I don’t play in public very often.  Partly because I don’t have a lot of opportunity, partly because when there is an opportunity, the public play venues/events aren’t set up to accommodate the kind of play I’m interested in. But I played in (semi) public last night.  It was probably one of the more intense scenes I’ve done in in front of a potential audience.  It’s a double edged sword.  I am a pain slut AND an emotional masochist.  There is a lot going on physically (i.e. I’m on the ground being punched and kicked) and a lot more going on in my head (i.e. my play partners are purposely saying things often only I can hear that are designed to push very pokey emotional buttons).  And the audience can only see the first part for sure… and maybe small hints of the second.

I don’t think I want to even try to put into words what was going on in my head last night.  It’s very personal, and not something I want open to the interpretation of others.  Suffice it to say that it challenged some core self-esteem issues, some childhood abuse triggers, and some parts of my very identity.  It was exactly the way I wanted to play, and the adrenaline was tsunami-like.  But it also sucked ass.

Afterwards, when I’d managed to pick myself up out of my snotty, soaked, trembling heap on the floor and stumble away from the scene of the crime alone (and I <3 my assailants who know to leave me alone) I bumped into random people here and there in my dazed walk out to the parking lot for air.  And each one of them asked me the same question – “Did you have fun?”

I want to state from the start that I am not offended or angry or in any way chiding people for asking me this question.  After all, we are all presumably there because at one level or another kink is “fun” for us.  But it does strike me as a very odd question to ask a wet, shaking woman with eyeliner running down her face, eyes swollen and unfocused.  I can’t possibly look, in that moment, like I’m having fun, can I?

I wonder…  Is asking this question sort of like SherynB’s Cult of Aftercare* – some way to reassure ourselves and make sure that the person is OK by following the proscribed steps – water, blankets, how was it for you?  Or is it because, in an emotionally difficult scene (and I am only assuming that it might be emotionally difficult for someone to watch – I have no idea, really, what others perceive watching a scene like mine) we need to make sure that it’s really what the bottom consented to?  Does this question really mean “did you get what you wanted?”

Even that question is hard for me to answer.  I avoided directly answering anyone who asked me last night if I had fun, because the answer was NO.  It was not an answer I wanted to give, nor a conversation I wanted to have.  But I could have said with all honesty, if someone asked me if I got what I wanted, that I *got what I asked for*. Isn’t that the point?

*An essay done by an acquaintance, it can be found on FetLife.

I never expect sex, however, when I climb into bed at night. I have too much baggage around sex, and somehow, despite having a committed partner and a very active sex life, I never, ever expect any, unless there’s been damned explicit conversation beforehand. There are clues, of course, that sex is likely. I can smell toothpaste on her breath. I’m wearing one of my clingy nighties. I catch her locking the door while she’s turning off the lights. The clues speed my pulse up as she climbs into bed. When the flirting or the touching crosses a line or the clues become overwhelming, when the idea of sex becomes the likelihood of sex, even now, with a partner that I’ve been with for over 2 years, I still get nervous butterflies. In some inner core of me, the prospect of sex makes me trepidatious, and shy, and a teensy bit scared. But wait, I’m into that sort of thing. So we can proceed.

Last night wasn’t all that different than any other. She knows, hell, the whole world practically knows, I’m in heat. I know she wants me. I’m lucky enough that she pretty much always wants me. I am hopeful. And when she pulls me over on top of her I am happy to oblige. I love that moment when we slide from sweet, conscious kissing into utter consummation. When our mouths become more open somehow, the kisses more abandoned, harder and more careless. I love mid-sex kissing. I also love the pale hill-and-valley of her cleavage, and the way my teeth sink into her skin so easily until it clamps on the muscle below. Always, by the time my nails drag down her leg and my fingers slide over in between her thighs, she is deluged with wanting me. I love the way her clit feels shiny and smooth between my fingers, like my own personal worry stone. She comes so easily for me, and it makes me feel proud to make her so happy.

