A View from the Floor

I’ve done a lot of writing about the “good submissive”. About obedience and patience and putting aside our own wants and needs in order to meet his, in order to please him. And all that stuff is true. It’s all real and right.

But some days it all just falls a-fucking-part in your lap and you can’t do anything but scream “what about ME?”.

I recently quit smoking. It’s been five days. I know that’s not long but let’s put it into perspective. I’ve been smoking since I was thirteen. In 24 years I have never gone 24 HOURS without a cigarette or twenty. I’ve never made it an entire day, much less five.

I’m struggling with it. Horribly.
I feel a little bit mentally unbalanced. Like I”m losing it. Having some kind of anxiety attack/breakdown/manic-depressive/crazy episode.

Taylor…
Well, Taylor is at the end of his patience with the whole smoking thing in general.
He’s wanted me to quit since he moved in nearly six years ago. It took him walking out on me to get me to realize he meant it… he felt the smoking was more important than him and wasn’t having that.

So, here I am, struggling like a crack addict trying to quit and he’s out of patience with the whole damned thing.

And I really just want to scream.

I don’t have very many serious flaws or vices.
I rarely drink.
I don’t do drugs at all.
I’ve gotta have my coffee and I”m a snob about it but, at the same time, when we’re broke, I drink Maxwell House out of a can and rarely complain about it.
I don’t shop.
I don’t buy new clothes and make up and shoes.
I don’t own a bottle of perfume at the moment.
I don’t expect fancy dinners out or movies or shows or any kind of “date” at all.

I smoke. (Or did, anyhow.)
That’s it.
I smoke and I’m a little on the jealous side, I have a hard time with anything other than monogamy.

I”m not perfect.
But I obey him.
I do what he wants me to even when I don’t want to.
I take care of him. I cook and clean and fetch for him.
I suck his dick and fuck him when he wants to be fucked. (Though, admittedly, I’ve been less than enthusiastic the past two weeks between that awful cold and then the quitting smoking thing.) I might communicate that I’m not really in the mood but if he wants to fuck anyhow, we fuck.
I take the pain he dishes out even when it’s not the stuff of my own fantasies, even when it’s painful in a less than good way.
I do what I”m supposed to. I hold up my end of the bargain.And, for the most part, so does he.

Neither of us are perfect.

But, sometimes, I get lost and hurt and I really just want to scream.

Ok, so it took me too long to quit smoking.
So I’m struggling more than I probably should be.
So I’ve gone slightly insane with it and I’m less than pleasant to be around.
I’m doing it for him.
I’ve got zero walls right now. I’m completely open and vulnerable and hurting over doing something he insists I do, over proving my obedience and loyalty to him…

And no matter how tired of the shit he is I still need him to BE THERE for me, to take care of me right now, to protect me from my own psychotic mood swings and ease my god damned pain.

That’s his JOB.
You don’t ask someone to do something for you, don’t make such a dramatic change in someone’s life just to leave them to struggle thru it alone because you’re “out of patience” with the whole thing.

I take care of everyone.
I make sure we have food to eat even when I have to stretch $40 to feed three of us for a week.
I make that food for everyone and serve it with a fucking smile most times.
I give up things I like to keep them happy.
I go without creamer and crystal light, I drink crap coffee and don’t buy myself butter, and I put off dying my hair because Taylor needs batteries for his flashlight more than I need less greys.
I run his baths and even bathe him when he wants me to and I deal with stinky armpits when he’s too tired for the bath.
I take a bath or shower myself even when I don’t necessarily feel like it just so I’m not stinky when he crawls into bed.
I offer Advil when he’s got a headache, whatever it may take to make him feel better when he’s sick. I let him sleep when he needs a nap and I rarely fuss and moan about not having a car of my own and having to wait ’til he’s done with work to run any errands I have to do. I don’t usually ask him to take me because I know he hates running around. I’ll spend all day waiting to get the things done I need to take care of just so I don’t inconvenience him.
I’m strong and capable and I don’t ask him to do much of anything for me.
I handle the money as best I can and don’t bitch and start fights over the lack of it.
I hide my stress the best I can so as not to stress him out.
I hide my depression so as not to make him feel bad.

