Words, Words, Words

I knew, yesterday, that Tom was working on a post.  He told me that it was about the last year and where He feels the journey has brought Him to this point.  We didn't really talk much about the content -- more about His work (real labor) to try and get it done.  It wasn't easy for Him to write, and as the day went on, I could hear the strain in His words... His post is so raw.  When I read it last night, I found myself without words -- awash in roiling, swirling, tumultuous emotions.  We went off to bed without discussing it.  It is hard to read -- and I can understand the reactions that it evoked; just as I can understand the overwhelming silence emanating from nearly 800 people who read His words.

Today, He was at pains to assure me that He did not want to hurt me with the words He wrote... and I told Him I was fine.  I was not hurt by His words.  I've been hurt by the things we've been through in the last year -- we all have, and I am impatient for the hurting to come to an end, even as I know that we have still got a long road to travel before we are able to feel that we've healed from what has happened.

It is very likely that there will be more posts here in the coming months and years that will be difficult to read -- the stories that we've told to this point represent only a part of what has transpired.  The bits and pieces of what we each experienced are still becoming clear; we are still figuring out where each of our separate perceptions match up; we are still identifying the gaps in our shared experiences and knowledge.  We are only now beginning to be able to really hear each other; really feel for one another; really reach out and try to support and comfort each other -- and we are just beginning to reach the point where those overtures feel welcomed. 

As always, readers here are invited to look in on us; invited to share the struggles and triumphs; invited to spend a bit of time in conversation with us about the things that we are engaged in.  We're going to live this part of our lives, as we've done most of the last eight or so years, right here in public.  Reading what we come here to share will give a clear and unvarnished picture of our good days and bad days, our love and our struggle, our pain and our hope.  Those of our readers who sit comfortably with us as we flail and scrabble -- thank you.  Your calm and gentle presence is a balm to our weariness and fear.  Those who come and read and then go silently on, you are welcome here.  We will assume that your kind thoughts and good energies are holding us up as we work to heal.  And those who react with frustration, confusion, judgement, blame, anger... You will assume that you know what is and is not.  You will assume that you know what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong.  There's probably nothing that we will say that will convince you that you might not have it figured out... 

Tonight, I wanted to respond to the comments that were made on Master's post.  I am not going to defend or explain, but I want to try to cast things in a different light maybe: 

LynLass, you have been a good and steady companion to us for many, many years.  Along the way, you have often shared generously of your own experience and your professional expertise to try and guide us through thickets that might have snared us otherwise.  I well remember that you were a valuable resource to me in the days and months after my hysterectomy, helping me to understand the various factors that were contributing to my depression, and rage.  Thank you for that.  Too, I know that you are convinced that there is great value to the AA model for recovery from alcohol addiction.  We are locked into that model these days, and not by our own choice.  We are following the path defined by AA, but we are not finding it a good or helpful experience.  I do hope that we will, at least, make contact with a few good, sane people through AA, and perhaps those friendships will prove to be valuable going forward.  But I cannot imagine that AA is going to be a way of life for us once we don't HAVE TO do it anymore.  That is just the fact. 
Beyond that, your continued positive affirmation that there is a way through this, that health and healing are possible, that we may all find ourselves in a better place in time is more important to us than you can know.  I hope that you know that, while we may not implement all of the suggestions you make, we read what you write and give it real consideration.  Thank you.


morningstar, I think that I understand that your "what was the alternative" question is well meant, but it isn't helpful or germane.  What was done, back a year ago, was done.  As Master puts it, we were each "naive" in our own ways; we were each blind to the consequences we were bringing to bear; we were each and all wrapped in our misconceptions, our misunderstandings, our ego trips, our fears and frailties.  Looking back is about fixing blame, and I think we've finally found our way through the maze of blaming and bitterness.  More important, for us now, is the question of how we can change -- change ourselves and change our lives together so that all of us get more of what we want and need than we did before.  If we'd known more, known better, been better -- we might have made different choices and maybe avoided this crisis (maybe). 

And finally, Rhonda -- You judge that Master is a "selfish bastard."  I'd hazard a guess that there are very few BDSM Dominant types who wouldn't happily lay claim to the "bastard" label.  Most of them cultivate that quality -- and hone it to an art form.  Some of us find those "bastards" to be remarkably sexy and way more interesting than those "legitimate" and nice fellows that some prefer.  Different strokes for different folks... 
As for that selfish thing...  Our household; our family is dealing with addiction.  Addiction is selfish.  It moves always to maintain and sustain itself.  Addiction does not care about anyone or anything beyond the next fix, drink, or hot fudge sundae.  We believe that there is hope for us to recover from the effects of addiction and that is the work that we are doing right now.  Your observation simply highlights your inability to empathize with the struggle to overcome the impulses that drove Master to drink too much.  Perhaps that lack of empathy points to your superb impulse control.   Maybe you have never struggled to resist the urge to gamble, the urge to shop too much, the urge to overeat, the urge to spew nastiness across the cyber universe at total strangers who never did you any harm... 
 It is, in my opinion, easy to look casually at the story of our family over the last year and take sides -- easy to designate victims and victimizers, and think that tells the story.  It is also intellectually lazy.  We are a group of three complex humans.  We have long histories and unique personal stories to tell.  You, and all who read here, see bits and pieces, but cannot know the whole.  I'd think that, knowing that, one might be cautious about making judgements.

Master has declared the truth of how He feels about the potential for us to engage in M/s or D/s interactions at the present, and I think that is reflective of how He feels about what has happened to Him, but I also think it is grounded in how He perceives of power exchange within the BDSM context.  He is a spanko and a sadist.  For Him, almost all of the "real" practice of D/s or M/s is about the erotically charged realm of sadomasochism.  It is, literally, sex and violence.  When He does not feel sexy, He does not "feel  dominant." 