Because, for a long time, I had issues… when I it was my turn to please others in bed, I developed into a bit of a pillow queen. I am lucky to be with someone who is sort of my sexual yang in this way; she gets a lot of pleasure from pleasing me, and she is seemingly tireless in the pursuit. So now, I let myself wait expectantly, and after catching her breath, she begins kissing me. Hard. We have become learned lovers – she knows how the barest brush of fingers over the very tips of my nipples will make me arch my back towards her hand. Not really hoping for more – because my nipples are sensitive and it can easily become too much – but not wanting it to end either. I know when her nails start digging deeper with each pass, that her hand will skim lower soon, then lower. Soon she is on top of me, a pair of finger buried deep inside, her thigh between my legs driving against the back of her own hand to add force, push in deeper. My breath is coming in gasps. Then the door opens.

My daughter stands in the doorway, backlit from the dim light from the living room. For once, we’ve forgotten to lock the door, or maybe we just hadn’t expected. S rolls off me smoothly and casually; we’re hoping the darkness camouflages anything, and besides N is mostly sleepwalking. I slip out of bed, lead the kidlet to the potty. I tuck her back into bed and kiss the top of her head, whispering I Love Yous. No matter the circumstance, there is always a tender sweetness that infuses this moment that happens almost every night. She is my little joey, and I have tucked her safely back in her pocket.

So I am two people as I walk back to the bedroom. Mama Roo is not a sexual creature. She is a creature of band-aids and snuggles, tickles and soft laps and loving rules. Mama Roo doesn’t jive with the smoldering between my legs that I can’t ignore, but I know with her there, I may not be able to abandon myself to it again. To me, parenthood is connected to childhood, and childhood CAN’T be connected to sex. That damned baggage again. But as I step back through the bedroom door and push it shut behind my back, S looms out of the dark behind it. “You scared me”, I hiccup. Voice low, she says “That was the idea”. And she’s pushing me backwards towards the bed. And my blood is pounding in my ears. And Mama begins to fade under the thrill of fear.

This is the crossroads, the one where all roads lead to Rome, but some are hillier than others. If S, in that moment, had held my hands pinned above my head and fucked me ruthlessly, I probably would have come quickly, the mother in me completely forgotten. Instead, she lets a moment of gentleness slip in, and deliberately slows down. Her tongue flows over my belly, lowers down over my mound, dives between my thighs, slides into that cleft as if she’s savoring, licking a last drip of something sweet from her fingers. She is loving, stroking, caressing. Normally, this is my grail, the thing she does that always drives me wild, but the feel of her lips on my lips is too placid, not jarring enough to bring me fully back into this room, and I can’t come. I stop her. She raises her head, climbs up me, hovers over me. She is so close to orgasm herself again and I can tell from her breathing she wants it badly. I dig my nails into her back, goading her on, she starts thrusting against me all over again, faster and faster, until she comes a second time.

I am happy, again, that I brought her pleasure, but a little seed of fear is planted in me as she falls to my side. She draws a line of tiny kisses down my neck, nuzzles me closer.  No.  No. She has taken her pleasure, and she is done with me. The seed is sprouting. She is done with me. She has used me. It doesn’t matter I didn’t come. I don’t matter. I am suddenly a little girl again, aroused in the dark, a shadowy someone rolling off of me, whispering I am a good girl, I’ve done well, I have pleased them. My arousal feels twisted, my pleasure doesn’t matter, the words are false and cruel.

STOP.