But sometimes…
I just need someone to take care of me for awhile.
To have the patience to stick with me in my rare crazy times and fucking take care of me, help me, love me like I take care of, help and love him.
For more than ten minutes.

I need him to stick it out, to not abandon me when it gets boring or old or annoying.

Sometimes…

i NEED things.
I don’t just want them.
I NEED.

I need to be able to cry on his shoulder. I need to be able to fall the fuck apart and have that be okay for awhile. I need to know he’s there and he’s got me.

I’ve never fucking had that. Not with anyone in my whole god damned life.

Maybe I”m too strong and too capable.

Every time I start to lose it, my whole life, it’s ….
pull yourself together.
knock it off.
get over yourself.
grow up.
stop being selfish.
blah blah blah

It’s no wonder I need pain in my life.
It’s the only god damned time anyone ever lets me fall apart.

And even then I usually have to pick myself up again.

I guess broken and falling apart and crazy and vulnerable I’m just not very attractive or worth much.
Cuz no one ever wants to just….

Take care of me.

I think every man I’ve ever been with has told me “you take such good care of me”.

When does someone take care of me?

Maybe my reaction to quitting smoking is unreasonable and stupid . But that doesn’t make it any less real, any less painful, any less awful.
And that doesn’t make me any less in need of someone to just fucking hold my pieces together for me until I can do it myself again.

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Lots of worried emails and messages.
I’m peachy, everyone. Happy, healthy, and planning to enjoy this weekend off.

I doubt I’ll post until Monday so I wanted to ease the worry while I can.
He didn’t kill me, I’ve not been buried in the garden and I feel wonderful.

I do adore you all for your concern, though. It makes a girl feel loved.
xoxo

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Right off the bat I’m gonna say I have no idea where I’m going with this. Earlier, I blogged about an…   interaction…  Taylor and I had last night. (I’m loathe to call it a scene or session because it wasn’t the least bit planned nor was it really play. It just…  was. It was us, interacting in a sexual and physical way that makes up part of the core of who we are as a D/s couple.) So since I wrote about it earlier I’ve had all these thoughts running thru my head and I’m not sure if I can untangle them properly or make a cohesive post out of them but it seems I’ve got to try.

Anyhow…
We had this interaction that was rather brutal. Not what most would think of when they fantasize about BDSM and their sessions at the local dungeon, not the lovely, ass warming spankings and canings we mostly mean when we talk about S/m. It was, in essence, him doing what he wanted with me and me enduring it. Today I feel as though I was tossed off a bridge. I don’t have that oh so sweet ache in my pussy or seat shifting lingering pain in my bum. I feel like I got beat up. Like I was in a damned bar brawl and lost. And never once during the “scene” did I feel like saying “oh, baby, that hurts so good”.
Honestly, it sucked. It just fucking hurt. It was silent and painful and I felt used and hurt and scared and…   completely controlled.
I did NOT want him to be doing what he was doing. If I could have safeworded I probably would have. My body was hurting, aching, ready to just give out on me. My mind was whirling and screaming.
But I was good. I stayed where he put me. I endured the pains he wasn’t even intentionally giving me. I took it all without a complaint, without even thinking of my own state of pleasure - or lack there of.
I was his, this was what he wanted to do and, by gods, I was going to take it.

And it was perfect.

I never got off.
I never hit “subspace”.
I got wet because that’s how my body reacts but I never got out of the pure pain enough to even get twitchy.
It was like I was an object.

I don’t feel like that very often.

Sometimes it just truly upsets me to feel that way. It feels less a lesson or reminder and more of a reality. I just don’t matter.
Those times pretty much suck and there’s really no telling when I’ll react that way.
I wish I didn’t because even though last night was terrible it was wonderful, as well.  More than wonderful.

I can’t explain it very well.

There’s just something about enduring for him that sends me off to la la land. Not subspace as everyone talks about it but this place where I feel like everything is right in my world, where I have completely fulfilled my purpose in life, where I am so completely and totally his in ways I don’t always feel so close to the surface.

It leaves me raw and exposed and calmly content at the same time.

