the marks of a slave

[BiBunny]

"I love you, slave," he finally said to me the other day.

I have waited for years to hear those words.

That incredibly simple statement, so powerful, so profound, made every tear I have cried, every night's sleep I have lost, every ounce of alcohol I have consumed in hopes of somehow drowning who and what I am, every night I have come home and lain on the bed with one foot on the floor to keep the room from spinning, every internal struggle that I have gone through and still go through worth it.

There is still much more hardship and struggle to go through. It's not as if it's somehow ended now. But when I think of the look in that man's eyes when he said those words, I realize that, however hard it gets, I will follow him for all the days of my life.

 

[Adakgirl]

But I don't like seeing the consequences of my own mistakes. Especially when they're played out in the lives of my children.

My mother was married briefly twice and had six children, each from a different father. Her children's lives WERE the consequences of her own mistakes.

They may be hard to look at, but if you can see them now you still have time to turn them into something better. It is when these things are seen for what they are and then just left be, not addressed, not dealt with, you turn your head away because it's too hard to face what your mistakes have caused..that is when you fail them.

But really think of the mothers who should have never been mothers, who don't have the protective instinct that you do, who don't bother to look to see how their children's lives are being played out or who are too self absorbed to care. Who are not there for their children, who do not prepare their meals and care for them.
THINK of the drama so many children are dragged through, the pain so many are put through, the ones that will never have the unconditional love from their mothers that you give your children. Then look again at your children's lives and tell me are the consequences of your mistakes really so awfully bad?

 

[intothewoods]

six kids with six different men?


damn!

 

[Adakgirl]

I guess sluttish behavior and a love of sex and men runs in my family, and there was no birth control back then. Bu she raised us by herself and without welfare...only the oldest turned out to be useless. the rest of us turned out ok.

 

[eastern sun]

The ground beneath all of our feet has always shifted and moved, it has never stopped.
Does your fear of loosing your balance come from the knowledge that it will have to be you who will have to gather the strength to pick yourself up yet again?
Or that if you somehow can't do it, the fear that he will fold his arms and look at you with disgust, turn away and refuse to pick you back up?
Do you trust someone will be there for you..if you lose your balance and fall?

I have a terrible relationship with my own mistakes.

They take shape outside myself and punish me. And I resist them.

I try to convince them of my good intentions and the nature of human clumsiness.

They keep reminding me not to kid myself. I can do better.

I cringe in their presence, and bend to their pressure.

And by then my mistakes are directing the show.

It helps sometimes to lose myself in his lead.
It helps sometimes to just do the dishes.
It always helps to rediscover my humility.

What I'd like to learn is how to live with my mistakes as friends I can laugh with, instead of chastising enemies.

 

[eastern sun]

I have lost sight of my right place.
I have lost sight of my humility.

Forgive me.

 

[intothewoods]

I have a terrible relationship with my own mistakes.

They take shape outside myself and punish me. And I resist them.

I try to convince them of my good intentions and the nature of human clumsiness.

They keep reminding me not to kid myself. I can do better.

I cringe in their presence, and bend to their pressure.
And by then my mistakes are directing the show.

It helps sometimes to lose myself in his lead.
It helps sometimes to just do the dishes.
It always helps to rediscover my humility.

What I'd like to learn is how to live with my mistakes as friends I can laugh with, instead of chastising enemies.

This really resonates for me.

 

[eastern sun]

the marks of a master

It was his birthday yesterday.

And the day before, on Easter Sunday, I fell while racing my daughter on her scooter. It's been a long time since I felt my face hit concrete, and though the sensation is remarkable, it was the sound of the impact - like the sound of meat falling on the slaughterhouse floor - that made my heart skip and tears spring to my eyes.

The resulting marks were superficial. But dramatic.

So, yesterday, he calls from work and wants to meet at a restaurant in Manhattan. I tell him I don't look so good, will it be ok? And he asks me to get the kids ready and call him back.

My body hurts. My face hurts. And it's while I'm dressing this wounded self, putting makeup on my eyes under scrapes and bruises, that I feel like his "slave."