I drag my thoughts back to the moment like planting a foot on the ground from the edge of a spinning merry-go-round, the sudden jerk and lack of motion making my head wobbly. I sit up. Finally, S senses something wrong.  She places atentative hand on my back, holding very still, waiting. I wish, fervently, in this moment that she telepathically understood, that I didn’t have to explain to her the scene in my head. I cannot lay there and let her touch me so tenderly, or I will burst into tears at any moment. Anger and self-pity and melancholy threaten me like storm clouds. I cannot let her unwittingly echo something so awful. I need the honesty of pain. I need roughness to push away the other me. I need it to be DIFFERENT. If I don’t open my mouth now, and let sound come from my lips, I will be lost to it, and I will curl up into a tiny ball on my half of our king size bed, and I will sob like a lost little girl, and she will not understand because I will not be able to tell her. But I REFUSE. It’s my trigger, dammit, and I will use it the way I want. I will not let it take me from her, or her from me.

Suddenly, I lie back down in bed, and say quietly but firmly, “Finish me or don’t touch me.” I am praying sotto voce; please please please don’t ask me to explain. Please understand. Please GET ME. I can handle either option. Just please don’t say anything. Just choose.

It is a little like stop motion; there is a glitch in time, and somehow without moving, she is on top of me again. My arms are pinned. She is lying heavy across my chest and I can’t draw a good breath. My legs are being pried apart and my chin shoved up by her shoulder and her fingernails are scraping against the tender inside of my labia and my elbow is bent at an odd angle and she is too deep inside of me and she is just a fraction too far from my clit and it is too fast and too slow and it doesn’t matter and I come and come and come and come SCREAMING. It is over in three minutes. In the haze afterwards, all I can think to whisper to her is “Are you happy with me?” And it is OK now that there is tenderness in her voice as she sighs back “Yes, honey. You are a very good girl.” Now I can sleep.

And I slept well.

As survivors, we’ve been taught all along to be afraid of our triggers, that they are bigger than us, that they own us. We must learn to overcome our triggers, then erase them. A trigger is an awesome, powerful thing – all that raw emotion, little lizard brains flying off the handle like a fireworks warehouse set ablaze – but it’s MY power. I am so tired of other people – therapists, self-help gurus, shrinks, kinksters, well-meaning strangers – telling me what to be afraid of, so tired of others hinting that my playing with my triggers, even embracing them, is a sign of denial, dysfunction, disease. I don’t have to play by modern psychotherapy’s rules any more than I have to play by my rapists’. I have taken a long road to get where I am, and I know pretty much what I’m doing. Yep, I said pretty much. I am flawed, not perfectly mentally healthy, just like anyone else. But I know what my darkest sexual fears are, and I will face them down in a dark alley any day. I wonder if all those other people can say the same?

It’s the tempest in my head that is distracting me from all the delicious splendor of predictability.  There are all these waves and currents of thought making rushing sounds in my ears.  Authenticity, life purpose, relationship dynamics, parenting decisions, corporeal existence.  I don’t think I’ve ever lived a day without my brain asking me a dozen esoteric questions I can’t answer, and now is no exception.  What’s a nice, orderly OCD girl to do?

I never question that I am lucky.  Many people might call me a pessimist; I’ve lived a hard enough life that I typically expect things to follow the same crappy patterns they’ve always followed.  It’s worn right into the granite of my firmament: The other shoe will ALWAYS drop.  But that doesn’t negate my luck, and I don’t often forget it.  If you’ve traveled far enough into hell, you know you’re lucky just to be alive.  You know that a job and clothes and dinner and warm blankets to sleep under are what make life sumptuous.  I am loved, more than I deserve, and often more than I am ever comfortable with.  My child is hale and bouncy and smarter than I’ll ever be able to stay ahead of.  I get to do something pretty much everyday that I like, if not love, to do.  There are no bullets percussing through my door, no radiation slinking towards my hometown, no horsemen riding towards my imminent apocalypse.  I appreciate this on a deep, cellular level.

Sometimes, though… often, I wish I could make it mean more.  I wish I was a stop-and-smell-the-roses kinda girl.  Surely a girl who understands how absurdly lucky she is would be embracing every moment, lush with singing birds and a Disney-like soundtrack.  But I can’t make it work.  I can’t help peaking under the dark things, cracking open every old rusty box and creaking open every dust-coated door.  I can’t help wanting to dissect my brain, and everyone else’s while I’m at it. I’m a perpetual toddler: Why, WHY?

