Helpless

The phone rang just after dinner. His father calling. His mother had fallen in the kitchen and maybe broken her hip. She was refusing to allow His father anywhere near her.

Fear and uncertainty and need and the need for support. He and T are off and on the way to them. They've called me as things are happening. Keeping me informed of developments and news.

I am videotaping the Alamo Bowl Game because Ohio State is playing. Otherwise I am helpless to do anything of any use at all. The third, unexplainable one in the poly triad...

Sigh.

I hate paddles!

We had a nice afternoon, really. This is a week where He and I have the luxury of time with my break from school and with His office closed for the holidays. So there was some quiet time in the warm sunny afternoon to snuggle into one another's arms and just be lovey.

But then, inevitably, it was time for a spanking...and a paddling. He's indulged me for days now and not paddled me, choosing straps and the cane instead. Today, there was no such out. He did do me the favor of a nice long, hard hand spanking ahead of the paddle. I found I couldn't relax and enjoy the warm up hand spanking because I knew what was coming. The dread overshadowed the pleasure that might have otherwise derived from that hand spanking. But that was my fault. Not His.

Too soon, that paddle was there, waiting for me to kiss it and ask for Him to please paddle me. Training and habit hold and work. Ingrained behaviors serve. In my mind, I began the mantra which carries me through the worst of these times -- "Yours always and all ways. Yours always and all ways. Yours always and all ways..." Over and over and over, trying to drown out the shrieking wail that rises up in my mind: "I HATE PADDLES!!!!!"

I held the position. Stayed. Eventually, no matter how I despair in the midst of it, paddlings do end. His hand came back and after the harshness of the wood, it seemed almost soothing and sweet.

I sobbed afterwards in His embrace, and finally calmed enough to make love and find my own release and soar with Him as well. We had a nice afternoon, really.

swan

Potpourri...

There are a whole "raft" of things that I'd talk at length about this morning if I had about three hours to just sit and go on and on... I'm happy in a kind of low key and relaxed sort of way and not very focused feeling. Got a bunch of stuff floating around in there, bumping up against my neurons. Maybe just a taste of the stew:

Menopause and why I don't seem to be anywhere near it yet. My mother was there by now, so what the heck? I'm really done with this crap you know? Being a girl isn't all that much fun. Not to put too fine a point on it... Seems all I can muster however is a dandy crop of fibroids and some irregular bleeding that makes life sort of ugly from time to time. Condi Rice got hers handled, so why not me?
Vaginal fisting. Now there's a topic that's close to my heart. Seems I can't seem to do it anymore. Hurts like the dickens. We used to do it all the time and it rocked my world. Now it is scary and miserable and I miss it terribly. And I'm the one who can't get wrapped around it -- literally. Damn!

Mud. The snow is melting and there is now mud everywhere. Mostly on my carpet. Ick. Hopefully as it dries, the vacumn will get most of it up. Between the muddy footprints and the increasingly elderly cat's increasingly delicate stomach, there is simply no hope for my carpet. I know slaves are supposed to be on their knees but this is just silly!

Sometimes your kids can make you cry. The message in the Christmas card from the boy-child said, "I miss you Mom and I am proud of you for working to become the woman you want to be." Awwwww.....

And just in case anyone thinks that the Heretic doesn't care about this swan, I'm writing this from my place here in front of my SAD light. You see, I get the blues when the winter days grow dark and gloomy. No sunshine and this bird starts to droop. So... He figures I might be one of those folks who suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder. I've always gotten low in the late winter. When I lived in Colorado, that came in February, but the skies tend to be bluer and sunnier out that way. Here in Ohio, there is much more grayness to the days. Nevermind. With characteristic, decisiveness, that "diagnosis" led to rapid study and research and then the purchase of the biggest, meanest SAD light on the planet -- shipped to us from Alaska. If anyone knows about dark and gloomy winters, it ought to be those folks. So now I spend an enforced half hour a day in front of my "grow" light. And I do think it helps. Seems to be leveling out the winter time blahs of the droopy swan. Ain't love grand?

swan

What do you say on a day like this?

My CompuServe homepage headline today says the death toll in the Indian Ocean from the earthquake and the tsunami's that followed it is now standing at 44,000. That is sure to rise.

Outside my windows the winter sun glints off sparkling and still largely unmarked snowfall. Our household is warm and well. The holiday gifts are all opened and mostly settled in and I still look forward to a number of days of rest before school resumes on January 3.

Surely there are a number of things in the world where I live that I would wish were otherwise, but for today, I am feeling lucky indeed.

swan

Better today

We had a good day yesterday.

Finally had a chance to sleep in. That in itself was a gift. Then, slowly, as we awakened in one another's arms, and as He teased my body into sexual awakening, He and I approached the idea of playing with me back in the stocks.

