The Care and Feeding of...

It's been complicated. I don't think there are any simple or clear answers as to how we got into the tangle we've found ourselves in.

Some background --

If you read the header here, you know that ours is a polyamorous family -- fMf; practicing erotic power exchange (BDSM), specifically erotic and disciplinary adult consensual spanking. That upper case "M" connotes a naturally dominant, sadist at the center of our lives and our family. T and I are both collared to Him, she as His submissive and wife, and I as His slave.

What may not be quite as clear, unless you've been reading right along is that we are all of a certain age... That means that there are "issues" (like peri-menopause). Hormonal hurricanes (erratic and unpredictable) sweep through our household at roughly twice the frequency that might be considered normal in most homes, and I have the not so charming good fortune to bleed prodigiously for about 11 or 12 days out of every month. It's a party happening. We should have invested in feminine hygiene product stock when we formed this alliance... might have secured a nice retirement for the bunch of us.

Other health challenges have beset us, one after the other, for most of the last two years it seems: cataracts, migraines, glaucoma, worsening arthritis leading to a total knee replacement, hernias, appendicitis, uterine fibroids, more prescription medicines than you can shake a stick at, ever tightening dietary restrictions, and a host of medical scares that have necessitated a variety of sometimes invasive and frightening tests and procedures. Getting older has sucked -- and they call these "The Golden Years!" GAH!

I am a masochistic bottom. To be sure, there are other things that can be said about who and what I am, but elementally, essentially, irreducibly, I am a masochistic bottom. In relationship, sexually, that is as much a part of the expression of myself as my voice, my smile, my thinking, or any of the other responses that one might elicit from me emotionally, intellectually, or physically. It took me most of my adult life to come to terms with that aspect of who I am. I spent years hiding it, ashamed of it. Now, I claim it, own it, know it as mine. When it is withheld, a very real part of my sexuality withers and dies.

My masochism is not expressed classically in an ability to transmute pain to erotic pleasure. I hurt. For me, pain is pain. Too, I am not satisfied with "easy" pain -- the little hurts that simply spice things up a little. I am easily bored by the sort of slap and tickle that merely titillates. It is, in part, why Master and I are so perfectly matched. He is a sadist who enjoys hurting me, who does not particularly enjoy the role of "service Top" -- hurting me the way I "want" to be hurt. For the first year of so after we came together, we played intensely, and I howled in pain under His hand, and I bore the marks.

Then, things began to change. I came to have places on my ass where the skin routinely broke and bled during each session. Deep bruises and welts became the norm when we played and I seemed to take longer and longer to heal. Our sessions would bring up anger and rage, and He would take the brunt of my emotions. It is the burden of the Dominant. In scene, He takes it all on. It is His, all of it. He worried. About my health -- mental and physical. Add to that the very real health issues that were not related to our "play," and He began to make decisions that it simply wasn't safe to play with me anymore...

At first, it seemed that the sessions were just scaled back, or put on hold for health crises, or spread out -- weekly instead of daily. But it was a spiral. Less and less and less and less.

It was the most loving of decisions. He wanted me well and healthy and happy.

But it felt like rejection and banishment and exile. It felt as if, at a time when all the other parts of my sexuality were up in the air and questionable, that too was in jeopardy. If anything, I wanted to be pulled in tighter, bound more stringently, hurt worse. I wanted to know that, at least there, I was still the woman who felt something...

Finally, today, this morning, the damn burst. I found the words to say it so that He could hear it and understand it -- not as criticism, not as demand, not as bitchiness, not as fantasy that could not reasonably be made real safely, but as real need that, left unmet was really hurting me emotionally. Hearing it, He was able to tell me how much He'd missed spanking me the way He likes to.