J scolded me in therapy the other day for claiming that I was “semi-broken”.  I’ve always said it – well at least since I’ve stopped considering myself completely broken.  I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to think of myself otherwise.  Not because I view myself as less functional than others (although I have my days…)  But because I am convinced that as my youthful neural pathways developed things got fused into some sort of abnormal and convoluted configuration.  Sure, I’ll always be able to figure out that 1+1 equals 2, just like everyone else, but only by adding 5, then subtracting 2, and then dividing it all by the square root of 27. (And don’t bother doing the math, its wrong.  Poetic license.)  You get my point.  Mostly, my brain just cannot leave well enough ALONE.

So, back to my humdrum life.  All hi ho, hi ho, and on with life we go.  I am happy with my new job, finally.  My daughter is settling into a routine again, finally.  I am firmly divorced, and slowly, successfully letting go of guilt, regret, and what could have been.  I am in a stable, committed relationship with someone who is more or less emotionally healthy.  It’s a full life, a good life.  Beyond that though, lies the rest:  The kink life.  The poly life.  The writing life.  The roaring of the ocean in the symmetrical seashell of my days.  And I can’t regret it.  These things are the things that make me burn, that flood me with that feeling of shaken bees and warm honey, that sensation I am absolutely addicted to and cannot live without.  On weeks like this one, where everything on the outside looks settled, these things fuel me and inspire me… and leave me in utter turmoil about things no one else can even perceive.

I’ve tried writing many times over the last few weeks, but the pages just sit shiny and untouched in front of me.  Writing in a tempest is no good.  Nothing will sit still long enough for me to look at it, let alone tell you what I see.  I catch tiny twigs in mid-air, but nothing solid enough to construct a sentence.  So here I am, not writing.  Writing about nothing.  Full, but empty.

I know she’s read my post; I get a single word text early in the evening – “Damn.” Put the kid to bed, watch a TV show. Of course I notice she’s wearing jeans when she prefers to chill in pajama bottoms at night. Of course I remember that I wrote I wanted to be fucked hard with a strap-on. I pretend not to notice the bulge in her jeans, and place a pillow in her lap as I lay my head there for petting. Her hand only tugs a little as it runs through my hair, but it is enough. I am wet before the show is over.

Turn off the TV, lower the lights, check on the kidlet. She follows close behind me into the bedroom, holds my arms lightly behind my back, whispers to do what I must to prepare for bed, and then strip; I must be naked on top of the bed when she returns. I remove contacts, brush teeth all the time pretending not to scramble, my chest rising and falling a little faster. I joke when she catches me still peeing in the bathroom, but I am relieved when she exits and leaves me to finish. Quickly.

Tonight, I am being a good girl. It doesn’t happen often, but I want this. Badly. When she enters and lowers the lights I am lying nude on the bed, as ordered. I slide out the breath I didn’t know I was holding. She grabs an ankle and pulls me toward the edge of the bed. Climbing on top of me, she whispers “tonight, I fuck you with the lights on.” It’s a challenge. She knows I hate lights, want to copulate furiously in the dark like animals in a cave. I press my lips together – no protest. Nothing to make her hesitate. I watch her stand up, slowly unzip the pants, free the strap on. I avert my eyes like a virgin schoolgirl.