I call him back, "we're ready" and he tells me where to go.

I can't find the car. I'm disoriented, standing there in my nice clothes. But my kids are sweet and patient and we meet my daughter's favorite teacher while we wander around the block.

It hurts to drive. But we arrive, with gifts and smiles, and he is happy to see us.

I can't get comfortable in the hard restaurant chairs. Something's wrong with my hip. And he asks "what's up?" "I can't get comfortable." And just as suddenly it shifts. We're here. I settle in for the evening.

A few minutes later, he looks up from the menu. "You don't look so bad."

"Thanks." I smirk. We order. While the waitress steals looks at my face.

As we talk about nothing, bantering with the kids, regaling each other with stories of the day, he interrupts to say "You look beautiful." My heart melts.

And, after dinner, I'm surprised by my own face in the bathroom mirror, because I actually believed him.

Only a master can look at this bruised, swollen face and see its beauty.

 

[eastern sun]

And the night it happened, he praised my willingness to allow the thrill of the moment to override my caution. "That's passion," he said. "Maybe we should get you a scooter of your own."

 

[Adakgirl]

What I'd like to learn is how to live with my mistakes as friends I can laugh with, instead of chastising enemies.

My thoughts on this.
I believe there are some mistakes we make in our lives that we simply cannot laugh with. Nor should they be laughed with, they are to dreadful to be humorous even years after we have made them. We can only accept the fact that we made them, learn to live with the consequences of them and try to understand why we made them at the time. This way we can try to understand them and learn from them, so we don't make them again. I think we have to make them in order to grow and learn.( I am sure you know this)

Without making mistakes and learning from them...what would you know ? How could you have learned about life and the choices we must make when certain situations arise? How could you function in the world, among people? Parents that do not allow their children to make their own choices (when they are old enough to) be they right or wrong, and don't allow them to make their own mistakes, who deal with the consequences of their child's mistakes by covering up for them, paying the price for them or "fixing" them, only hurt their children by doing those things.

We make mistakes for good reason, once made, go ahead and beat yourself up about them, chastise yourself but only do that for a set period of time then stop and deal with the consequences ....we can only gain knowledge from mistakes. Mistakes are not bad, they are not your enemy unless you can not accept the fact you actually made them and forgive yourself for them. Allow yourself your own forgiveness, learn from them, remember them and then let the mistakes that are holding guilt and pain over your head go...move the fuck on. Don't keep throwing your mistakes back into your own face, it is only destructive to you and will not change a thing.

Only then will you be able to laugh with them . and only some of them, not all of them.
No-one can teach you how to do this...you already know how, you just have to give yourself permission do it.

 

[Homburg]

Adakgirl is on to something there.

I've been thinking a lot along these lines. You hear about "negative space" in art. The space around your subject. The blank, or purposefully underused areas that, in good composition, help to define the subject. Negative Space is highly important in visual design, and the space between beats and notes is equally important in musical design, and speech as well.

In speech, silence becomes incredibly important. And a truly proficient speaker will manipulate silence as deftly as they handle words. Writing does something similar. When you create a character or a scene, that which is not said, but is apparent in the writing, can be incredibly important in presenting the overall tone of the piece.

In each of these cases, the Negative Elements are often what sets the overall tone of the piece, allows for pacing, for cognitive rest if you will. Without these pauses, these spaces, these comparatively empty mu elements, you will have a jumbled, overly busy incoherent mess.

Chew that over for a second.

Now look at good character design, be it writing, television, or oral story-telling. A character may be presented by their positives and their strengths, but what makes them well and truly plausible, easy to identify with, and soooo close to "real" are their flaws.

Monk is a pretty popular television show. The main character, Adrian Monk, is an incredibly perceptive, intelligent man, with an almost preternatural ability to collate disparate minor datum into a coherent whole, and thus unravelling the core mystery of each episode. He is also afflicted with very serious Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, among other very blatant and burdensome mental/emotional issues. Would such a preternaturally perceptive brainiac be plausible, or likeable were it not for his attendant frailties? Probably not. He would be so superior as to be insufferable, and is still almost that bad to the actual police investigator characters in the show.