So today, we've retraced our steps. Brought out the rubber paddle and the rubber strap and instituted hourly strappings. Today, I've been back in the stocks -- a place where I've not been in months and months. Tonight I'm sore and welted, and yes I've had that silly place on my butt break open and bleed repeatedly. But I'm feeling safe and held and seen and back where I belong again.

swan

Feelings

It is back to school for me.
And it feels too soon. I'm really not ready. Oh, I'll do OK in terms of the course material, but I'm emotionally drained, and that is not a good thing when there are 50 adolescents walking through your door every morning at 7:30 AM. It isn't something that a person can fake. You've got to love them, and you've got to have the energy to take whatever they bring you of their lives and their hearts and give what you have to give them -- wholly and fully or it just isn't good enough. I am just so tired.
And I am acutely aware that I am a stranger in this community. It is so provincial. So conservative. So wary of me -- of my wildness, my "foreign-ness." These are people who have lived their whole lives in this neighborhood, who all live within a few blocks of their parents and cousins and aunts and uncles. Many of them have never traveled out of the neighborhood, much less the city... I've left my home, my family, divorced my husband... I'm living here, miles from my home, rootless and with no discernible reason for being here. To them, I am a gypsy, and therefore a dangerous and mysterious woman. I threaten everything they value and believe in. They mistrust me at very deep levels. I am a subject of gossip and open dislike for many of them. The weird rumors that swirl around me are almost funny if they weren't so downright mean... I'd leave if I didn't need the gig. If there weren't the kids... I just love the days that I spend in the classroom working with the magical kids...

And I am finding myself feeling shy -- Noticing my shyness again. We're connecting to some new friends again. Making new connections. Opening up and forming relationships. It is good. Makes for the potential of less loneliness and less isolation. This is a positive. But it exposes me to strangers. People I don't know. Master gets all wound up and excited and jazzed. I find I want to back into a corner and watch for awhile. Listen and hear and watch and observe and just get the feel for it all. It scares me. Makes me nervous. I'm not a person who makes friends easily. Not a cocktail party sort. Let me just go slowly... I'm the sincere introvert in the triad. So, I'm feeling socially overwhelmed.

And there is energy flowing every which way... Eeek.... Like an electrical storm gone wild. I can't control it. Can't channel it. Can't make it be nice. Can't make it be tidy. All I can do is try to hold on to the currents and direct them. I am the one who reflects, deflects, vibrates, overloads, and ultimately just short-circuits with all the various frequencies in the family. Crispy critter...

Did I say fragile?

swan

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Violet Wand

One of our most esoteric toys -- the violet wand -- almost got lost in my divorce.

For those of you who don't know, a violet wand is an electrical toy. It generates static electricity, and is based on a Tesla coil. They are the descendents of quack medical devices, popular in the 1930's, when they were thought to cure darn near everything...

This one is a newly manufactured device (many on the market today are re-manufactured, older models). It has numerous attachments, most of them glass, capable of delivering a variety of electrical shocks (of varying intensity) to the body of the "victim." Using it takes some care, although it is not a particularly risky sort of play.

T and I are both great fans of the wand. Master is not particularly fond of the critter. He finds the sensations it delivers to be "creepy."

Purchasing such an item is not a small investment. I think that when the former husband and I bought this thing, we paid nearly $400 for it. I have kicked myself for letting it slip out of my grasp, especially since I was quite sure he was not likely to use it. In fact, when I got up my nerve and asked for it back, he put up no fuss at all, and relinquished it quite easily.

Now, we have it. We just have to figure out who and how and when we're going to play with it. May be us girls will just have to break the beastie out... Ya think?

swan

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One way to get my feathers ruffled...

It always surprises me when it happens. Maybe because it is rare in our fairly small social circle.

When we are out among "scene" folk, the likelihood is that everyone we encounter understands the protocol that says "don't mess with what doesn't belong to you," so it is almost never an issue there.

So I get surprised and taken aback, and then just a little bent when the assumption is made...

I'm submissive and I'm female. Those simple facts do not, however, have any significance in any universal sense. I do not find it necessary to respond submissively to anyone who comes within my sphere of awareness. Assuming that I will do so is bound to create a clash of wills. My submission is specific and selective. It is given to Master, and is His to command. For Him, the answers are all, essentially variants of "yes, Sir." That is not true, in any way, shape, or form for anyone else on the planet.

Every now and then, I run into someone who seems to think that encountering a submissive female (it doesn't appear to me that submissive males evoke this response) is a lot like finding someone else's child out in public unsupervised and behaving inappropriately -- they just can't resist the urge to try and "do something about it." These types, knowing that I am submissive, while otherwise decent folks, tend for whatever inexplicable reason, to fall into patterns of interactions, however subtle, that just assume that I will answer to them just as I answer to Master. That, with them, as with Him, there is no polite "No, thank you," within our conversational lexicon. Inevitably, I end up having to get pushy or even GROWLY before we come to understand one another.