In my head, I feel the hard candy-colored cock slip into me before it ever touches my cunt. I’ve felt it over and over all day. But finally she is guiding it in, slowly. I fleetingly think maybe this was going to be one of the gentle nights, the tender caresses, lovemaking. She starts rocking on top of me, and the thought is gone. I am sliding across the comforter, its rough paisley chafing against my back as she rocks harder and harder against me, plowing the full length of the shaft into me, grinding the leather straps and buckles into my cunt. It bites, and I don’t care. It bangs so far into me I feel echoes of it through my belly button, and I drive my nails into her thighs clutching her closer, mouthing DON’T STOP over and over and never uttering a sound. My head is pressed against a wall, her fingers clenched so tight in my hair my neck is almost at right angles. DON’T STOP. The ache deepens in my belly and my mind conjures images of blood coating the strap on, dripping out on the sheets. It makes wetter, so wet I can barely feel the plastic plunging in and out of me any more, only the pounding, like my belly is a drumhead, tight, seasoned with sweat. I am biting down, her breast in my mouth and I have no idea how it got there. Trying not to tear flesh with my teeth. DON’T STOP. Pain, fucking, pain, fucking. OH GOD, DON’T STOP. She gasps, and shudders, releases my hair. She slows, she stops. Somewhere in the distance I hurt. I didn’t come. But it was never about me anyway, only how hot my post made her.

She slides off and lays next to me, stroking the side of my face. I am not exactly surprised when her hand slips down and around my throat, wraps tightly for a moment. “Tomorrow,” she whispers, “there will be more.” I am too spent to decide if I will fight back tomorrow. She turns off the lights.

At the risk of providing TMI (but what the hell, it’s an anonymous blog) one of the apps that I’ve fallen in love with is My Days, which tracks my monthly cycle.  In the past I’ve always sort of followed this on instinct – PMS has always been a pretty ginormous neon sign signaling the start of my period, and being mostly lesbian, I didn’t have any particular need to pay attention to fertility or ovulation.  Except for one reason.  For good or ill, I am usually precisely aware of the days I am ovulating.  Or as I call it, “being in heat.”

As a tree-hugging spiritualist, I’ve always loved that I was acutely aware of my natural cycles.  As someone to whom sensuality and sexuality is forefront in my life for so many personal, political, and philosophical reasons, I can definitely groove on the idea of embracing the intense, hard-driven sexual impulses I experience during ovulation. Owning my female sexual power, and all that.  But sometimes, it’s a giant mother-fucking pain in the ass.

Thinking with my cunt is something I’ve… ahem… struggled with during certain phases of my life.  When I “came out” as a poly slut, it was a little too easy to let myself fall into my fat-kid-in-a-hostess-outlet mentality and want to fall on anything that looked particularly tasty in the moment.  It certainly made the process of divorce a heck of a lot messier.  And, thanks in part to the monthly mindlessness that overtakes me in heat, it’s taken me at least the last year to learn to practice discrimination.  I’ve finally earned a hard-won understanding of the difference between polyamory and ethical-sluttery, and while I still claim both labels for myself, I am no longer a slave to my own gluttony, or prone to attempting relationships based completely on hormone-driven impulse.  Hopefully I’m in a new phase.

But this is all a very dry and theoretical discussion of something that is anything but dry (pun intended.)  Here’s the reality:  I’ve been sitting in a café all day, working on various writing projects.  At various points in the day I have 1) posted random flirtations online with people I don’t usually flirt with, 2) sent a dirty text message to my girlfriend, 3) compulsively checked Fetlife for anything titillating, and 4) considered and reconsidered driving home to my empty house so I can use my Hitachi alone for a good 20-30 minutes.  The only reason I have not done number four so far is that I am really, really hoping my girlfriend will fuck me tonight, hard, preferably with a strap-on.  And I’m afraid if I’m alone with my Hitachi for too long I might use it to the point that my cunt is numb and unresponsive for a good 24 hrs (which unfortunately will not make the drive go away.)  Heat means that my panties are forever damp, for days, and they chafe.  And I call them panties, instead of underwear.  And I want them off.  It means that my mostly-lesbian status changes to omnivorous whenever a fresh young thing sits down next to me at the coffeehouse. It means I spend random moments remembering what it tastes like when ex-lovers spilled come in the back of my throat after a particularly good blow job.  It means that listening to Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back” makes me pre-orgasmic.  Heat drives me to wear tighter t-shirts, low-rise jeans, and my favorite belt because I like the feel of sliding the leather strap through my belt loops.  Which makes me fantasize about being hit with it.  Heat has sent me to random retail bathrooms to masturbate so I can go back to actually thinking clearly.  And it’s led me more than once engage in a drink or three so I could have an excuse to drunkenly rub up against my current object of lust.  I could go on and on and on… because it does.  Usually for at least a week.