I experience it differently.  As Dominant and submissive, or Master and slave, we are really not "the same only different."  Even as He has gone into a quiet period regarding sadomasochistic play and "active" D/s or M/s, I still feel owned.  Absolutely.  The "fun" stuff has fallen off, but I am still operating to take care of Him, meet His needs, do the things that are part of my pattern of service.  I cannot help myself -- and He cannot help but expect those things to continue to  be done...  I still manage His medications, take care of the bills and finances, maintain the household files, keep things around here relatively neat and tidy, fix the meals, handle the laundry (with lots of help from T), maintain my career so that I may make a financial contribution to our household, keep myself readily available to meet His needs sexually, offer what I can of emotional support, act as His exercise buddy...  Somedays, I wish it weren't true, but there it is, and what is more, even when my inner brat is pouting and insisting that it isn't "fair," it remains immovably in place.  I can't change one jot of that routine -- and believe me, I've considered the possibilities. 

And here we are.  We've lost.  A lot.  We've recovered.  A bit.  We've got work ahead of us, and we're not always happy about what we're faced with.  We are taking the good with the bad.  Learning to live a new life with new rules and new goals.  It is all very new and still pretty fragile.  Watch carefully.  This should be a learning experience for us all.

swan

"Now" for me and the Question of My Dominance

It seems that our Blogging has become a chronicling of the progress of our (my) life as we proceed through this now almost year long chapter.

I have always found October to be the most evocative of months. I love fall and the transition it brings in weather, smells, colors, shorter days, return to school, football, and the soon to follow holidays. October has always boded what for me has seemed as a wonderful awakening, that I adored until now. I used to love fall on the campus during my ten years in and around college. Even after finally finishing my last graduate work, I used to take a day off in October and go spend a day on the campus to enjoy the atmosphere, the fond memories, and be with students who were living through their own college days.

In two weeks it will be the anniversary of a weekend sojourn we made last October to a state park lodge on Lake Erie. I was as happy then as I've been in recent years. We three spent the weekend being together, reveling in the nature offerings that the park preserves, visiting my old haunts from when I lived in Northwest Ohio, dining in favorite restaurants and just being happy. It was like life somehow said that I would be granted a "last-supper-like" delicious interlude so that I would have a contrast as my life descended into the nightmare it has been since.

We returned home. Sue posted about our glorious weekend. We resumed what was then a new routine for us, and particularly for me. My career had ended suddenly and sadly four months before. I was staying home alone weekdays since sue had returned to school from her summer break. T was of course at work in her career. I was passing my time on the Internet, doing household errands, exercising, chatting with sue on line, and yes, drinking (that seems now like it is some sort of horrendous confession........like saying I was murdering children or some horrific crime against humanity.)

The following Thursday Sue and I were chatting on IM while she had a few minutes break while at school. I made what I thought was a meaningless comment. It was the sort of passive aggressive remark lovers sometimes exchange when they are cross with each other. Sue decided it meant I was going to kill myself and called 9-1-1 thinking she was trying to save my life. What ensued was the beginning of a nightmare that has been life since. Sue was genuinely afraid, and swears that she had no idea that when one calls 9-1-1 it means you are summoning the police. From many conversations with her, she had no idea what calling 9-1-1 would set into motion, but she never imagined police, and what ensued. Apparently she thought somehow some sort of psychiatric crisis intervention was being summoned. I did know absolutely that 9-1-1 meant she had called the police with a complaint about me as being dangerous. I left the condo not wanting to be here when they came for me. We live in a very right wing, repressive, conservative Republican, devoutly fundamentalist Christian, suburban, strong hold. I feared police coming here and encountering BDSM paraphernalia might well have dire legal consequences for both she and I. At least t lived in a separate condo next door providing her a shield. I don't know which of us was more naive, Sue in not knowing that when you called 9-1-1 you were calling the police to intervene into a crisis (or that if it wasn't a crisis, police would certainly aggravate it into one), or me for thinking that if I was not here when they knocked on the door, they would just go away.
A half hour later I was in a nearby Wal Mart parking lot, under arrest in handcuffs. They interrogated me, harassed me emotionally and physically, and wanted to search my car, which I refused. When some additional police arrived as this melodrama played out, they told me that they had been patrolling our condominium complex searching for me with rifles and flak vests with shoot on sight orders, if they found me. They joked about how they had frightened several of the "old folks who live there while they were taking their morning walks." It was clear that they wanted to charge me and take me in, but I was 61 and had no previous police record. I didn't fit any profile they were used to seeing. Had I been black or Hispanic I would have been gone I am certain, but I was caucasian, educated, apparently middle class, had a nice car, etc. Eventually I was able to get them to see this as just another example of how women (or "bitches" as all women were generalized in that discussion) were guilty of always victimizing poor unsuspecting "guys" and bringing their life to grief. Amazingly, after we all grunted and scratched ourselves in masculine solidarity against the great feminist castration conspiracy, they took my cuffs off, told me I needed to end my relationship with sue, and let me go home relatively unscathed. So the last year's sojourn into criminal justice and alcohol rehabilitation began.

I was enraged. My adult life began in the anti-Viet Nam War movement, druggie, hippie, counter culture of the late sixties and early seventies. If there was any credo I lived by it was, and is more so today, that never, no matter what, do you call the police. You don't deal with the police. You avoid the police. You don't ever support the police. Police are evil, harmful, despicable, hired thugs. They never help, anyone or anything. If you have any sort of a bad situation one thing is certain. If you involve yourself with the police things will get immeasurably worse. It is a betrayal that you wouldn't even visit on your worst enemy to call the police on them. My slave, my great love had called them on me!!!!!!