I wish I could find that headspace more often.
It’s what I want almost every time we do S/m activities.
To push past what I think I want, push past my “i’m a big bad masochist and can take this” to “i want you to stop, i want you to stop, i want you to stop but it is my place to take it, to take what you need to give and be grateful for it”. To push past my own needs until I”m meeting his.
Does that make sense?
He’s not the sort of sadist that’s having fun when you’re enjoying what he’s doing. The fun, for him, starts when it starts to suck for me.
And I guess we’re a good match that way because, truly, most times I’m not having fun until it sucks.
Not that it’s fun, then. It’s just that, when it sucks and I’m doing it for him…  when all thoughts of me are driven from my head…  that’s when it feeds my needs, that’s when it’s what I ache for.

My misery feeds him.
Getting to that place of abject misery and unrelenting pain, doing it because I am his and I must and I have no choice because it’s what he wants of me and that’s what I do…  what he wants me to…  that feeds me.

I’m still not saying what I want to.
I don’t have the words, I guess.

Nothing makes me feel so possessed, so owned, so much HIS as being used in ways that aren’t intended to make me feel good. (Well, ok, the occasional princess fuck is heaven on earth but the key word there is occasional)

It’s my darkest fantasies come to life. Taken, plundered, used and abused, hurt, sobbing and left to crawl over and thank him.

“I don’t want power to be simply exchanged; I want to rip it from her body” ~ HardTop

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I’ve been relatively absent lately.
A summer cold that has me pretty blah.

Hard to find anything to write about when ya feel like crap and are driving everyone away with your hacking, sneezing and honking - not to mention crabby, bitchy ickiness.

Part of me want to crawl into bed and stay there, alone, in silence, until I feel better.
Part of me want him to beat the bitchy, crabby, icky right out of me.

And while I wallow in the worst sort of misery, everyone else is getting spanked and flogged and clamped and clipped and leashed and chained and tortured and generally used and abused into oblivion.

I’m jealous.
Summer colds suck.
And I don’t wanna come across like a whiner (though I am) cuz the good submissive takes what she’s given when she’s given it and doesn’t whine…

It’s not fairrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I want slaps and clips and belts and a sore pussy, damn it!

I can’t even breath good enough to suck a dick, for fuck’s sakes.

So.
I’ve checked in and written something here.
Y’all know i”m not dead.

I”m going to go now, be jealous, take some Theraflu and, with a bit of luck, get better so I’m not so cranky and blah and can inspire my man to do something fun.

I’ll be back soon, I”m sure, with something of meaning and importance to blather about.

~peace

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A couple of separate things have had me pondering the whole truth and communication and “you must tell him everything; every thought, every desire, every feeling that crosses your mind” thing.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I do value honesty and communication in my D/s relationship. I value it in all my relationships. But there’s got to be a line. There always is.

Kaya, over at Under His Hand, said something in a blog a month or so back about this. I can’t find the exact post, can’t remember the exact words, but she was questioning it. Questioning it because of the reactions we sometimes get to our absolute honesty.

On one the forums over at MDS we were discussing the whole “asking for it” thing. More people than I can count threw in the “he must know what you want and need, must have that absolute honesty and truth and openness if he’s going to make a good decision” card.

You hear it incessantly.

But…
Do we really need to tell them every last thing in our heads? Really need to show them every reaction without censoring?

I don’t think so.

I think, at first, when the relationship is new and you are learning each other…  yeah, you need to give every drop of yourself, every reaction, every everything. He MUST be able to get into your head, learn you, know what makes you tick, how far he can go without breaking you.

But later?
Five or ten or fifteen years down the road?

C’mon.

He knows you.

I’m not saying people should stop communicating. Gods, we should never do that.
But does he really need you to tell him every time something sucked for you? Don’tcha think he knows? Don’tcha think, after all that time, he can tell? That maybe he wanted it to suck for you?
Does he really need you to whine and tell him every day for a month that you neeeeeeeeeed something? (I need a beating, Master. Ooooh, I’m just dying for a beating.) Does he, after being together awhile, really need you to tell him you hate that paddle and please stop you can’t take it? C’mon. You can SO take it for awhile, he already knows you hate it and you’re going to hate him if he stops anyhow so shut up already!

How often do we actually HINDER their sadism and dominance by not just shutting the fuck up, by insisting upon communicating every thought and emotion that flits thru our heads and hearts?