True to my inner kitty, I just want to roll around in a mewling ball at someone’s feet and beg for relief.  Most times I simultaneously loathe it and relish in it, but I guess either way it doesn’t really matter.  Some things in life just are, and for now, this is one of them.  I guess, thanks to my smartphone, I can at least try for a little mental preparation.  But if you are currently someone I am fucking, it’d be really nifty if you gave me a call.  NOW.

While neither S or myself will ever consider ourselves monogamous, we have come to a recent agreement that we need some time to concentrate on our committed relationship before pursuing any additional outside romantic relationships (but I love that we also have the understanding that life = serendipity, and that if someone enters either of our lives that represents an irresistible force, we can and will openly acknowledge that.  Which is good, because there are already people in our lives that are… distracting.)  For the first time, we can try and understand who we are as a couple without factoring in the uphill battle with all of our other relationships.  One of the things that has always been present in our relationship, but never had the space to breathe or grow, is our draw towards Dominance/submission.

No one ever suspects it of us, at first.  Or if they do, the always assume sweet, sweet S would be the submissive, and larger-than-life Az would be the domme.  Uh-uh.  Wrong answer.  But really, that’s the key.  The D/s dynamic, with us, is about finally finding in each other a reason to reach into the squishy, nekkid soul of our being and expose the pieces of ourselves we don’t normally let others touch.  For me, that’s letting myself need someone in a way I have never before allowed, and having some faith that they will actually, willingly and reliably, meet that need.

It’s not an easy need either.  I struggle with identifying as a sub at all.  What I am is high-maintenance, emotionally scarred, and prone to living in the dark corners of my mind.  I am alpha; I have relied on no one but myself for literal survival since before my earliest memories.  I am utterly selfish in my determination to live life on my own, very specific, terms.  I shall not be moved.   Nonetheless, there is in that pulpy inner mess a secret desire to be dependent.  To trust someone so implicitly as to actually depend on them to care for you in a way you cannot care for yourself.  To believe that they know you as well, if not better, than you know yourself and to surrender to that faith.  To let them lead you down a path not of your own choosing, with the conviction that the destination you reach together will be the right one for both of you. Faith like that is a bedrock, when all I’ve ever known, all I’ve ever stood on, is shifting sands.  Imagine how far I could run, how high I could jump, finally starting on solid ground.

These realizations are all well and good.  This is why I (and S) pay J for services rendered.  We’ve therapized it, we get it, we communicate it, we are stunningly non-codependent about it.  And both of us our on our own individual journeys to meeting in D/s land.  Aaannd… there’s a snag.  See, in order for S to finally let go of all that childhood training that conditioned her to be nice, never show anger, doubt her own strength, yadda yadda yadda, she’s gotta work through some shit.  Yep, that’s right, my uber-stable, ultra-calm, pillar of level-headedness is flipping the fuck out.  OK, it is important to note here that her flipping out and my flipping out are two entirely different creatures, and mostly hers involve more-emo-than-usual Facebook statuses and mood more reminiscent of PMS than per usual.  It’s not the end of the world here, really.  But the timing of it sucks donkey poop.  Because it happened riiiight at the moment that that most vulnerable little me was starting to think “huh, maybe this finally is the woman I can trust enough to depend on.”

There is a firm intellectual understanding of what’s happening here; I’m a smart chicky.  I know S’s process is coming from a place of strength, and will only lead her more firmly into her own self-awareness and growth.  It’s awesome, and I applaud her.  I am proud.  There is also, however, an irrefutable part of me that does not connect the intellectual dots, does not give a shit about therapy and personal growth, and that just feels.  And what I feel right now is sand between my toes.