I was enraged and felt crushed by the betrayal! I was devastated. That devastation on top of the losses of my parents and my career, and my body's dramatic changes and the two serious and medically difficult surgeries in 8 months that involved, and t's mother's horrible illness and disability and her imminent death all combined I quite frankly became insane.................and yes...............I drank! I drank to oblivion. My drinking, had become increasingly problematic. The gastric bypass surgery I had undergone changed entirely the way my body processed alcohol. It enhances the effects of alcohol immensely. No one seems to know for sure the exact extent of this, and there are likely individual differences in response, but there is some research that indicates it may intensify the intoxicating effects of alcohol to 6 to 8 times the effect on normal people. I did not know about this altered affect of alcohol. And I was drinking, drinking a lot now... I was absolutely not dealing with the pain I was in. T spent that next weekend..........Halloween, about 50 miles away at her Mother's taking care of her in the aftermath of her stroke. Sue and I joined her for dinner and trick or treat on Halloween. On the way back home I launched into another of my horrific enraged tirades against sue for calling the police. I was convinced they were going to come get me and take me away. The following day in a drunken enraged stupor I became threatening of sue and she and t, who had returned here from her mother's, joined her in a motel room feeling it was unsafe to be at home with me, called the police.

My memory is a blur. I recall coming to semi-consciousness in our living room. I'd been passed out on the couch. Five police surrounded me. I don't know what transpired. I was carried, handcuffed and screaming, to the police car. I was devastated and sure this was the end of my life. I still wish it had been. I was taken to my first ever experience in a jail. I was booked, and stripped and thrown naked with a weird quilt wrap like quasi-garment into the cell that would be my home for the next four days. The first two days I was in solitary. They later explained to me that I was not in solitary. I was on suicide watch, which meant I was locked down with no human contact 23 hours a day, and let out in the middle of the night to shower and exercise when there was no one else around but a guard. If I had been in solitary I would have been locked down 23 hours a day, and let out for just one hour in the middle of the night for shower and exercise. It was a discrimination without a difference. It was cold typically in the 50 degrees range. I was naked. I was not allowed to have anything on my feet. I was not allowed to have soap, towels, or even toilet paper. There were no blankets or bedding. My cell had a metal slab "bed" with a one inch thick pad that really provided no "padding," a sink, and a toilet. The lights in the ceiling stayed on 24 hours a day. There was no window you could see out of. There was no clock. The first morning I was arraigned. I was dressed in prison orange pajamas hauled in chains to court. I was allowed rubber thongs on my feet which were of little use. It had snowed. It was better than being barefoot but not much. I had little understanding of where I was or what was being done. In court I asked where I was, what I was charged with, who had charged me. The prosecutor made of this that I was dangerously violently mentally ill and a risk to the community. I had a defense attorney who was a public defender who stood at my side. We had never laid eyes on each other before and she said little or nothing other than telling me where to stand. My bail was set at $20,000.00. I was charged with inducing panic and domestic violence. I was taken back to jail in chains still of course, stripped naked again and put back in my cell.

After another day in solitary I was evaluated by a very elderly lady who was supposedly a mental health professional of some ilk. I am a mental health professional. What she did would not have constituted a mental health evaluation anywhere else. She pronounced me no longer a suicide risk. I was given the same orange pajamas I was dressed in for court, and I was now allowed soap, toilet paper, rubber sandals, a sheet and a blanket, and to spend non-lock down time in the day room and meals with other inmates................my first contact with others other than those I was chained to for transport to court that first morning. After four days I was released pending trial. Eventually, after $5000.00 to an attorney, I went to court the end December. I agreed to a plea bargain dropping the domestic violence charge, and pleading no contest to inducing panic. I was sentenced to 6 months but released in lieu of 6 months probation. The terms of the probation were misrepresented to me by my attorney, apparently due to his ignorance of the practices of this court. He'd never practiced in that court before but had been referred to us by teresa's work. They have an employee assistance program (EAP) which offers referrals to legal services and mental health services. They referred us to this attorney. Accessing him via the EAP we paid about three times what his service would have cost us, if we had simply contacted him directly. That was how we wound up with an attorney who was ignorant of the court we were being heard in. The same EAP did however refer me, and eventually all three of us into the care of a psycho-therapist who has proven wonderful.

I had not intended to write the great American novel here this morning. I had intended to further update where we are now, not describe our path here, but I seem to have unending finger twitching on my key pad. I will try to summarize the long story from then until now....at least for today. I did not do well after all this. I continued drinking. I raged. I was suicidal. I didn't want to live and prayed each day I would not face another. Finally I became suicidal and violent with sue and t in mid January and was taken to jail again. This time I was in eight days and charged with aggravated menacing and domestic violence. The same attorney did as marvelous a job this time, as he may have been somewhat lack luster the first time. I did not receive a violation of my probation despite this offense which is indeed miraculous, and I am sure due in large part to his skill. I plead guilty to domestic violence. The Aggravated Menacing Charge was dropped. I was required to do alcohol rehabilitation and thus to participate in AA, and subsequently to do a year of rehabilitation aftercare, and on-going psycho-therapy all at our expense of course.

We have all of us written here about our experience with AA and rehabilitation, which are interconnected. They are essentially intertwined programs of religious indoctrination. They have helped literally millions of people. If you are willing to, or the only way you are able to survive your addiction to alcohol, or whatever substance is to, shift your addiction to obsession with magic and religiosity, and the dogma of a cult, AA may serve a to provide you a lifeline. I am not orthodoxly Christian, nor will I be, particularly not upon the requirement of a court. If there were ever to be any thought or opportunity for that conversion to occur, this experience has ended that. I do have to pretend to have been converted fully however. If I fail to behave as if I have been gloriously converted to sobriety, by the grace of God, I will go to prison for a year. I have 26 weeks of my aftercare program yet to serve, before I will have completed the program. Aftercare monitors my twice weekly attendance in AA meetings (and writing reports on each one), and requires a weekly hour and a half long Aftercare group meeting to discuss how our higher power is keeping us sober. I am so far thankfully managing to successfully bluff my way through this. I receive accolades about my progress in my recovery.