This time, it didn't seem so completely, horrifyingly, frightening.

We'd already been playing at what we call "pussy-whacking" -- spanking on my labia and mons and thighs and cunt that can range from light and sensual to fairly intense. Depending on how aroused I am, it is a game that can be very difficult or very sexy. Yesterday, it was on the sexy side. So, when I moved to the stocks, that was at least some of what He continued with in the beginning. The sheer sexiness of it helped to keep my panic at bay.

He didn't put my head in the stock either -- only my ankles and my wrists were restrained...still a pretty definite constraint on my ability to move, but somehow far less intimidating psychologically.

He kept it sexy, scratching me and stroking me with the tip of a knife blade -- sending tingles and shivers all up and down my body. Eventually, my breathing calmed and slowed and I began to relax into the framework of the stock, to lean into it rather than to pull against it. Only then, when He sensed my beginning relaxation did He start to spank me with His hand -- no other implement, just firm and steady strokes with the warmth of His skin to reassure me that I was not alone.

I was covered with sweat -- cold and clammy and shivering, but still there and still in control of my fears, able to hang on and be with Him, and submit to His will. It was a huge step forward from the previous attempt.

He let me rest a bit and then offered me a choice: He would continue my spanking with either a paddle, a strap, or the cane -- my choice. I hate choices in the middle of sessions. My mind whirls in a thousand directions and I can't make it settle down to the decision point, but I also know that no decision lands me with all the options instead of just one. I managed to find the words to choose the cane. It isn't that I prefer the cane. Rather, it is that in the bent over position that the stocks impose, heavier implements feel bone jarring as the impact transmits itself into my spine. So lighter is better. Choice made. But then request required. Ask... Find the words... "Please Sir... " It took me what seemed like long minutes to figure it out -- what to ask for? He waited, and I finally managed, "Please Sir, use the rod on me" That seemed to satisfy, and we proceeded. It was difficult and I did cry and struggle and sweat even more, but I made it. I made it. And He told me that He was proud of me -- it's been so long since I've heard that...

We finished with a few minutes with my head in the stocks and a bit of hand spanking. That's still awfully difficult. Physically difficult on my shoulders and my neck. Emotionally and mentally difficult. It went better this time though, and I think I can learn this. With some time and some support and some coaching.

I feel better and softer and more secure today. More His. More myself. More in a place that I recognize. Less lost.

swan

I really don't "get" Christmas

This is the day that so much of "normal" American society celebrates as Christmas. It is a part of the religious tradition within which I was raised. It is not foreign to me in any sense. Yet, I am increasingly baffled and bemused by it, and, this year in particular, put off by it -- even a bit incensed and offended.

Part of that comes, this year, from the still fresh pain of the November presidential elections, and the implications of those elections in terms of American "culture" -- that brooding sense that there are GOOD folks (defined as conservative, right wing, fundamentalist Christians of a certain stripe) and then all the rest of us... For someone, like me, who has spent a lifetime as a feminist, a pacifist, a person who lives in an alternative lifestyle family, a person with friends and family members who are gays and lesbians, who is not sure that the Christ myth is THE TRUTH, who finds more questions than answers in the "scriptural" writings of the world, the world has gotten pretty unjustifiably black and white and, frankly, darned scary and unwelcoming. If you want the honest truth, it makes me mad as hell.

So, all this fuss over the supposed birthdate of the historical person, Jesus, who started (although I'm not convinced he intended any of what has been done in his name) all the Christian hoopla, disturbs me. All the carols and all the cards and all the twinkle lights and all the HO HO HO and all the rush to buy gifts and decorate and party -- I've viewed through jaundiced eyes. Seems I've grown more and more attached to my sense of connection to all the parts and pieces of the universe, and through that, connection to the Divine Creative Force, which I sense is the IT we all know as GOD. If there was, at some point in time, as so many cultures insist on telling it, a savior born of a virgin in some miraculous fashion, and come to live among us, as one of us, my question would be, "why -- to what purpose?"

And so I am not merely a "Grinch" or a "Scrooge," but much more fundamentally, a non-participant in the Christmas "thing" from a philosophical point of view. I go along socially, because it is what my "family" does, but I find it wearing and draining and annoying. It is another level of personal dishonesty and hiddeness that does not fit. It wears badly, like a shoe that is too tight.

Tonight, though, it is at an end. We are all home, tucked in warm and comfortable and together. It has been a difficult and dark and snowy and bitter cold few days. My heart has struggled and my mind has bridled and I've cried alone in the long hours of the night with sorrows and fears that are for another day. For now, it is enough to find us all three, warm and loved and safe here together.