It’s a waiting game really.  In this dynamic, I can’t do a damned thing for her, and she can’t do a damned thing for me, not in this moment, and we both know it.  I use my calm, parental inner voice to talk to the squishy, pulpy me: “just give it time, don’t run away, don’t give up on trust quite yet, hang in there, baby.”  All soothing and gentle-like.  And I hope it buys enough time for S to do what she needs to do and come back to me.  If we don’t get there, we’ll probably survive.  But I will mourn.  I want this bad.

So here I am currently, becoming utterly obsessed with the idea of writing a book.  With “becoming a writer.”  I can feel that this is a big one – not just one of those paltry little mini-phases I get onto every few weeks.  On the one hand, my full zeal could be a massive asset to this particular type of undertaking.  On the other hand, I am completely, and justifiably, terrified that this particular obsession will end in a lot of time spent taken away from other parts of my life which will suffer in turn, only to end in massive disappointment when I hit a million road blocks and a zillion critics telling me I’m not good enough.

There is a merry-go-round in my mind right now.  Could I do it?  Should I do it?  Am I good enough?  Will anyone take me seriously?  Will I be laughed at, scorned, disparaged, disrespected?  Am I being presumptuous and overconfident?  Am I being too humble?  Do I have enough discipline?  Will the phase last long enough this time to actually finish?  How many people would I enrage/damage/wound/alienate if I try to tell the story of my life?  How would I protect the privacy of those I care about?  Will the truth police come and lock me up for daring to tell my inner story?  Is there really a boogie man, Virginia?

For the moment, I can’t seem to stop.  I so badly just want to plunk down in front of some published author somewhere, spill my written guts out to them, and have them tell me “YES, you can and should do it; you are a great and insightful writer and the world needs to hear your story.”  Or even “No, your writing is amateurish, your story is not interesting enough for a broader audience, and no one will read this.  Don’t even bother.”  Sudden death I can handle.  But the theme of my life lately seems to be more about the speed of water torture, not split second take-downs.  And I SUCK at waiting and wondering.

A good friend of mine will be publishing her first novel this fall.  As we spoke on the phone today, she told me how relieved she was to be only weeks away from completing her work.  She admitted the process had been so much harder than she ever imagined, that it made her completely neurotic and full of doubt and crazed – but that she had found it a great relief to speak to other authors and hear that each and every one of them thought they were losing their mind somewhere along their creative process, too.  It’s nice to hear that even people who’s talent is indubitable still ride the merry-go-round of anxiety and temporary insanity.

Still, the sentence is ringing in my head, over and over, like a cartoon echo… “I think I’m going to write a book.”

Criminy.  This one’s not letting go.

To have found myself in a book… I can’t even imagine.

Yeah, yeah… it sounds corny, and I am not usually prone to corniness, but there it is.  I’m still thinking about it.  But I guess after 10 years it’s worth thinking about a little harder.

OK, so I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m some kind of submissive.   As much as I have a sadistic streak in my heart a mile wide, I’ve never been comfortable in Domina shoes.  I love to hurt people, but I’m too lazy for the rest.  For a long while I settled on the sadomasochist title.  It’s true, but in a clinical sort of way that doesn’t begin to touch my emotional experience.  I’ve spent the last two years trying to explain to someone, anyone, what it is I’m looking for when I play.  Many times that has gone astonishingly not well.  Most times I didn’t have the right to words to even come close, sometimes the words just left me feeling too vulnerable to ever utter.  But recently…