Soon I will be awarded my nine month AA sobriety coin. I will receive numerous joyous congratulations and hugs. The grace of God will have saved yet another poor drunk. I will stay out of prison another week. sue and t will be glad I am not drinking. Life will be good.

This is a life I despise. It is daily continual coercion to achieve goals that are not mine, and never were. The only place where this life and my aspirations intersect is where I get to not go to prison for a year, and where I will no longer be required to play this game the end of January 2013. The only other intersection is that because of this my two, t and sue, remain with me and we keep our family in tact. That means there might be hope of some semblance of happiness again some day.

As all this progresses I feel better than I did at first. I no longer wish I had not awakened each morning, although I do still find most of my first morning thoughts involve my remembering that I am a criminal, and a drunk, and could well be in prison or jail by nightfall. I feel physically better not drinking of course, and I am doing well with my exercise and diet regimen.

T and sue seem generally OK. They are glad I don't drink any longer. On the other hand they wish they had "me" back. They have been told by the so-called treatment professionals I will be OK again..............someday

So the big thing lately is that I am supposed to recover my Dominance. If you read here, you have read that discussion. I am supposed to spend my life in an intensive program to never drink again, the goal of which, my sobriety, is the goal of my two submissives, the courts, the police, my probation officer, my rehabilitation professionals, everyone in AA, my fellow aftercare participants,..........................everyone, BUT ME. I am to spend a few hours every two days in meetings focused entirely on that topic, and particularly how I can, and will be, saved from alcohol by the grace of God, and only by that grace, in that it is the one, and only, way I can be saved, and joining in group prayers to that end. I must pretend and fake adherence and adoption of this farce, or they can, and will, put me in prison for a year. This active program will continue through next April. Beyond that I will still be on probation for nine months after that and be expected to at least continue with AA meetings throughout that period, and to never deviate from sobriety even once. If I fail, I go to prison...........a year. Beside that, if I have any contact with police, e. g., if I would get a traffic ticket, I would go to prison for a year.

NO I DO NOT FEEL DOMINANT! THIS IS NOT A LIFE I CHOOSE. I AM CONTINUOUSLY SUBJUGATED TO RUTHLESS RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION. THIS IS ALL AT THE INITIATION OF MY SUBMISSIVES TO WHOM I AM SUPPOSED TO BE FEELING THAT SOMEHOW I AM DOMINANT.!!!

That is how it is for me now. I am alive, and that feels like not much of a gift. I am out of jail and that is what I can manage for now. To achieve that, I am required to pretend I have accepted a religion I believe to be false and evil. Were this religion not evil, it would not be a party to this coercion and brain washing. I am not willing to go to prison for a year, to stand up and express my real feelings. I will complete my program and my AA until I am free again.

So it goes, day in and day out. To be Dominant I would lead a self-determined life. My current life, my "now" personifies of the antithesis of self-determination.

Tom

So, How's it Going?

You, Dear Reader, might wonder (if you wonder about us at all) how things might be going with "The Herons" in these early days since my unilateral declaration that I was resuming my place as His slave.  Is it really possible that it could be that simple -- just decide and it all snaps back into place?

The simple answer to that question is, as it turns out, not all that simple...

Yes.  For me, things are back in place, or perhaps more accurately, I feel as if I have snapped back into place.  Habits that were formed over years and years of service to Him, and anticipation of His wants, needs, and moods, and intense observation of His every response and reaction -- have all resurfaced.  My late snappishness and bitterness and hurt have mostly dissolved away.  I can feel myself quieting, waiting more gently, softening.  That feels good and right to me.

And no... the place I once occupied in His world is unalterably changed, so there is no real way to go back to that same place.  I think I will still have a place to be in His life.  I hope I do.  I just don't know, yet, what that place will be.

Lest my uncertainty be misunderstood, let me be clear... He and I are better, I think, than we have been.  It feels like there is healing happening -- real and tangible healing.  The anger and frustration that were the currency of our days for so many months are dissipating.  We are better... but not the same.  Not the same.

And so... I am back to the most basic of slave skills.  I wait.  As gently as I can manage.  Quiet -- or as quietly as I can manage.  I cannot claim to follow His lead if I insist that He lead at my speed and in the direction I would choose.  We will move along paths that He chooses at the pace that He sets.  I do not know where that path leads.  Knowing isn't part of my life anymore.

swan

Maybe It Depends on How You Look at It

In her comment to my last post,  morningstar said...

i will follow this (what shall I call it???) journey??? i don't know what to call it swan.. but i will be interested to see how it goes....
i have been trying to be submissive without a "leader" so to speak.... some days it is just damn frustrating.... 
i wish you luck  

I'm not at all sure if she meant that to say that I am "trying to be a slave without a Master," or if she was really only speaking to her own current situation.  I know I tend to do that in comments on a regular basis -- read someone's words about their life and their experience, and then speak to whatever that brings up for me about my own life and circumstances. 

 I know that the implication that I am somehow trying to do the submissive/slave side of the power dynamic without the accompanying Dominant/Master side caught me off guard.  I never wrote those words, and I'm surprised to find what I did say interpreted in that fashion.  So let me try to clarify --

What I discovered, Saturday morning, sitting in my therapist's office, was a truth about myself.  More accurately, I suppose, it was rediscovered... because I have known it for years.  I am, if it can be possible, happiest and most fulfilled when I live from the place of "slave" within my most intimate relationship.  It is what I wanted through nearly three decades of marriage, and it is what I chose when I came here to be with Tom some 9-1/2 years ago.  It is what I choose for myself today -- and for as long as I live.  For myself.