You can look at just about every really good character in any story and you will see that their flaws are what made them plausible. Well, the same can be said about their back-stories as well. Their mistakes, their foibles, and their bad choices are what defines a believable, rich back-story. The same can be said of real world figures. The apocryphal story of George Washington and the cherry tree is a good example of this. Young George makes a rather bad decision, a mistake, and his reaction to said mistake defines his character for us for the next 200+ years.

The same can be said for you as a person. You are possessed of a unique combination of strengths, talents, shining high points where others praise you, laud you, and envy you. You have made good decisions in your life, taken the right path, and won. But you would be dull, lifeless, and difficult to believe if you did not also have your errors, your mistakes, your judgement bobbles, and your metaphorical warts.

I do my best to live my life without regrets. I know myself well, know how I am, and how I will react to things. I know that I will regret inaction a thousand times more than failure, so I act. I accept my mistakes, because I bought them with my effort, and they usually happened because I was either insufficiently prepared, diligent, or informed. In each case, I can likely learn something from those mistakes, and endeavour to not make them a second time.

And, as I consider the whole of my life to be the sum total of every choice I have made up until this exact second, I have to embrace my mistakes, my bad decisions, and own them. If I am to say that I am pleased with my life at this moment, and I am, then, by extension, I must say that I am pleased with my mistakes as well, as they got me here just as much as my *cough* brilliant moments and victories.

And, honestly, some of my fuck-ups make for great stories. Yours probably do too.

 

[myinnerslut]

sometimes the hardest thing is learning to stop trying for perfection.

 

[intothewoods]

My thoughts on this.
I believe there are some mistakes we make in our lives that we simply cannot laugh with. Nor should they be laughed with, they are to dreadful to be humorous even years after we have made them. We can only accept the fact that we made them, learn to live with the consequences of them and try to understand why we made them at the time. This way we can try to understand them and learn from them, so we don't make them again. I think we have to make them in order to grow and learn.( I am sure you know this)

Without making mistakes and learning from them...what would you know ? How could you have learned about life and the choices we must make when certain situations arise? How could you function in the world, among people? Parents that do not allow their children to make their own choices (when they are old enough to) be they right or wrong, and don't allow them to make their own mistakes, who deal with the consequences of their child's mistakes by covering up for them, paying the price for them or "fixing" them, only hurt their children by doing those things.

We make mistakes for good reason, once made, go ahead and beat yourself up about them, chastise yourself but only do that for a set period of time then stop and deal with the consequences ....we can only gain knowledge from mistakes. Mistakes are not bad, they are not your enemy unless you can not accept the fact you actually made them and forgive yourself for them. Allow yourself your own forgiveness, learn from them, remember them and then let the mistakes that are holding guilt and pain over your head go...move the fuck on. Don't keep throwing your mistakes back into your own face, it is only destructive to you and will not change a thing.

Only then will you be able to laugh with them . and only some of them, not all of them.
No-one can teach you how to do this...you already know how, you just have to give yourself permission do it.

I didn't take easternsun so literally. I took it more as a sentiment about owning your bullshit. If you own it, you can laugh at it. Something like that.

There are mistakes and there are bad choices. And sometimes it's both. Forgiving yourself for bad choices is sometimes the most challenging of tasks.

 

[intothewoods]

Sorry to put this here, but this thread makes me think. Hope you don't mind, easternsun.

Recently we've been flexing the terms of our relationship. Not role playing. Not pushing in a destructive way. Almost trying out these models on for fit as we approach our wedding. There are times I push back harder. Asking him to think about whether he's really hungry, because fuck it all, I want that man with me in twenty years. I love him. I don't want to be without him. And there are times he pushes back harder, to make it clear that he is in charge. And the way we bend to make that work with kidlet there. He has said slave a lot lately. Mind you, I don't feel it is what others identify as here. The word has a different meaning for him. To me it seems fluid and constantly evolving. So we'll see.

 

[DamianCain]

It was his birthday yesterday.

As we talk about nothing, bantering with the kids, regaling each other with stories of the day, he interrupts to say "You look beautiful." My heart melts.