I hate floggers.  I find spanking boring.  I rarely participate in an organized “scene”.  If you pull a knife out during play, I will laugh in your face unless I truly believe you are about to stab me with it – and I want you to stab me with it.  I don’t lay quietly draped over a St. Andrew’s cross while my top “works on me” – I’m usually doing my best to step on her toes with my heels, kick him in the balls, or bite any appendage that comes too close.  I want it to feel primal.  I want blood and broken skin and the real possibility of bodily injury.  I want terror and rage and hysteria and trembling and crying and maybe even triggers and flashbacks and re-traumatization.  I lose all sense of self-preservation.  I don’t play to provide service.  I don’t play to be obedient, and I will always be an unapologetic brat.  I don’t get all smooshy and gooey in subspace.  Less and less often I want the obligatory “blanket and a glass of water” aftercare. More and more I want to be left in a snot-soaked mess on the floor while you kick me one last time and walk away.  Or maybe left to scream and shoot hate-filled glares at you from a corner. I want to admit that pictures of needles under toenails turn me on, and scenes involving running people over with cars are the ones I secretly aspire to and wish I could handle, like a little girl wishes for ponies and high heels.

So what kind of submissive does this make?  I doesn’t mean I don’t want a dominant – I do, in the worst way.  But who the hell wants to dominate someone who never wants to be submissive?  I don’t play to submit, I play to discover I don’t have to, ever. I play to believe that there is something fundamentally unbreakable about me no matter how broken I am.  I want to be owned and protected and guided by someone who is 100% aware of the fact that I am the most high-maintenance, contradictory, wild animal they will ever own. Someone who is willing to endure just as much pain as I am during a scene.  I want to be queen of the subby heap.  [Please don't take this to mean I disrespect any other sub and the way the experience submission - I DON'T.]

Maybe this is what an alpha submissive is, but I suspect I haven’t even skimmed the surface of what it could mean.  I think I’m claiming it now, nonetheless.  I’m planning on growing into it.

But fuck that.  This is my blog.  The place where I dump all the negative crap so that it doesn’t leak out into my “real” life.  I was being accused, ironically, of having no self-esteem, being completely other focused, and self centered, of whining and not being able to find joy in my life.  So, there’s my demons.  Yes, my self esteem wavers.  Show me a woman, an abuse survivor, anyone “obese”, any single parent, anyone who has ever struggled with PTSD or depression or self-harm, who’s doesn’t.  BUT… NO, I don’t need to give a shit what you think of me because despite what you think you understand about me, I do not have to be completely other-focused (although I fall into the trap sometimes just like everyone else).  Furthermore, um… of course I’m self-centered in my OWN GODDAMNED BLOG.  It’s about me.  Fucking deal with it.  It has no relation to how self-focused I am in actually daily life, nor whether I am capable of finding joy, which I do on a regular basis.  I find joy in my daughter, in love, in spring, in ice-coated winter wonderlands, in shopping at my favorite stores, buying the perfect gifts, in books, in the newest movie in 3D, in being congratulated on a job-well-done, in laughing, in words.  So often in words.  Which is why I blog.  Words to me are magic, mystical, more powerful than swords… pick your mixed metaphor.  Words are fucking nuclear.  Words are my salvation.  Even if my words may seem always negative to you, my dear intendeds, rest assured that leaving them here makes room in this slightly-broken brain of mine for all the joy I am accused of being incapable of feeling.  OK, that’s enough of that rant.  Rally.  Move on.

Speaking of rally, I took my daughter N to the state capitol today to see democracy in action.  There’s something indescribable about being in the middle of a crowd of tens of thousands of people, realizing you all are after the same thing – living wages, fairness, human rights.  It’s beyond empowering.  And I think it’s worth a year of any history or civics lessons N could have gotten from a school book.  So thank you to our WI Teachers union for giving me the excuse.  Thank you for being brave enough to stage a sick out.  And thank you for helping me show my daughter that principles sometimes matter more than rules.

I could write more, I guess, about how I’m doing.  My now ex wife is gone – gone a week now.  I am still shell-shocked.  But I think I’m gonna just ride the rally wave, put the stick down, and poke that particular hornets nest another day.

But I’m reclaiming my blog.  I’ll be back.  Power to the people.