 The changes we've come through have rocked us to our foundations.  We've been lucky to survive.  We are, I hope, through the worst of it, but we are still in the early days of clearing the debris and laying the foundations for "new stuff" in our lives.  It is hard work -- exhausting both physically and emotionally.  We haven't yet come to a place where things are easy or simple or familiar.  Every move and every task and every undertaking seems daunting and oppressively complicated and difficult.  Every single success; every triumph; comes about because we've managed to successfully navigate the delicate business of working at it together with whatever tools, skills, and talents we can bring to the effort. 

I am not faced with trying to be "slave" in some vacuum where there is no dominant counterpart.  He is the One that I serve, and the only One that I want to serve.  He is learning His way into our new reality, even as I am, but He is still "Master" to me -- always and all ways.  That is far more about who and what I am than it is about Him.  I belong to Him; bound in heart and mind and body by threads that span our two lives with a strength that is more than steel.  The fact that, as I became fearful and hurt and angry and resentful, I pulled myself away from those anchor points does not change the truth of their existence.  It is only evidence of my own willful foolishness and blind panic.  

I needed to flail around in that place until I realized where I'd gone wrong.  I needed to correct my own course.  I needed to come back to my home and my center.  That has been my work and my healing in these months -- to come to understand that, and then to accept that it was within my power to choose to do it.  He couldn't "lead" me to this.  I would have battled with Him and fought Him -- just as a drowning swimmer may fight her rescuer.  Far better, I imagine, that He let me work through this on my own, and find my own way back to "us."  

I know that there is a common belief, in the lifestyle community, that it is the Dominant partner who leads, and the submissive partner who follows that lead.  That may, in fact, be precisely the model that prevails in many of our relationships most of the time, but I have come to believe that it isn't always so.  If the goal is to build strong and healthy relationships that endure and work for the partners, then the power flows between them in natural and organic ways, and the leadership can pass back and forth depending on what the circumstances demand.  Just as climbers might share the lead in ascending to the summit, so we move in and out of "leadership" roles in our relationship.  I have skills and knowledge and wisdom to share, and sometimes it makes sense for me to be the one to take the lead.  That doesn't mean I am less slave or that He is less "Master."  It only means that each of us offers the best we have to this life we are creating together.  

So, I will be "slave" as best I can.  I will work on the things that still bedevil me in that context -- my fears, and my tendency to extrapolate from bits of nothingness, and my quick leaps to judgement, and my jealousies, and my insecurities.  I will do the best to serve Him, to anticipate what He might need and want from me, to be where He needs me to be, and to cultivate the graceful, respectful, kind, and loving attitudes toward loving Him that were once my habit.  He'll give me whatever guidance and direction seem appropriate and necessary from His perspective, I'm sure.  We'll grow together into this -- even as we have over the years that have gone before.  I doubt that we will avoid all the frustrations and battles and pitfalls that may be lurking along the path.  I hope we manage to bypass some of them.  

Bad things could happen, but I am not looking for them.  Good things might happen just as easily, and I want that for us.  So that's where I'm going to put my energies.  I want more joy, more pleasure, more intimacy, more love, more sex, more S/M play, more laughter, more adventures, and more friendships.  I am the slave.  I may not be able to make all of that happen by myself, but I can bust my tail to do my share.

swan

Be the Change You Want to See

I started back today seeing the same therapist that I saw a few times back last winter/spring.  I was not happy about beginning that process again.  I am not one who appreciates the soul-baring vulnerability of therapy, and I deeply resent the time and the money and the emotional cost.  However, I finally found myself so tangled up in my own thoughts and fears and hurts and confusions that there was simply no good option.  I am lost and feeling alone, and I need someone from outside myself and our immediate family to listen to me fuss and whine and spin around -- and point me toward the exit.  I can't do it for myself anymore. 

She is J, and she is very good.  She is now, with my return to counseling, working with all of us in individual sessions.  If one were keeping an accounting of the "good things" and "benefits" to accrue from our struggles in this year, surely finding J would be on that list.  We've been lucky to have her wisdom and acceptance and simple affirmation of who we are individually and as a family.

When I worked with her back in the early months of all of this, I felt pretty solid and pretty secure and pretty centered.  She declared, in those days, that I was "the pillar" of our family.  I found that intimidating, but was also flattered and a little proud of my own sturdy strength.  Except that, as time has passed, I've started to wobble and tremble.  I'm not feeling so strong these days.  I am exhausted and weary and scared and desperate.  I veer from hopeful to hopeless and back again at a dizzying speed.  When I sat down in J's office this morning, it took only the simple inquiry as to how I was doing to send me into a flurry of tears and whimpers and a shaky-voiced litany of fears and woes that left me limp and trembling.

She listened to my random, stream-of-consciousness outpouring, and then proposed this version of my dilemma:

You are divided in your approach to the challenges in your relationship.  You could respond to any of the  situations that you are trying to deal with from your strong, powerful, capable, intelligent woman persona -- or you could respond from your slave persona.  It must be hard to figure out what to do with those two possibilities.  Which one do you want?

That stopped me in my tracks.  I could tell, inside myself, that what she said was true.  I know that strong, independent, capable, powerful woman.  She is the one who runs a busy classroom of growing pre-adolescents with a sure and steady hand.  She deftly handles the many unpredictable shifts of the school day, and never breaks a sweat.  She judges and evaluates and decides the course to take through a thousand minor (or maybe not so minor) tumults every single day.  Too, I know the slave who is quiet and calm and secure and soft and yielding.  She is the part of me that waited and waited and waited to be taken in and held close and given the gift of a place to safely lodge a heart that longs to submit.  In my mind, I rolled that question around and around -- if there were a choice to be made here, which would I choose?

Deep breath.  "Slave," I told her.  "If I could choose, I'd choose to respond from the slave mode."  And, saying it, I felt some bound up place inside of me release just a bit...