Night

It's Christmas eve. We've been all day at "family" events. In a poly family like ours, that becomes complicated. There's T's family -- mom and brother and his wife and all the myriad kids. Quite a free for all of gifts and wildness. An open loving gang, where I've always been warmly welcomed and included even though there is no actual explanation for my presence. Later, dinner with Himself's family -- His parents, ex-wife and her mother, His kids. That's a much more constrained and formal sort of group, where the protocols are stiffer, but even with them there is a sort of de facto level of matter of factness to my being around. Still, I am clearly the extra person that no one quite knows what to do about, and there is the need to be discreet in my behavior. It is a strain.

The family that I would label as "mine" in some sense is all very far away both geographically as well as emotionally, mostly. The only living parent, my mother, is estranged -- civil but unaccepting and unwelcoming of my life or my partners. Of my two brothers, only one still speaks to me at all and he is alternately grudgingly accepting and then preachy about how I am being stubborn in my attitude toward "mom." My grown children are really OK I think, but busy (even more than busy) putting together their own lives, and so have little time or wherewithal to be interacting with me. And so the decision made to pick up and follow this path has led me into personal exile. That is acutely felt in this season when all and sundry immerse themselves in "family."

And I am reminded of the places where "slavery" of the sort I claim is solitary in nature. It is not His to meet my needs or keep me happy. That I am feeling sad, longing for gentle touches, yearning for the sorts of foreplay that might inflame me ahead of the pain I know is my lot... These are not the things that are His fault or legitimately His concerns. And still, in the dark of the night, I lie awake and know how very alone I am and know how very dark the road ahead of me seems just now, and how very few choices there really are for one who embarks on this journey. And, yes, I do wonder if I chose wisely when I made the choice. I think I did, but still, in the night, I wonder -- I am, perhaps a terrible coward.

swan

Christmas gifting

The Swan's HeartI struggled with this one...

Way back last summer, He showed me a stock that He'd found on line. He was all excited about it, and thought it would just be such fun to put me into it and then spank, and cane, and use the singletail. I remember the rising sense of panic as He went on and on and on. I didn't say much at the time. Just let the conversation hang in the air, and eventually, it sort of died away.

For one thing, such furniture is not easy to come by, and it is expensive...

But then, I've been struggling with the masochistic side of our relationship in general. It is where I live, after all. Not all of who I am, or how we are together, of course. I know that he loves me, even without the SM part of my submission, but there is a huge component of my slavery that is predicated on the sadomasochistic power exchange between us. I know this. Knew it when I came to Him. I understand that what thrills Him is the pain that He milks from me, and that when I am struggling and fighting to stay with Him through the agony, that is the one thing that most delights Him. There was a time when that was erotic for me. When I found my way into an endorphin charged rush and escaped into a floaty mist of pleasurable sensuality. No more. The sadist has taken that away -- stripped away the erotic and sensual aspects of the experience and left the pain, until there is only the searing agony and the fear and the humbling knowledge that I will hurt and beg and most often break.

So, the late night voyage on-line to order the Stock that would lock me into position -- head, wrists, and ankles, for His pleasure, was more than the purchase of a gift. It was a journey into my fears. It was a facing of the dragons that live at the edges of the dark forests in my mind. Once the decision was made, I ventured from the warmth of my bed in the middle of the night to place the order in secret, pleading with the craftsman to make sure that the package would arrive in plain packaging so that the surprise would be assured. And then I waited in terror -- barely able to breathe for all the weeks, knowing that IT was coming, knowing that I had cast my own fate. The simple knowledge made me crazy with fear and anticipation, and dread.

And now... today, because a wild, historical snow storm has kept us all home here in the almost south of Cincinnati... We've opened our gifts a few days early and it is here and assembled and I've had my maiden voyage. I've survived, albeit not with a bit of panic and hyperventilation. He seems delighted. I'm glad for that. It is what I hoped. It scares me half to death. The sheer powerlessness of it.....

swan

Naming is about claiming

When you name something or someone, you lay claim to it or them in an essential way.
When I came to live here, I was Sue -- Suzanne (the moniker my parents gave to me). I saw myself as by myself and for myself -- a warrior woman, who needed to fight battles in order to survive. I also knew, deep in my soul, that I was one of those ugly duckling women, who were blessed with brains rather than with beauty. So be it.
But I came here because He who now owns me said, "come to me." Not a request, but simple directive. Undeniable and irresistible. Once in His orbit and under His sway, I began to change: to live and breathe and grow in His sight. The ugly duckling metamorphosed into a beautiful swan. The changes were tangible and physical, it is true: pounds lost and years shed as worries and cares seemed to melt away. Some change though is more numinous -- in the carriage and in the lift of the head and in the simple knowing in the heart. One becomes what is seen when another looks...

swan