"You've got a touch of sadness about you at the moment." He's right, of course, but I had hoped it wasn't quite so obvious. I'm at the London Munch, attempting to socialise in a fake it til you make it strategy that is clearly currently more fake than make. Or perhaps The Professor is just being extremely perceptive. Either way, I get a hug and we chat a bit, possibilities of pallet wrap and hairdryers (the heat hardens and shrinks the plastic) are raised alongside house refurbishments with extra sturdy hooks in the ceiling. It's good to see him again, to see a lot of people - the fact that they are there, getting on with things and so on is reassuring. I'm still here too, trying to get on with things.
But wherever I go, in whatever conversations I have and whatever I do, there's something around the edges. A creeping shadow which follows me around. I am nowhere near over him. I know that I should try to, but I don't really know where to start. I'm not sure how you go about cutting off your shadow - or if you just wait for it to go away. Like so many things with the collapse of the relationship the lack of coherence, of control is making me frustrated.
I'm pondering at the moment whether this is because for the first time I was not the one to end the relationship, so consequently am left with strong feelings that have nowhere to go. What our cousins across the pond term "closure" I suppose. After all, when I tried to end the relationship we still kept on seeing each other. When he ended it, it stayed ended, he managed to have the upper hand in the end. Which leads me on to my second thought - whether the D/s may be playing a part - I've never had a D/s relationship as strong as the one I had with The Photographer, for a long time I was his and extremely happy to be so. And now I'm not, or rather, he has decided that I am not, but I still feel as if I am. So, I'm doing what any good submissive would do when left alone. I'm waiting for him to come back. I know that this isn't right, that this isn't actually a game that we are playing. That he has left me and that we are done. But there is a gulf between knowing something for a fact and actually believing it. To get to the place where I truly feel like I am mine, rather than his. No shadow.
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BARBERETTE & HAIR FETISH
5 weeks ago
5 comments:
I thought long and hard about whether or not I should comment and say what I'm about to say for a lot of reasons... For one thing, I wanted to tell you that I was reading this blog first, rather than just "pop up" commenting, but what you have written here touched such a nerve that I decided I should just say what I want to say and trust that you won't take it the wrong way that I found and have been reading your blog. I also have no experience of a formalised D/s relationship; I've never had a relationship that has explored in a conscious or negotiated sense some of the undercurrents that I have long suspected exist in my psyche and sexuality, so I don't want to seem to be over-stepping either my experience or my bounds...
Even so, I think that I really understand what you are saying here... To give you a little background without bombarding you with "my shit", I was supposed to get married last year, and the woman in question was, and probably still is, the love of my life. We were together for two years and ultimately engaged when we were at university together back in the mid-nineties, and then ten years later we tried again. Before things fell apart the second time we were both very happy again and we were indeed engaged once more, but as it turned out it was not to be...
The sadness that left me (as described by others) "broken" the first time we parted and has this time still left me with a cold shard of pain in my heart is / was in the most part caused by my inability to believe that she would leave me... I don't mean I'm so great that it is inconceivable, what I am referring to is the complete desolation that follows being __quitted__ by someone that I gave myself to body and soul. In every way except of us actually discussing our relationship in those terms I was "hers", by my own volition, and even though neither of us would likely think to identify ourselves as motivated by BDSM or would have (at the time) described our relationship in D/s terms, as I look back on it now I realise that in so many ways that is exactly what it was.
I remember, vividly, a conversation / fight that we had the last time I was in Hamburg with her; I remember saying to her "You hold me in your hands, [her name]. My heart, my whole future is yours and it is yours because you told me that you wanted it, so I gave it to you, and now you're not sure?" I can hear myself saying it as if I were a ghost in that room right now, right in that moment. It is not so much being left - I've been left by another and it is not the same - it is (for me at least) the horror of realising that the person that you have handed your innermost being to (because they seemed to ask for it and you wanted to give it) has turned away and it appears, at least, to be a simple choice for them.
I have been trying ever since to be in possession of myself again, to not be hers anymore, and all I can tell you is that a lot of the time, in fact the vast majority of the time, I do belong to myself again. There are moments when I am still hers, but as time passes they are less frequent and they pass more quickly. I am fairly sure that I will never be completely free of her, but it will one day (soon I hope) be such a small part of me that she has kept that it will not matter.
For what it may be worth, the turning point came for me when I realised that I wanted myself back more than I wanted her to want to possess me, more than I wanted to give myself to her... From what you have written here it sounds like you have either made that decision or are about to make it. This is a good thing, I promise you.
If I may say, thanks for writing this entry (we can talk or not as you see fit), and actually for this blog as a whole; it has brought a lot of things into focus for me, and I can't tell you how much I have valued finding it and reading it, and as a side issue how impressed I am by your writing, honesty and candour. Thanks,
Oli
Hey.
Thanks for writing that. For sharing something like that. I want to say that I enjoyed reading it (which I did, twice) but that's not the right word. I'm glad that I was able to read it.
One of the reasons I've previously been loathe to attribute any pain from the fallout with D/s is because of precisely the things you describe - those connections and ties are probably part of all relationships it's just that kinky folk have ownership as a normalised part of our vocabularly. I also, with the vanity of the "enlightened" tend to think that all relationships have those powerful feelings, just that in BDSM we pull on the strings more. Emotional games as much as physical ones form part of D/s, power plays brought out into the open.
Anyhow, I'm glad that you *are* reading the blog, hopefully finding it interesting. Don't worry about "over-stepping" - I'm not a world authority or anything. Just a girl who did some stuff then wrote about it on the internet.
You're very welcome; glad that you were glad to read it, if that makes sense? Mission Accomplished if you ask me - I got to express how your post made me feel and in so doing managed to share something helpful(?) with you as well :-)
I think that __some__ "vanilla" relationships do follow the same or similar lines as D/s relationships (probably quite a lot actually) without either partner really realising that it's happening, but yeah having the power dynamic "out in the open" probably does make it all the more powerful and all-consuming. I certainly don't see it as a criticism of non-D/s relationships that you attribute some of the impact on you of this relationship ending to the intensity of the roles that you and The Photographer inhabited within it. If you feel it, it's probably true, at least in my experience.
As for reading your blog, I'm glad that you are happy I'm reading it, and yes I am finding it interesting and remarkably reassuring (impossible to not make that sound a bit patronising in text, but I really don't mean it to be). I will also try to worry less about coming across as a n00b -thanks :-)
Hello.
Understated.
Looks like you have been struggling for a while. Subbing in bdsm is just so hard. It creates a real physical need in the top that I think the top never develops in the sub. And without knowing the guy, I think the physical sadism sometimes morphs into emotional sadism and dumping you became the ultimate endgame. Keep searching.
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