I've pulled myself back from that place through the last year.  I've chattered away in my mind, and been absolutely convinced that I just COULD NOT continue to live as His slave for a whole variety of reasons.  I've been stiff necked and stubborn and hellbent on having it be the way I think it should be.  The part of me that has "control issues" has put together a very convincing list of whys and wherefores -- all the justifications for pulling myself away from Him and the promises I once made.

This morning, in less than an hour, affirming my stated desire to live and respond from "slave mode," my oh-so-perceptive therapist turned me around; showed me what I wanted; and showed me how I'd been sabotaging that for myself and, possibly, for us.  I sat there breathing and knew that I couldn't do one thing about changing how He feels about me or us or the M/s dynamic we once enjoyed.  He won't be pushed or manipulated or coerced by me.  That doesn't work -- never has.  I can, however, resume the role that I once lived with grace and joy.  Whatever He might choose for Himself, my living as His can't hurt us (at least, I don't think it can).

I've wanted Him to fix things for us.  I've wanted Him to make me feel safe again.  I've fallen into the trap of believing that the only way for me to give Him my submission is for Him to "take" it from me.  I don't know what I've been thinking -- I know better than that.  I know how this works, and I know what my part is.  I need to walk the talk.  If I want our current intimate stalemate to be broken and our dynamic to be restored, I need to bend -- to "assume the position" of slave.

It may not be easy.  Probably, it will be very difficult in at least a few places.  I am afraid; terrified even; at the reality of His continuing anger with me.  I don't want to face that -- or deal with what it may mean, but I am ready to lay that down and trust Him to find a way through it for the two of us.  I have been fierce about my efforts to steer things, and it has been catastrophic.  I am not a good ship's captain.  I can't keep insisting that He see it my way, do it my way, make me happy.  I have to let this go; believe in the heart of who He and I are together; and take the risk of trusting once again.

And so, once again, I will be...

swan

Current

It has been such a year.  Things have changed so quickly ... and then there have been times when it seemed as if there was never going to be any change at all.  We've lived together through it all; and we've lived, each of us, locked away in our own private struggles.  We've tried to lean on one another, and we've tried to be strong for each other.  Often, there has been no strength left between us, and we've collapsed in a jumble of swirling feelings and hurts.

Today, I awakened with the word, "current" in my brain.  Long-time readers will know that I have a thing for words; their meanings and their roots.  I love it when a word comes to stay with me for awhile, and I enjoy the act of wandering around with a word in my head -- turning it over and tasting it and seeing what secrets it may have to share.  So...  current...

One of the first things to occur to me as I thought about the word "current" early this morning when things were still quiet and sleepy around here was the multitude of meanings the word carries.  The dictionary gives us a view of the territory that gets covered when we start contemplating this particular linguistic gem --

adj.

1.

a. Belonging to the present time: current events; current leaders.

b. Being in progress now: current negotiations.

2. Passing from one to another; circulating: current bills and coins.

3. Prevalent, especially at the present time: current fashions. See Synonyms at prevailing.

4. Running; flowing.

n.

1. A steady, smooth onward movement: a current of air from a fan; a current of spoken words. See Synonyms at flow.

2. The part of a body of liquid or gas that has a continuous onward movement: rowed out into the river's swift current.

3. A general tendency, movement, or course. See Synonyms at tendency.

4. Symbol i, I Electricity

a. A flow of electric charge.

b. The amount of electric charge flowing past a specified circuit point per unit time.

Interesting, to me at least, is the etymology. The word first appears around 1300, meaning "running, or flowing," from the Old French corant "running, lively, eager, swift."  That seems to derive from the Latin currere meaning "to run, or move quickly."  There's a whole world of words pointing to the eventual meaning of our word, "current."  The Greek -khouros gives us "running," and the Lithuanian karsiu is literally "go quickly."  The Old Norse used the word horskr to mean  "swift," and in Old Irish and Middle Welsh, we find carr which gives us "cart, and wagon." The same word, for the Bretons was karr which turned into "chariot." In Welsh we find carrog which meant "torrent". Meaning "prevalent, generally accepted" is from 1560s.

So, having indulged my fetish for fun with words, I can imagine that some readers will, by now, be wondering what the point might be -- or maybe even if there IS a point...  Be patient with me.  I'll see if I can make my thoughts line up and actually say something coherent here.

I started out this morning with the word current in the sense of flow.  Specifically, I was thinking of the flow of water in a stream or a river or even the rip currents one might find at the ocean's edge.  Currents can be relatively gentle when the body of water is small and the forces that create the directional flow are slight.  A gentle stream can be moved along down a slight slope, and the force of the current makes the water sparkle and gurgle over rocks and logs in a melodic and calming passage.  But change the slope, or the volume of water, or add some additional factor into the mix, and that gently flowing water can change into a deadly torrent that sweeps away everything in its path.  Floods and tsunamis and storm surges and cloud bursts can all bring the destructive power of swiftly flowing water to bear on anything standing in the way.

I have felt like we have been swept along in currents that simply overwhelmed us this year; currents resulting from storms that we never saw coming.  That's one of the things about a current -- it isn't necessarily easy to see.  It may flow beneath the surface, and capture you by surprise.  I'm sure there will be those who would ask how it was that we didn't see what was bearing down on us.  I'm aware that there are those outside our lives who saw clearly the mistakes that we were making, and of which we were so unaware.  I can understand their frustration.  I often wonder about people who build homes in the flood plain of a major river, or directly in the likely path of some significant number of Atlantic hurricanes.  What do they expect, after all?  Do they somehow believe that they will be immune to the almost certain disasters that are aimed right at them?  Is it the pure and irresistible allure of the shore?  The compelling loveliness of the stream side?  Maybe I understand that set of choices better now than I once did -- I too have walked to the edge and stood there entranced, even as everyone around me shouted that it was shear folly.  And so the currents knocked us down and dragged us under and swirled us against the sharp-edged rocks -- and tossed us, broken, upon the shore.  Current...