Sheesh!

Oh, yeah! Want to see a swan in full, ruffled up, ugly bird mode?

swan

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Thinking about Subspace

Malcolm asked about subspace --

"I wonder what is on the other side of that space? Do you ever feel like going there - if there is a "there"?"

I think it is terribly difficult to talk definitively about subspace. Those who have tried to describe the experience seem to have such widely divergent personal visceral reactions to it. I've read accounts by many, and wondered if we'd shared anything that was even remotely similar...

I've also heard the physiology and biochemistry explained in terms of adrenaline and endorphines and a whole cocktail of naturally occurring compounds that the body can generate in response to pain, stress, anxiety, fear, etc. I'm sure that physiology is, in part, responsible for the sensations that people report feeling as "subspace," but I am also convinced that there is more. If it were simply a matter of triggering the physiological response, then I'd have not experienced this long dry spell. Surely, we've played at intensity levels that were more than adequate to trigger the biochemistry.

Malcolm's question about "there," and "beyond there" intrigued me, because, although I use language that speaks of subspace as a place, that is really imprecise.

For me, at least, entering into subspace isn't about changing location in any sense. It is more about shifting perception. I don't leave or go *anywhere.* In fact, the subspace shift, really allows me, to "stay in a scene or session" in a way that is significant.

What changes, when I enter subspace is the way in which I perceive the sensation of pain, the sounds I hear, the temperature of the room, textures, distances, the passage of time... Surprisingly, it is not that my tolerance levels are increased, or that difficult sensations are lessened, so much as that my "mental distance" feels like it increases. Everything slows down and spreads out, brightens and sparkles more, is more shimmering and more lovely -- so that I can appreciate it, take it in, and process it more easily. It is as if my brain steps up to a level of functioning that keeps it from getting overwhelmed and swept away in the whirl of sensation and panic that can send it spinning out of control without the glow of subspace.

I am, suspecting, this week (as I think about it) that what has kept me from subspace for so long may have been another kind of perceptual shift -- or inability to make a perceptual shift.

I think that subspace puts one into a place of particular vulnerability, softened, quieted, observant but disinclined to take oneself out of the way of what is occurring. It comes when there is a willingness to trust, to be completely without any defenses. I don't think that perceptual shift is easily made when there is fear or anger. It may be that I have been holding out -- holding on to fear and anger that should have been put aside long ago. It hasn't been fair. Hasn't been conscious. Has hurt us both.

swan

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Coming Together Again

We are Master and slave. Always, and all ways. It is not something that we do. It is something that we are.

When we first came together, to live with one another full-time, we resisted adopting that language. It seemed too torrid, too lurid, too laden with the overtones from overblown fiction that were simply no part of our lives. Reality eventually convinced us that we belonged to each other in this way, and we came to use this descriptive language to designate the truth of what it is we are with one another.

This passage of time has tested our understandings and our perceptions of how that works. The power that we hold between us has been balanced most delicately in these weeks when Master's physical strength and personal wellness has been compromised and gravely challenged; when it has fallen to me to support, manage, guide, cheerlead, and sometimes even push...

We've had to reign in our natural proclivities and essential personae to a degree that has been fairly significant. Once or twice we've danced at the edge of snapping at each other -- and pulled back, knowing the stresses with which we were each dealing and understanding what was at stake. Too, we've believed fervently in the day when all would ultimately be restored to its rightful place, when health and healing would be achieved and we could each pick up our own mantle again and resume our positions in the dance...

Five weeks doesn't seem like a long time. Really. Except when it seems like an eternity. Dominance and submission is a delicate thing. Patterns laid down on top of patterns -- carefully and consistently, over weeks and months and years. Built into memory and reflex and habit. Our patterns have been -- not broken exactly, but set aside because they simply could not serve our reality in these weeks. The slave, in serving, had to put aside the former demands and requirements of the collar for the duration...

And the duration was without any specified boundary or limit. Nebulous. When He was well, then... Indeterminate.

I've found myself edgy just lately. Balancing on the razor edge. Unable to relax. Jittery, jumpy, depressed. Knowing it would not be always like this, but not "knowing."

So...