I am always bewildered by her unwillingness to accept that her beauty is at the absolute core of my sexuality, and vexed by the trepidation that accompanies my directions for her to find expression of her desires that are so unbearably erotic to me.

 

[bethpage]

I have a terrible relationship with my own mistakes.

They take shape outside myself and punish me. And I resist them.

I try to convince them of my good intentions and the nature of human clumsiness.

They keep reminding me not to kid myself. I can do better.

I cringe in their presence, and bend to their pressure.

I've been musing about mistakes. Here is something I posted on my journal that may have meaning for you:

Virtues and Vices: Sadness

I have a lot of both. The ancient desert fathers (also known as the lunatics from that Jewish cult who lived in the howling wilderness--for their time, they were really weird!!) had a tradition of the eight bad thought, which became the seven deadly sins. The desert fathers (DFs) had sadness and acedia listed--these were later rolled into sloth; and vainglory added to pride; and envy added to the total list. Gluttony, lust, greed and anger got to stay unchanged.

These last few weeks have been the season of Lent, leading up to the high holy days of Passover and Easter. As far as the church (I'm counting all of those who considering themselves Christians, not any specific tradition) is concerned, this is The Day. Christmas is only special because of Easter, the saint's days are extra, but Easter? Easter is The Day. And Lent is a time of preparation, leading up to the important part, like a 6 1/2 week long arrow, pointing to this special weekend.

I didn't do much special for Lent, or for Easter. I barely made it to church, I didn't take up anything extra, I spent little time contemplating what this all means to me and how I could better serve God. I did give up shopping, mostly. That was my sacrifice, but that was also because I'm broke. I'm deep in the grips of acedia, and I can't say that I'm doing much to get free.

And I'm feeling a sadness, because of all I haven't done. A disappointment, a lingering resentment against myself. I had wondered why the DFs put sadness on a list of bad thoughts which lead to bad habits--I mean, seriously, sadness???? That's stupid.

But now I think I understand. Because if I choose to dwell on this sadness, on my missed opportunities, it can become a way of thought that leads to a way of life: looking back, living in the past, instead of living fully in the present. It becomes a spiral that its easier not to leave.

And this applies to much more of my life than just Lent or my relationship with God. Its also about all the times when my choices were less than stellar, and the ramifications and second guessing circle in my head like sharks around a lifeboat.

 

[eastern sun]

Sorry to put this here, but this thread makes me think. Hope you don't mind, easternsun.

Recently we've been flexing the terms of our relationship. Not role playing. Not pushing in a destructive way. Almost trying out these models on for fit as we approach our wedding. There are times I push back harder. Asking him to think about whether he's really hungry, because fuck it all, I want that man with me in twenty years. I love him. I don't want to be without him. And there are times he pushes back harder, to make it clear that he is in charge. And the way we bend to make that work with kidlet there. He has said slave a lot lately. Mind you, I don't feel it is what others identify as here. The word has a different meaning for him. To me it seems fluid and constantly evolving. So we'll see.

I look forward to hearing what the word slave means to you.

There are no rules, you know.

I still find it fascinating that our relationship only makes sense using terms like "master" and "slave." The nature of the relationship hasn't changed fundamentally. We're just nicer to each other, now. Weird, hunh?

And it doesn't mean we don't have our doubts and troubles. We're just nicer to each other while we go through them.

Maybe it helps having some kind of "form" to live in. Maybe it helps us feel more comfortable about our deeper (shall I say "darker") selves.

I know it makes me try harder to please him. Which makes me pay closer attention to him. Which makes me see him more clearly. Which improves our communication. Which makes it (sometimes) easier to be together.

It also makes me less likely to focus on "what I'm not getting." Like, particular kinds of attention that I think I need.

I hope you will post here, intothewoods, as you explore the meaning of these words. I'd love to hear how they express themselves in the "stuff" of your lives. Or how they don't. We'll all learn from your experience.

 

[eastern sun]

Mistakes

They may be hard to look at, but if you can see them now you still have time to turn them into something better. It is when these things are seen for what they are and then just left be, not addressed, not dealt with, you turn your head away because it's too hard to face what your mistakes have caused..that is when you fail them.