Then there is the "present" meaning of "current,"  as in current events or the current state of affairs.  Currently... we are -- or things are -- or life is... like this or that.  Except that, as one describes the present moment, it careens past at the speed of time.  Gone.  And now there is the new moment.  And now that too, is flown past.  The now of the current moment happens and is gone -- like a dream awaking.  Reach out to touch it, pin it down, capture it to think about later -- and it evaporates in a sparkle and a mist and a vague sense of disquiet.  I've always found that to be one of the benefits for me of spanking.  Spanking brings me right smack (I apologize, but I couldn't resist that one) into the present moment.  In fact, it is one of the tricks I've used through the years to get me through an intense spanking -- never think about the last stroke or the next.  In the middle of a spanking, if you could get into my head, what you would hear would be me saying, "now, and now, and now..."   Or, perhaps, "one, one, one, one..."  It may be that there are lessons there for this life we're trying to cobble back together:  Stay away from the past, and don't gaze too far into the future.  Keep it current --  now, and now, and now, and now.  Current.

In another context, current can be about electricity, power, charge, juice, energy.   Between He and I, there remains something electric; something so elemental that we are drawn together -- maybe at the atomic level.  Maybe. George Carlin once opined that electricity is just organized lightning.  Oh yeah!  I well remember being struck by that lightning when, very early on, I found myself drawn, elementally, to the magnetism and power and energy of this man.  He will remind me, these days, that I knew what I was getting into -- knew it all up front and ahead of making the commitments that brought us to this place.  I'd probably argue that point, but there seems no point.  And anyway, I was, like Paul, thrown from my horse and struck blind.  In those high energy, electrically charged early days, He might have explained in careful detail that He was, in fact, an axe murderer and a cannibal and a Republican -- and I'd have still followed the same path.  I have no doubt.  I like electricity.  I like it in my life and I like it in my play.  I am a great fan of the violet wand (although, sadly, He is not).  The current of our lives makes sparks and sometimes one or the other of us gets struck by a bolt from the heavens.  It may turn out that, if we are going to insist on keeping hold of each other (and I do hope we will), that lightning will strike the same place over and over.  Current. 

Don't give up on us, friends...  And for those who are not friends -- I wouldn't count us out.  The current still runs between us.  We're unsure and uncertain as we work our way back to playing in the flow, but we are testing the waters.  There remains the energy and the electricity and the spark.  We've been tossed and left half-drowned, but we are alive and we are still present with one another.  Current.

s.

My God! I Feel Like Writing

I have been locked inside myself, lost, confused, anguished, grief ridden and "crisisy" for a long time now. I have longed to write about what is raging inside me, my head, my feelings, my soul, and "locked up" whenever I attempted to even approach the prospect of writing, let alone doing so. It seems being "locked up" is my life's primary learning the last year.

This morning suddenly I WANT to write....................I need to. I feel like Forrest Gump when he said he felt like running one day and so ran. There was no antecedent. There was just action...........being as a verb not a noun.

It has been almost a year now since last October 28, the day that was my personal 9/11. It kicked off a series of real injuries for me. It culminated a string of losses over the last two and a half years. Little has been good since and nothing is the same.

Over the last two and a half years I lost my parents, lost my thirty-five year long professional career and concomitantly what I stood for publicly as a man, lost 60% of my body through gastric bypass surgery that was medically very difficult, had a crisis bowel resection from a life threatening bowel obstruction that became medically complicated, and lost the majority of my personal income. These losses occurred in the run up to last October 28.

Then October 28 occurred. Sue phoned 911 when she became concerned a comment I made in an IM chat with her reflected suicidal intent. Police hunted me in our condominium complex with rifles, flak jackets, and a shoot on sight order. I had fled to a local WalMart when she told me she had called 911. They found me there and about a dozen of them harassed and interrogated me in handcuffs in the parking lot for a half hour or so, before, having no police record at all, they felt they had nothing on which to base arresting me and so I was released. I was enraged . I lost my trust in the integrity of our D/s. In my drunken raging about that a few days later, I lost my sense of safety in my home, as I was carried screaming and struggling in hand cuffs from my home. I've not felt safe a moment since. I know at any moment anyone, likely those closest to me , can call the police and they will do whatever they want to me for whatever reason. I was released with my first criminal conviction..................suicidality treated as a crime, with no services offered or provided. A month later even after seeking services on our own, I was worse. This time I was psychotic and murderously self-injurious and intent on harming sue and t as well as myself. Again I was in jail in chains. My second conviction......................two years probation...............pending a year in prison if I fail to complete that, or if for any reason at all they decide to violate my probation. Again no services were offered or provided, but they were mandated. I did 8 weeks of alcohol rehabilitation. It was a 6 week program, but my family felt I shouldn't graduate at the end of six weeks, so they took it on themselves without talking to me, to have it extended.

I have no trust or sense of security ever. I am depressed. I am in constant fear. I have lost my trust in the those whom I love. I have no faith in our government. I melt down if I see a cop. I have murderous fantasies of retaliation against police, and rejoice every time I hear of police injury or death.

I attend two mandated AA meetings a week and submit reports about them to the weekly continuing care meeting that I must attend to stay out of prison. AA has helped me at times. More often it makes me feel worse. It is a religious cult that focuses on replacing substance addiction with addiction to magical thinking. One must, to fulfill their program, develop a vision of a higher power, be that Christianity's vision of God, or coming to believe in a "door knob." (I am not exaggerating. That is one of the examples of what AA says you might do if you are an atheist or agnostic). Whatever that vision is, every gathering ends with a remarkably non-secular recitation of the Lord's Prayer, as they sanctimoniously purport they are not a Christian cult. I have jokingly wondered if they ended each meeting with readings from the Koran, they would be able to get away with claiming to not be an Islamic religious cult. I am keeping up my compliance act. I behave as though I have thrown myself into AA and aftercare. My aftercare coordinator called me last week to tell me she enjoys reading the insights in my AA meeting reaction reports as much as any she has seen. I must or I will serve a year in prison.