One night this last week, as we headed for bed yet again. Late. As I prepared the coffee for the next day. Locked the doors and put out the lights. Hunted down the cell phones to get them onto chargers. Turned down the bed. Found the pillow for under His knee. Retrieved the pillows that He uses on the therapy table and brought them back to the bedroom. Got ready to take the compression stockings off and wash them out -- ready for tomorrow... He looked at me suddenly and asked, "Where is your collar?" I told Him, and He said, "Get it and put it on." I did as I was told. Almost grumpy. Almost pouty. He took me by the hand and took me out the door and to the car, putting me, not in the driver's seat where I've been now for weeks, but in the passenger seat. I was speechless. We drove into the night with Him at the wheel -- a scary proposition, but I remained collared and quiet. He took me to a local pub and marched me inside to explore the possibilities for a beer I might like since my favorite Thai beer is no longer available locally. We sat and talked and drank and enjoyed the company of the young bar tender for perhaps an hour or 45 minutes. Then home and to bed, calmer and relaxed than I've felt for weeks...

Yesterday, as we awoke, He decided to indulge me in a session with the leather floggers that I so love, and which we hardly ever use. We began with me displayed over a pillow, and I struggled not with the implements but because of muscle spasms in my back. Still, I wanted to manage it because it was so unique to have leather and not wood as the implement. Even so, the intensity built quickly and I was soon crying frantically. One of the "tricks" of lying on the bed for "play" is that I can only hear if I turn my head so my good ear is up. That generally means I cannot see what He is doing and what implement He is using, so I did not know what it was that had reduced me to such upset. He took a few minutes to talk with me. Asking me who's I was, and for how long, and... It is our standard litany, and serves to center me and calm me in most cases...

When I'd settled down a bit, He started back in with the latigo flogger. It is the heaviest and meanest flogger in the arsenal. If I'd seen it coming I might have fussed, but I didn't. Instead, I felt only the heaviness and the depth of the thud. And then, I felt myself slide over the cliff into subspace...

I've not been to space in well over a year. Have believed I'd not go there ever again. Have thought I'd lost the "knack." Or that perhaps our sort of "play" precluded that for me. Yesterday I went there and stayed there for (apparently) a good long while. It seems He took full advantage of the situation to up the ante even further, bringing on some even more extreme toys, a knife or two, and, yes, even one of His beloved paddles... I simply floated happily along humming and cooing at the end of the string He held.

I eventually found my way back in and was sufficiently coherent to manage the "stupid, spacey, dizzy one" fucks...

I think we're coming together in our proper places again...

swan

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The Heretic's Quirks

First of all, I want to concur with t. Searabbit definitely needs a good spanking and noting how cute she is, I'd love to volunteer to do the honors:)

Categorizing my idiosyncracies could take some time were I to become at all comprehensive about it. I have a number coming to mind, some of which are minor and others more far reaching.

I tend to eat one food item at a time on my plate and then to go onto another and when that is consumed yet another. I'm not a eat a bit of this, and then a bite of that, kind of guy.

I create chaos. Everywhere I am I leave piles of stuff in my wake. I am just not capable of creating environmental order. If I find myself in the environment of some truly obsessive person who has everythig neatly put away and organized I will likley find a way to mess it up.

I've always believed that I was in charge of things and that the world was to conform to my wishes. It made for a lot of shall we say "interesting" encounters with parents and authority figues as a boy. It is really no wonder I have a thing about spanking:)

I am an inherently political animal. I cut my teeth throwing rocks at cops in the 60's and 70's fighting to end the Viet Nam War. I was not a pacifist. I was a fighter. I've never been pacifist about anything in my life. I eventually learned that there were better ways to effect change than throwing rocks in the street (although there are days I'd give anything to have just one good riot again:) I'm a poliitacl activist in my public life. I spend early Sunday mornings listening to Sunday morning news programs. I'm in love with Air America Radio and some of the other new "progressive talk" radio formats that have sprung up. I think possibly Cindy Sheehan could be the spark that ignites the movement to take us out of Iraq at long last.

I love knives. I find them sensual, and when I can I usually carry several. I handle them and pracitce with them and incorporate them into my sensual play. I have a collection of hundreds of them.