But really think of the mothers who should have never been mothers, who don't have the protective instinct that you do, who don't bother to look to see how their children's lives are being played out or who are too self absorbed to care. Who are not there for their children, who do not prepare their meals and care for them.
THINK of the drama so many children are dragged through, the pain so many are put through, the ones that will never have the unconditional love from their mothers that you give your children. Then look again at your children's lives and tell me are the consequences of your mistakes really so awfully bad?

My thoughts on this.
I believe there are some mistakes we make in our lives that we simply cannot laugh with. Nor should they be laughed with, they are too dreadful to be humorous even years after we have made them. We can only accept the fact that we made them, learn to live with the consequences of them and try to understand why we made them at the time. This way we can try to understand them and learn from them, so we don't make them again. I think we have to make them in order to grow and learn. ( I am sure you know this)

Without making mistakes and learning from them...what would you know ? How could you have learned about life and the choices we must make when certain situations arise? How could you function in the world, among people? Parents that do not allow their children to make their own choices (when they are old enough to) be they right or wrong, and don't allow them to make their own mistakes, who deal with the consequences of their child's mistakes by covering up for them, paying the price for them or "fixing" them, only hurt their children by doing those things.

We make mistakes for good reason, once made, go ahead and beat yourself up about them, chastise yourself but only do that for a set period of time then stop and deal with the consequences ....we can only gain knowledge from mistakes. Mistakes are not bad, they are not your enemy unless you can not accept the fact you actually made them and forgive yourself for them. Allow yourself your own forgiveness, learn from them, remember them and then let the mistakes that are holding guilt and pain over your head go...move the fuck on. Don't keep throwing your mistakes back into your own face, it is only destructive to you and will not change a thing.

Only then will you be able to laugh with them . and only some of them, not all of them.
No-one can teach you how to do this...you already know how, you just have to give yourself permission do it.

I'm an addict, an advanced practitioner of a variety of techniques of denial, blame, evasion, rationalization and self-destruction.

So what do I do? I take the kind of thoughts expressed in your first post (like "I'm not as bad as those other mothers") and use them, at least temporarily, to justify turning my head away.

Then the initial problem escalates to crisis. And the consequences of my denial are played out in my son's behavior at school. I cannot deny, but I can blame. I blame others, who may or may not listen to my frightened anger. And I blame myself, who always listens.

And then, because I really was in denial. And rationalizing the petty signs of trouble with grandiose ideas and self-congratulation (on what a good mother I was, at heart). I then vowed to tattoo the nature of my mistakes in the center of my mind's eye, so that I would not forget. And be doomed to repeat the bad habits of dysfunctional families and irresponsible adults.

Which leads to the creation of a guilt complex that filters every perception with its self-chastising hues. And once again, my vision is not clear.

The pendulum swings from one extreme to the other. And as it swings through time, I do count on finding equilibrium again, with a deeper (though perhaps still flawed) understanding of "what's really going on."

But see things from a moment from my perspective. I live a double life. Our community views me as a wonderful, caring mother, and entrusts their children to my care. And at heart I am.

But what if I told them that I was a "sex slave?" Many of them would be titillated and want the sordid details. But all of them would rethink their notion of me. And my children's behavior, less than perfect, and sometimes downright troubled, would be attributed to the shadow I am casting.

It isn't necessarily being a "slave" that is the problem (though sometimes I wonder), it's being an addict - and if I am using my position as "slave" to feed an addiction - then the wonderful array of behaviors follow - the denial, the rationalizations, the blame, and the guilt.

I've been thinking lately that I need to find a kink-friendly therapist to help me work through some of these issues. (But I don't usually trust therapists - they're often crazier than I am.)

And I look at some of the fresh-faced lovely young women who are currently evaluating my son, and who I do trust with his well-being, and know that if I told them the truth about my relationship, I would be the one in treatment. . .

This is what bothers me.

