This one was Tough...

I think that people who do not live in D/s or M/s lifestyle relationships question whether it is even possible to do this full time. I understand the question. It is easy to see how outsiders might question how it is possible to incorporate the “stuff” of our kind of living into the day-to-day realities of life. To all those who are skeptical I can only say, we do it… we live it, stresses, strains, and all.

Of course, when the strains of “real” life appear, they tell in the M/s realm as well… We’ve been living life in the stress zone for a while, and cracks are beginning to appear. Master is tired. I am moody. T is ready to run away from home. We all need a vacation, and that is simply not in the cards. If anything, when we look out into the immediate future, there is more heavy and hard stuff coming down the line. We all know it. We all understand the necessity and inevitability for it all. We are all resigned and set for handling it. Still there are times when brave hearts falter and brave faces crumple, when tempers flare, and conflict arises. Each of us manages that in our own unique way. We are interesting personalities and the dynamics between us are reflective of our various temperaments and relational styles and preferences. T tends to avoid and smooth over conflict. I tend to manage it to a large degree – modulating and negotiating for a while, until I don’t… Master generally goes head on for the heart of the matter – or sometimes the jugular. When He and I clash, it can be titanic…

Between us, one of the most persistent raw spots is the pervasiveness of “media.” Master is, by my lights, a media addict. He wants, no – demands that there must be a television available in every room in the house, and radios as well. Our household computer is also (conveniently) located where one is in easy viewing proximity of the main room television. It is common for Him to turn on the television the moment His eyes open in the morning, and He is perfectly happy to fall asleep with it still blaring away at night. Both He and T seem to sleep undisturbed through whatever is on the tube or the radio (a behavior that I find utterly uncivilized)… On the other hand, He views me as a complete “Luddite” who would, left unchecked, throw all the evil TV’s, radios, and computers in the nearest pond and drown them all… That assessment isn’t too far off the mark. I seldom turn on a television on my own, and most of my radio listening is reserved for time alone in the car. Because of my hearing loss, I find the noise of such devices isolating. I cannot hear normal conversations when there is other noise in the room. So, I prefer it fairly quiet. Then too, I find most television programming just stupid and vapid. If I’m cleaning house, and I’m home alone, I may put something on the stereo and then sing along while I work.

If you’ve ever lived in close, intimate relationship with another person for more than a few weeks or months, you know that it is not the big stuff that gets you. Always, it is the seemingly little things. I believe this is true even in M/s relationships. For us, this TV thing is one of THOSE.

So, here we are living lives that have just been too intense for words. Illnesses, and aging parents, and work related demands that have pushed the envelope way beyond what is reasonable, and finances feeling sort of stretched some, and end of the school year exhaustion setting in, and…

As if that isn’t enough, we live in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Cincinnati Reds play baseball here. Anyone who follows baseball and lives in Cincinnati is subject to some sort of odd combination of slow torture and public humiliation mixed with just a hint of the taunt that maybe it could be different if only… It is worse than being a Cubs fan. Those poor fools know there is no hope. People in Cincinnati seem to have some insane belief that it might just be possible for this misbegotten bunch to pull it out, and there’s the rub. From opening day on, Master becomes possessed of a virulent mental illness. He knows it will make Him miserable, but still He watches Reds baseball on television, or, if the games are not televised, He listens on the radio. A lot of the time they just flat lose right from the start, and He yells and screams at the television through the whole game. It’s a party. But other times, they actually manage to lead going into the last inning. That’s when it gets really ugly, because we have a closing pitcher by the name of Danny Graves. Danny Graves will be the death of my Dear Master. Of this, I am certain. Danny is a nut case on the pitcher’s mound. He can blow a five or six run lead in the blink of an eye, and then complain when the fans boo him. He is the scariest thing in baseball. Why he continues to appear at the end of every game in which the Reds have a lead is a mystery to me, but there is the fact.

Well, anyway, last Sunday night the witch’s brew boiled over. Too much stress for too long, people worn down to a frazzle by all the forces working on them, a basic incompatibility ballooning in importance late at night when sleep-deprivation began to war against a looming early start to another intense work week, frustration and anger as another Danny-Graves-authored humiliation played out on the TV broadcast of another Reds game…

Master was listening to the ending of the game on the radio. Except He wasn’t really listening. He was sleeping and it was late. I’d been sleeping, fitfully, off and on, but the noise was keeping me from really being able to sleep soundly. So when I could tell that he was actually sleeping, I hoped to be able to turn the radio off. I made several moves in that direction, but each time He would wake up and growl at me. I’d settle in and try and wait. The game ended and I thought, “now we will be able to go to sleep,” but still the radio played on. Again He drifted off to sleep and I heard snoring, so I tried again, and again got growled at. By now, I was feeling really frustrated and increasingly angry. I was awake because of the radio – and He was asleep! Finally, I decided that if I wasn’t going to sleep, I might as well read. So I sat up, turned on a light and found a book. That, of course, woke Him up and made Him angry. He asked what I was doing and I told Him I couldn’t sleep and so was reading until it was time to sleep. Unfortunately, my frustration was clear in my voice, and He heard it loud and clear.

The battle was joined. He immediately was furious with me, declaring me unreasonable about television and radio. This in spite of the many, many nights I have stroked His back while He watched TV late at night with His head laid on my stomach until He drifted off to sleep, and I then had to struggle to reach the remote to turn off the TV long after He was dreaming and snoring… None of that made any difference. This time He was too worn, too stressed, too exhausted, too upset to care about the past. He declared that this was the last straw. Stated that He would not sleep with me anymore. Said that I was an insufferable bitch. I tried to back off and apologize, but He would have none of it. His fury was towering…

I knew that He would leave and go next door to T, and that she would be confused and upset by whatever story He would have to tell. Our late night rows often make her crazy. I was shaking and just devastated. It had only been a week or so since He’d threatened to strap me for questioning whether always meant always, and now He was saying He would no longer have me in His bed.

I slipped out from under the covers and went to the front bedroom of the house. It is a small room that we use primarily for storage. I found a small quilt there, wrapped up in it and sat in a corner on the floor. There, I sobbed silently in the darkness, not wanting to anger Him any further. I cried and cried and cried until there were no tears left. Eventually, I crumpled into a heap and fell asleep on the floor. Sometime early in the morning, around 3:30, He came and found me and took me back to bed. I was terribly cold and terribly hurt, but sad and sorrowful, I crawled back into His embrace. He said not a word. Simply pulled me into His arms and cradled me and we slept, fitfully until the alarm went off at 5:00 for school.

It took me until Wednesday to finally calm down enough to talk to Him about how hurt and scared I ‘d been. We talked about it and things are better and smoother now. M/s doesn’t make all the rough and bumpy places go away, and it doesn’t mean that we never disagree or that we never fight. It does mean that we hold onto and respect one another in very particular and specific ways even through the most difficult and heated and angry battles. I never considered ending our relationship and never considered leaving. I knew that as hurt as I was, it was His decision to come and call me back, and that I would stay on that floor until that happened. I knew that I had to give Him my pain and my anger and my fear over the whole episode in order for us to heal. That was my responsibility, and that ultimately it was my job to let it go back into His keeping. I did not have the choice to stay hurt and angry over it. There is much that is difficult in this life, but much to learn as well.

I am trying to learn.

swan