It will come as no surpirse to folks who read here that I love to spank women and am obsessed with collecting spanking implements, furniture, restraints, etc. I have likely never met a woman under the age of 75 I haven't wanted to spank. Spanking is my primary expression of connection, excitment, fun, erotic arousal, and sensuality. I awoke this morning fantasizing that someone was referring groups of three and four young women to me for spankings which they were required to accept. I was then having them strip and placing them in my stocks for blisterings with my rubber punishment strap. Shortly thereafter sue and I were fucking like teenagers:)

Oh yeah, I know one, I'm a confirmed drinker. My current favorite is Jameson's Irish Whiskey. I also drink an occasional vodka, as well as dry white and red wines with dinner. I'm not much of a beer fan. I'm pretty dedicated to controlling carbs in my diet and beer gets in the way.

I am a type 2 diabetic and am the poster child of diabetes control dealing with diet, exercise, and oral medication. It is not uncommon for me to be asked by physicians if I really have been diagnosed as diabetic when they see the numbers resulting from my glucose and hemogolbin A1c tests.

I'm ADHD. I won't be taking stratera. ADHD enables me to think about numerous things simultaneously. Thirty percent of U. S. corporate CEO's have ADHD. I'm one.

That exhausts my cataloging of quirks for the moment.

All the best:)

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

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More Idiosyncracies -- T's List

::: singing ::: "T thinks searabbit needs a spanking"...

ok here goes..

1. I am a reader. I read everything. I read online. I read all types of books. I read labels. I read catalogs. Tom is fond of saying that I am the only person he knows who reads cookbooks for pleasure! "BT"....before Tom.... I used to read 5-7 books weekly. But since it "Takes a village to raise a Dominant", I read about 3 a week now.

2. I am a fusser. If there is something on my plate I will worry it to pieces until it is done. If we have someone coming over, I will stay up late getting things cleaned up and organized and prepped so I don't have to work hard before they arrive or while they are here. I have also become a list maker and that just makes me sick to my stomach....guess I am growing old, but invariably I will leave for the store for a few necessary items and come home with everything but the 1 item I needed most....so now I "list"....grrrrrr

3. I like to get out and do something atleast 1 weekend a month. Swan & Tom would be tickled to death to stay home every weekend, hunkered in the condos, but I am the "social director". I am always on the lookout for new and interesting events or trips for the clan to make. Lately because of the bionic knee, we have been hampered. And Tom hates the heat and Swan hates the crowds. But I am going to get them out and about again soon, or I will just have to start traveling alone ...or maybe I will find me a sweet young thing...someone just dirty enough to play with who is strong enough to carry my bags...LOLOLOL!!!

4. Swan misses her Mountains and I miss my trees and camping. I used to backpack. I have always been a "fluffy" gal. But used to be more physical. I am doing all the prep for a gastric bypass surgery. When the surgery is done, and I am healthy, I want to pack again. I want to camp and see real trees. Not ones a nursery shoved in the ground. Ones Mother Earth birthed Herself. Yep, looking forward to that. Camping to Himself is the Red Roof Inn instead of the Marriott. I want to sleep under the stars on a trail again before I am too old to appreciate it.

5. I am a shopper. That is not to say that I have to buy to be happy. I am perfectly content to go to a store and just shop. It relaxes me. Swan hates shopping, so I do most of the grocery shopping and 95% of the Christmas shopping. And that is fine with me. I like getting out in the stores. I LOVE finding a great bargain. I like quirky stores. I like flea markets. When I was very little my dad would dress me in jeans and tennies and haul me along to junk yards, looking for parts for a car he was restoring.. I like to think of Dad when I find that special something.. I know it tickles him to see me carrying on tradition.

Your turn Tom!

T

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Triumphal Knee News

We saw the surgeon today.
Tomorrow, the "bionic knee" will be 5 weeks old.
Master's recovery and progress is simply remarkable.
He is walking on His own two feet without assistance of any kind -- carrying a cane with Him in case He should need it, but generally, not using it.
He has bent knee flexion of 122 degrees (with a prosthesis which we were told would probably only go to 120 degrees mind you) and can now straighten his leg to within 2 degrees of perfectly straight.
He has not taken any pain medication except some occasional Ibuprofen for about 2 weeks.
He and I walked about a half mile over the weekend.
He is riding the exercise bike each day and is over 10 minutes now -- increasing His time daily.
He is learning to balance on His right leg, bearing all of His weight on the new knee.
He now says His arthritic left knee hurts more than His new right knee...
He has some stiffness and swelling, but not much pain.
His physical endurance improves each day.

