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