be given the capacity to decide and direct while the other takes on the obligation to accept, honor, and obey.  The humanity remains.  That agreed upon power imbalance does not, and should not, deify one and objectify the other.

The slave WANTS to be controlled; WANTS to feel owned; WANTS to experience the ecstatic state of total surrender; WANTS to live in continual and unceasing awe of her Master; WANTS to be recognized for the depth and breadth of slavish accomplishment.  It is ego.  Even as an otherwise and formerly strong, independent, capable, intelligent, sensible, wise woman gives up her freedom, loses her voice, ignores her best instincts and intuitions, and denies her capacity to think and perceive and judge -- it is her ego that is driving the apparent descent into nothingness.  A whole list of "shoulds" inform every decision, and she slowly (or maybe quickly) abandons all the skills, abilities, and talents that made her a good and valuable partner in the first place.  Incorporating all of those rules, or some other set of foolish rules, is dangerous precisely because it deprives the relationship of her fully functioning participation.  Bit by bit, and piece by piece, she stops contributing to the success of the shared relational endeavor and becomes a dead weight that must be carried along just like some kind of interesting piece of luggage.  Should the partnership encounter difficulties and challenges (and what relationship doesn't), she is, at best, handicapped in her ability to respond.  I know because I made those mistakes and fell into those traps.  I let my ego and my own wants seduce me into acquiescing to decisions and demands that nearly destroyed us all.  When it came down to it, for us, I had nearly lost the capacity to offer any sort of counter argument even as it became more and more clear that He was wounded, lost, frightened, and in need of something more than my poor efforts at some sort of idealized slavery.

On the other side of the power equation is the Master.  The Master/slave interaction is a duality.  It really does take two to dance this tango.  Whatever the inclination, in the absence of a Master, slavery is only an elaborate imagining.  In just the same way, the one who claims to be Master without one who would choose to serve, is a naked Emperor at the head of a parade that exists only in his own mind.  One who would assume the control of another person, who moves to own the choices and options and the very life of that person, steps out into territory where very few have the courage to venture.  For most of us, the act of making choices and decisions for our own lives is quite enough of a high wire act.  Taking on that responsibility for another is an enormous undertaking.  Within the context of the BDSM Master/slave dynamic, that choice is most often made within an elaborate social construct that requires the assertion of ultimate power, complete control, unwavering certainty, unshakable self-confidence, and a sort of god-like perfection that cannot ever sit easy on the shoulders of a fallible human.  It takes gigantic ego to even begin such a journey.  That is the fact, and there is nothing wrong with that.  Whatever great and grand things humans have accomplished throughout our long history, it is a good bet that somewhere in the mix is a powerful and healthy ego driving everything forward.  Without that sort of engine, nothing much gets done anywhere -- ever.  But even the strongest, most sure, most controlling and confident men have their weak places; their secret fears; questions for which they do not have the answers; private demons.  To whom do they look for clarification, the sometimes necessary gut check, the moderating second opinion?  If a Master makes a mistake, who can He trust to tell Him that He's gone down the wrong road?If Master insists that His way is ALWAYS the right way; if His every decision comes with the presumption that questions and challenges are unacceptable; then who will offer the sometimes necessary counter argument - or just a straightforward "no," when things go off the tracks?

I have never lived with a list of "rules."  I've never been asked to maintain formal protocols or rituals.  I speak as plainly with Him as I do with anyone else.  I sit on furniture, eat from plates, and wear the same kinds of clothes as any other woman of my age.  Those 128 rules have never been more than an interesting oddity from my perspective.  Still I lived with all of those unwritten and unspoken "shoulds:"
I should be quieter
I should be more trusting
I should be more respectful
I should be more graceful
I should be more obedient
I should be less angry
I should be less jealous
I should be more focused
I should work harder


On and on and on.  Not rules but expectations created by us but also impressed upon us and upon me by the social milieu of our Internet blogging pecking order.  Today marks the date when, nine years ago, I got in my car, turned my back on the life I'd had, and headed east to begin this life.  I can look back at good times and bad times; at hopes and dreams turned into life lived in love; at fears and sorrows and faults and failings -- and I know there have been mistakes and miscues along the way.  It hasn't been all one thing or the other.  Life never is.  I am glad I came.  I am glad I'm here.  I'm glad for what we have, and for who we've come to be.  I wish we'd managed to avoid some of the pain and heartbreak and struggle, but I wouldn't trade the good days and nights for the chance to do that. 

In the end, I guess I've rambled on and on to get to the point of saying that I believe that, even when the dynamic runs on a non-traditional power exchange, partners owe each other the best they have to give.  When we create rules and structures that prevent the full giving of the gifts of the Master or the slave, we hamstring them both in the service of their relationship.  Life is too tough and too unpredictable to tackle it with our hands tied.  In the view of this one, old lady, no one should ever agree to do that.

swan