To each of you who sent Him and us, postive thoughts and healing energy, you cannot know what that meant to us all. Thank you, thank you, thank you. He has come so far, so quickly and you, all of you, were a very real part of supporting Him and our family through that...

swan

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Idiosyncrasies -- Me?

Searabbit tagged the three of us. Wondering about idiosyncrasies in the Heron clan (like that isn't strange enough for all of you). It is ramping up to sincerely busy here and I expect the writing is going to get sparser pretty soon, but let me see if I can take a stab at the "swan" idiosyncrasies (or at least some of them):

1. I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime. Get me warm. Leave me quiet. Helps if I'm flat, but isn't a requirement. I sleep just fine sitting up. Once I'm out, there's no way to wake me up gently either -- stand back when you wake this one up because I'm going to come up with a start and probably swinging...

2. I'm cold. All the time. Need warm socks, warm sweat shirts, warm jammies, warm blankies... And of course I live with folks who are hot all the time -- who keep the air conditioning turned up and the heat turned down, and who kick the covers off or sleep on top of the blankets. I am doomed to freeze. It is the one serious, major, huge incompatibility in our relationship.

3. I drink expensive beer. My favorite is a Thai malt liquor called Sing Ha. It runs about $11.00 or $12.00 a six pack (more by the single bottle -- as in a restaurant) if you can get it. The supply is not very reliable. The good news is that I don't drink much. I'm likely to drink maybe one or maybe two a month... Not a cheap beer girl, but still a relatively cheap date...

4. I hate Christmas and all the stuff that goes with it. All the trimming. All the singing and present shopping and all the surprises and all the gatherings and parties and general happy happy stuff. It makes me nervous and jittery and jumpy and crabby. I become the Grinch. Makes me want to find a sunny beach somewhere and hang out and have a nice cabana boy bring me expensive beers... Of course, I live with Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus. Bah! Humbug!

5. I find I don't like rivers. Having spent most of my life in the Colorado Rockies where there are streams, that rush and leap over rocks and that are often narrow enough that a person can jump across them -- that are crystal clear and icy cold, I get creeped out by these big, wide, murky, slow moving, muddy, flat-land rivers. They scare me with their propensity for flooding from storms that happen hundreds of miles away. They seem to harbor ghosts in their swampy bottom lands and their swampy bottom ghosts seem to like to catch onto my spirit and tag along with me just for fun. Ick!!!

I'm sure the spice could list dozens of other "endearing" qualities that they think are weird and quirky... but that's probably enough for now...

Will leave this open for Master and T to finish up their lists...

swan

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Changes and Following

When we first came together to live as fulltime M/s partners three years ago, we shared enormous hungers that had been long denied in each of us....

He'd not had a really viable spanking partner that He could count on day to day. T's illness and attendant surgeries, had taken her out of that role, and the occasional friends that had come and gone as casual play partners had not filled the void.

I'd long suppressed my needs and desires for a Dominant spanking partner who would not view that part of my persona as deviant, sick, or wrong. My husband of over 25 years had tried to meet my spanking wants, but was very much NOT into it and left me more unsatisfied than if we'd never explored at all...

Finding each other and having the opportunity to meet our so long suppressed needs with one another unleashed a tidal wave of SM energy that swept us away in the first year of our time together. We spanked with an intensity and abandon that was Titanic (and probably not prudent). We literally whipped the hide off my ass. It set a bar that probably should not be the one against which I mentally measure myself nowadays -- but I do and always will remember those wild months.

He, (older and wiser, perhaps?) assures me that we simply must bow to the fact that we are not 20 and 26 years old, but rather 50 and 56 -- that there are physiological realities that accompany this chronological fact. Boy does that suck, Sir! He tells me that He is more than satisfied with me, but no longer driven by that same hunger and deprivation that fueled that wild orgy of three years ago. We'll still spank, and as He heals, the intensity level will come back -- fear not... Still, there will be a need to allow me to go through post session healing and it simply takes the time it takes. Fact and reality. Age is what it is.