I've lost a life long love with alcohol, a lover that I traveled every road and experience with for 47 years since I was 15. It was time for that to end, and a very harmful love affair. My feelings towards alcohol are like my feelings for my ex-wife. My life is better for not having her. There is no aspect of my life that is not better without having my ex-wife or my not having alcohol in it.

The loss of my first marriage benefited me hugely. It was a terrible loss after 31 years of marriage and involved huge grief and loss. The loss of alcohol benefits me hugely. It is a source of huge grief and loss.

So on top of the losses leading up to 10/28/10, I have lost alcohol. I have lost the privilege of ever working as a professional again because of my now permanent criminal record. I might well have not chosen to return to my profession. But there is a huge difference between choosing to never work at your chosen profession, and knowing that your society has said you are too criminal to ever do that again. We have lost about $10,000 in the process of this. I am 233 days sober today and 225 days into probation. We will continue for the next 505 days paying probation to handle my supervision. Probation entails nothing, but a meeting with me every two months to collect my probation fees. They do consider whether to approve a pass for me if I want to travel outside of my community. I am not allowed to travel without their permission. In the midst of this we lost t's Mom. My loss in this compared to t's is minuscule. Her Mom took me in and treated me as a valued and loved son when I was divorced and my own parents shunned me, and accepted our family completely as we came to include sue. Her loss is a painful void.

I've lost self-esteem. I don't correspond with or relate to any of the people I knew before this. I feel such shame and humiliation I don't want to face them.

I've felt a loss of my BDSM orientation and, it has, as sue has written, effected our relationship. I don't know how to have a trust based relationship with loves who clearly had so little trust in me they wanted me locked up, and who even though they thought that the way the police and courts treated me was wrong and harmful, support what was done to me anyway. They do not trust me, and I want desperately to trust them, but often when I try to, my mind flashes to being naked in solitary confinement, freezing, in the middle of the night, not knowing where I was, or why.

I am in therapy now for about 10 months with a private psycho-therapist. As we have wound our way through this, it has turned out, that I am a child abuse victim. I certainly knew my childhood was not happy. I've certainly seen other people whose childhoods were far worse than mine. I was an only child and it was the only childhood I knew. I assumed my childhood was as childhood is. My therapist asks me questions about if I had an experience like this or that. I recount experiences that I don't usually think about, but that occurred, usually between my mother and me, some with my father. She then reacts vehemently, and tells me it is no wonder that I have issues I have, and react and feel as I do.

It is her hypothesis that it is this history of child abuse trauma that is the root cause of the intensity of my post traumatic stress reaction, paranoia, grief at the events of the last year. Not that those feelings would not be normal, but that the overwhelming debilitating extent of my feelings is likely me, harkening back to feeling as I did as an abused helpless child when I was four, five, or six. She says I feel as I did then, when now I am in the hands of an abusive system at the hands of the women I love. Friday she is intent on our working together, the therapist and I, through an inner child healing exercise with hypnotic suggestion. I am a Masters prepared counseling psychologist. Psycho-analytical early childhood trauma based theoretical approaches to people's issues, have never had much credence for me, feeling it better to focus behaviorally and affectively on present life on life's terms (the 12-steppers in the crowd will be pleased to see that bit of "Big Book" jargon.) On the other hand, I am being treated for traumatic stress, I am coming to see that my childhood was pathologically abusive, and certainly what I am experiencing now is debilitating. If my childhood abuse is catalytically ratcheting up my trauma exponentially, why not try this? If nothing else, it should be an interesting experience. I don't see it making anything worse. She is very good, this woman I'm seeing and she feels it may well help. I guess it's a classic "in for a penny in for a pound" situation.

She is adamant that I am one of the more intelligent men she has known. She tells me that it is rare for people who have my childhood history (abuse, dyslexia, chronic acute illness, etc.) to have had the fairly highly functional life I've had.

Over the last two days I have had a re-emergence in my consciousness of my BDSM orientation, and a realization too that is it not only a sensual erotic orientation, but a spiritual one. Likely this spiritual twist is a function of my time with the Alcoholism cult folks. I am being reminded that I am who I am. The fact that I have lived through this last two years, and have relationship issues in the aftermath does not change who I am.

I am a Dominant man who is a BDSM practitioner. I am polyamorous. I will recover my strength. My current life is (in the words of my therapist) all scorched earth, but green is beginning to sprout again. I will heal someday.

I realize as I read back over this, how somber this all is. I suppose it is. It could be read or heard as accusatorial or blaming of sue and t. They were overwhelmed and fearful in the throws of dealing with a very distraught, angry, violent, depressed, grief ridden, drunk, paranoid man. They did the best they knew to do for themselves and me. Mistakes were made. None more than by me. Our loves are, I believe, preordained somewhere and sometime before any of us even knew to be. We will heal together. We will be back, not as we were, but better. Our family will be stronger. I feel that as a fact, even more than I desire it.

I need to write more. I need to write here. Sue and t and my therapist and my inner self tell me that I have books to write. I may in fact begin that process.

It is good that, despite the absence of our input here, this Blog still exists for me to be able to do this. That is because sue, in this awful interim has (at times quite laboriously), stirred the ashes here to keep this option alive, and to keep us connected to the love of the many friends here who have so supported us as we have struggled through so many challenges over the past two and a half years.

This period has been/is more traumatic than any evolution I have gone through before....whether adolescence, or any other of my life passages. I have made it traumatic for those around me.

Finding my voice here again is, I suspect, a milestone on the way through it.

Tom