 

[eastern sun]

If you've ever been to a 12 Step Meeting, (whether for sex, or drugs, or alcohol, or food. or relationship addictions), there's a lot of laughter there. Usually stemming from a realization of how blind we were to "the way things were," and the insanity we took for granted.

But we also cry when the consequences of our ignorance was tragic.

 

[eastern sun]

I do my best to live my life without regrets. I know myself well, know how I am, and how I will react to things. I know that I will regret inaction a thousand times more than failure, so I act. I accept my mistakes, because I bought them with my effort, and they usually happened because I was either insufficiently prepared, diligent, or informed. In each case, I can likely learn something from those mistakes, and endeavour to not make them a second time.

And, as I consider the whole of my life to be the sum total of every choice I have made up until this exact second, I have to embrace my mistakes, my bad decisions, and own them. If I am to say that I am pleased with my life at this moment, and I am, then, by extension, I must say that I am pleased with my mistakes as well, as they got me here just as much as my *cough* brilliant moments and victories.

And, honestly, some of my fuck-ups make for great stories. Yours probably do too.

I agree, Homburg. And I value your perspective. Since my kids were born, though, I have preferred stories with "happy endings," both in fact and fiction.

I can see the impact my parents' mistakes had on me. And I can see the impact my mistakes have had on my kids. I can forgive my parents. And I can forgive myself. I can even envision a more wholesome future, and take the actions that will lead us there.

But wholesome and the kind of sex I like don't always get used in the same phrase. Am I kidding myself to think that it is possible to have a "wholesome M/s relationship?"

When I'm in the middle of the forest, I often get lost in the trees.

 

[eastern sun]

sometimes the hardest thing is learning to stop trying for perfection.

especially when every spiritual path advises us to move towards godliness

maybe the ancients had it right. . . maybe having imperfect gods is the answer

 

[eastern sun]

I am always bewildered by her unwillingness to accept that her beauty is at the absolute core of my sexuality, and vexed by the trepidation that accompanies my directions for her to find expression of her desires that are so unbearably erotic to me.

Hi. I like your choice of words - "vexed", "trepidation." It seems like such a minor thing. So easily overcome.

(You should see the stormclouds developing in my chest! A dark thunderhead of turbulent resistance. . . .)

So why is this so hard? You'd think chasing my own pleasure would be inherently rewarding.



It's good to see you here. You surprised me.

 

[Shalrath]

At the restaurant, he took three pieces of broccoli, not the "choicest bites."

(This may be a matter of perspective.)

Having gone out with two vegetarians, I can understand the food hierarchy minefield this entails....

This is an utterly fascinating thread. I'm not into BDSM at all (I have other fetishes), and reading it - particularly the anecdotes by easternsun and VelvetDarkness, also BiBunny, Homburg and myinnerslut amongst others (I've bypassed the linguistic/social/religious debates I'm afraid) - has been very interesting and enlightening. It's a whole new discovery (reminds me of discovering dark ambient music and entire global and diverse music scene I'd never even heard of).

It's also raised interesting questions and emotions about devotion, feelings, giving and taking, for a non-BDSM person.

 

[Shalrath]

Oh, wait, I remember now, I had a question, sheesh memory of a goldfish on crack.... Anyway:

Is it a common theme - and part of the attraction to a Master - that they are someone who is fairly successful (financially, social status) and in a position of control and power in their everyday life?? Or can it work with someone who has a lowly life status but has power/control tendencies in their personal life??

 

[Netzach]

Oh, wait, I remember now, I had a question, sheesh memory of a goldfish on crack.... Anyway:

Is it a common theme - and part of the attraction to a Master - that they are someone who is fairly successful (financially, social status) and in a position of control and power in their everyday life?? Or can it work with someone who has a lowly life status but has power/control tendencies in their personal life??

I'd say if money is your personal value system those things are mandatory.

A lot of people who have money are looking for a new value system. I'm certainly riding the edge of solvency into my adult life and I seem to have no shortage of men who want to do my bidding. There are other things to be in control of and other ways of expressing that control.

A lot of the time, I find that people are not exposed to real, raw, emotional honesty. I'm kind of good with that. They can help me with my books. It works out.