And He wonders if I'll follow where He'll take me? I don't know what that might mean. I don't know, where besides this place, far across a continent, He intends to take me next. I've followed as well as I know how, thus far. I'm sure there are further journeys for me and us to make. I will do what I can to follow as best I can...

swan

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SM Confusion

I bleed, I blister, I bruise, I welt, I cry and rage and sometimes break... When we play the way He likes to play, the way He fantasizes about playing, it marks me physically and emotionally. He worries about damaging me; harming me. So He backs way off; giving me time to recover and heal.

It feels, to me, like being cut lose. Like I have failed the test. Until today, we haven't talked about it.

I think it is making us both sad and confused -- not sure how to go forward from here. Love makes SM way more complex sometimes.

swan

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Telling this story once and for all

It's time to tell this story once and for all. I'm done.

I am the oldest of four children and I am the only daughter. My brothers were 16 months younger (born 3 months prematurely), 5 years, and then 10 years, younger than I was. My mother was 27 and my father was 34 years old when I was born. I was the product of an unplanned pregnancy, and the wedding occurred after I was conceived. I don't really know how my father felt about that, but my mother was a party girl, and I am quite sure that becoming a wife and a mother did not fit with her plan for her life at that time.

Those who observed us from the outside saw us as the perfect 1950's / 1960's family. What I notice, when I look back at the many photos taken of us in those years is that I was a child who did not smile. Not ever. No matter what the occasion. I cared for my younger brothers, shepherded them to be quiet and kept them well away from behaviors that might irritate, aggravate or agitate my extremely volatile mother. I was a worrier.

I have been asked many times, over the years, if I was abused. I've never been able to recall anything specific, although I can point to a number of parental behaviors that would qualify as "emotional" neglect if not abuse.

Somewhere along the line, I figured it didn't matter much -- what mattered is what I did with my life. The best revenge was living well -- right?

Then Master and I started playing intensely and I started having fairly frequent odd lapses into panicky places where I'd find myself sobbing and sweating and shaking, begging not to be sent to "the dark place," not to "be left alone," promising to be good -- "please, please, please!!!" It really never made any sense in context with what we were doing at the time. We usually didn't use blindfolds and so the darkness reaction was way out there and He never leaves me alone in session. Sometimes, when it would come up, we'd end the session, othertimes, He'd work with the panic, but continue the session until I'd calm down and get it back in control. Eventually the number and frequency of these episodes diminished, but an interesting thing happened for me. I began to form a coherent image:

-- an underground storage space like a cellar or a crawlspace with a wooden door that lifted up in order to enter it
-- a sturdy, hand-made ladder that led down into the space which had a dirt floor except for a concrete pad at the base of the ladder
-- some automobile tires stored in the far back corner of the space
-- wooden shelves that ran down the left hand side of the space where there were gallon paint cans and cardboard storage boxes and canning jars and assorted other household items stored
-- dust in the air
-- wooden floor joists overhead
-- being carried, as a small child, down the ladder and deposited roughly on the concrete floor and then left there in the dark

It might be that none of it ever happened. The images seem very clear to me... and very detailed... and absolutely wordless... I never had any sense that any of that was there (in accessible memory) before I began playing at extremely intense levels sadomasochistically with Master. I now believe that the images represent pre-verbal memories of actual events that happened to me. I believe that my mother actually carried me, as a very small child (before I was talking) into the crawlspace of the home we lived in at the time, and left me there in the dark. I don't know what reason she might have had for doing that. I also believe that it stopped at the point that I became verbal enough to say anything about it that might have tipped off my father.

To this day, I've never been able to connect with the woman who bore me. She is, for those who know her socially, bright and charming and the life of the party. With me, she is rude, insensitive, uncaring, unkind, distant, self-absorbed, disrespectful, and just downright mean and nasty. I've spent a lifetime trying to figure her out and bridge the gap. Now she is 78 years old and I'm 50. There aren't that many years left. Where does one decide that "filial duty" ends? Even 1200 miles away, she can destroy my peace and stability with a simple phone call, leaving me agitated and jittery for days. Nowadays, her "reason" for being ugly to me (as if she ever actually needed one) has to do with her disapproval of my poly lifestyle. Of course, when I was living in the most vanilla of monogamous marriages, her rationale for being nasty was that she hated the man I was married to...

I don't think I hate her. I don't even think I'm angry anymore. I've wanted her desperately along the way. Wanted my mom at lots of points in my life -- wanted A MOM. Wondered, sometimes if I would have done a better job of parenting my own kids if I'd known more about "being mom" in anything other than the "negative" sense -- what I didn't want to do... Now though, I just want to stop expending energy in fending off her energy.

I'm done. If she is going to come into my life, it needs to be on my terms or not at all: polite and respectful and gentle. That's it. No more destruction and no more dumping me into the darkness. I won't go there for her anymore. I'm big enough and strong enough that she can't take me down that ladder anymore.

swan

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All Our Starts Are Good Starts

I'd thought about responding to swan's previous blog post "Tough Start" here, but had eschewed the idea, feeling I had responded in person. It seems to me, as I read further here, that I've failed to communicate. I feel like I've been caught up in a critical scene from "Cool Hand Luke:)."

sue you have cared for me to an exceptional degree of excellence for the last three and a half weeks. This began prior to my surgery with your helping me deal through my terrors as this surgery which I'd dreaded, and delayed, for a decade approached. Your care included helping with T to hold pans under me as I puked repaetedly in reaction to the morphine I needed to get through the immediate post-surgical pain. It included (you and T taking turns) punching my morphine button on my PCA unit every 6 mintues as I commanded you to despite harassment from my nurses. It included holding my urinal at night when I got home and my knee was too stiff and painful to make it to the bathroom, and adding new ice all night to my "cooling system" (a perverse sort of thermal bondage system we finally figutred out was an insurance scam the orthopedic medical community has bought into hook, line, and sinker:(.

You helped me do my initial, horrific PT sessions; as you help me continue them today. When my leg not only hurt terribly, but I freaked out because it would not respond and acted like it was paralyzed, you held me while I cried and comforted me and told me it would get better. You were right. You can't know how much that means.

You have fetched my back scratcher a thousand times I think, and gotten my so many pops and coffees and pain pills and sandwiches and towels and...........

You have pushed my leg up into flexion when I've needed it no matter how it hurt (you and me both). You've then supported me through the healing.

You've rejoiced as they've told me routinely that we are 2 weeks ahead of schedule in my rehab. Part of that is certainly my willingness to work and to hurt and go on. Much of it I could never do If it wasn't for you holding me, and not over reacting when I do hurt, and then smothering me with support when I break down........which I have not done often.......but which I have done.

I could have had no better slave. You have been supported by your sister, T who has done all she could for us both, but who, too, had to go back to work to maintain our economic reality.

We are struggling now to return to sexual, D/s, and SM reality. I have no trouble returning to active Dominance with you. I am your Master and while that role has been dormant for the last three and a half weeks, I have never left that role in my soul. You are mine and you have been mine without fail throughout this time.

I love you. I cherish you. You are MINE. You will recover your orientation as a bottom (which has not been without struggle for sometime anyway.)

sue, if you are not spanked for two weeks you are frustrated. If then you are spanked two days in a row you are traumatized. This is not a fault in your orientation as a masochist or slave. It is the result that our play is extreme and hurts.

I love it when we play and you love it. I love it too when you struggle. I love it too when you suffer.

There never has been a Master more well served!

I will not tolerate your denigrating yourself. You may share your feelings honestly and openly. You may tell me you don't feel sexy or attractive and we will deal with it. You may not tell me you are not sexy or attractive. You may tell me you feel you are not a good slave. You will not tell me you are not a good slave.........or if so, I bet you will not do it more than once. More importantly you will not tell yourself that.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Thank you is inadequate to express my gratitude.

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined,

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Tough start...

Not a good start this morning.
I fussed all night.
He'd talked about putting me in the stocks and using the whip -- and I saw Him falling and me not being able to get lose and not being able to help Him. It scared me terribly. I couldn't sleep.
And I've not been feeling attractive, sexy, pretty. I'm working hard. I'm caring a lot. I'm tender and I'm worried and I'm wanting so much for this to go well. But I'm not feeling much else...
And then the paddling started this morning, and I broke. Sobbing. Struggling. Not able to hold it. Wailing that I wanted to be away from here in this place where I am so foreign...
It was a terrible start to the day...
Sigh...
Then it was time to get breakfast and get cleaned up and get the &)*^&&%^))* compression socks on and get Him to PT. Life goes on even if I am a sucky slave sometimes...

swan

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