It is HARD to maintain a D/s relationship long term. Hard to keep the intensity. Really hard to keep the S/m from getting routine and less exciting than it used to be. We grow and change and our limits stretch and we have to do more and more to keep each other happy. Or we have to deal with less heart pounding excitement and learn to revel in the comfort, security and pleasure of a consistent, relatively normal D/s relationship. (Just like vanillas have to learn to love without the “crush” hormones once they stop raging)

Does it really help anyone when every time he does something to perk up the dominance or sadism we dissect every emotional and physical feeling we had about it? Doesn’t there come a point where you know each other well enough that, unless it’s something big or new or unusual, you can keep your thoughts in your own head instead of having to lay them out there? A point where you maybe choke back that bad reaction and see where things go for a bit instead of “giving him all of you, bad reactions and all because he MUST have them to …  blah blah”? A point where we trust him enough to just shut up and take what he’s giving, just shut up and do what he wants us to do?

I’m not sure I’m making much sense.

I know I no longer feel the need to give Taylor every thought, reaction, emotion in my silly, submissive brain.
I know he doesn’t want or need them all anymore.
I know he generally already knows what I”m feeling or that I’m choking back a reaction or even what I’m thinking half the time.
That’s why I let him in in the first place, why I gave him all that for so long…  so he could KNOW me.
Now he does.

Sure, if we’re trying something new or stretching beyond where we’ve been before I’m going to revert to telling him, opening up like a book.

But…
We’ve used that scourge seventy two times. He really doesn’t need to have me whine about it anymore or have me tell him after the scene in great detail how it made me feel.
He knows. And he revels in it.
He doesn’t need me to tell him that contradicting me in public embarrasses me and makes me feel stupid.
He knows and occasionally chooses to do it anyhow.

Communication and honesty are great. Mandatory, even, in this sort of relationship.
But the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me gods can, eventually, sound a lot like nagging and trying to control shit.

Me…
I’d rather keep a bit inside and keep things balanced, thank you.

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So yesterday I suggested to someone that they shift their focus from the wants and needs that weren’t being met in their relationship to figuring themselves out, figuring out what submission is, what being a submissive means to them.
Those are the basics, right?
The things we should approach first when we are exposed to and become interested in this lifestyle, right?
We’re not going to get anywhere without knowing ourselves fairly well, right?

I’ve been doing this a long ass time. I stopped worrying about the basics a decade ago. Mostly my blogs focus on the intricacies and struggles of living those basics 24/7.

But I’m thinkin’…
Maybe it would be beneficial to someone, somewhere, for me to spend some time ruminating on those basics. Hell, maybe it’ll even help me in some of my struggling if I take it back to the basics, eh?

So I spent some time with the online dictionaries (cuz, wouldn’t ya know, I no longer own a hard copy of one?  Egads!) and came up with these as the literal definitions of submission:

• The act of submitting to the power of another
• The state of having submitted
• The state of being submissive or compliant
• The quality or state of willingly carrying out the wishes of others
• The act of yielding to power or authority
• Surrender of the person and power to the control of another
• Acknowledgment of inferiority or dependence
• Humble or suppliant behavior
• Subjecting to a condition or process
• Committing to the consideration or judgment of another
• Allowing oneself to be subjected to something
• To conform to the will or judgment of another, especially out of respect or courtesy

Simple enough, right?

One person yielding to another. One person carrying out the wishes of another. One person complying and conforming to the will of another.

It means more than that, though. Simple definitions will never come close to defining lifestyle, 24/7 submission.

To me, submission to someone else, being someone’s submissive, means that I strive to obey, please and serve that person to the best of my abilities.
It means I have surrendered my right to make demands, to put myself first, and to determine what I can and cannot have, can and cannot do.

As a submissive I have a job, a role; to be pleasing, to obey, to serve him, to yield to his control, his will, his judgment.

I chose him. (He chose me? We chose each other?)
I now have to trust him enough to make the right decisions for me, for us.
I have to trust him to determine what I get, when I get it, what I do, when I do it.

I serve. I obey. I submit.
He controls.

I do not feel being a submissive frees me of responsibilities and choices as you’ll hear many submissives claim.
I am fully responsible for my own behavior.
I am responsible for the tasks he gives me.
I am responsible for giving him enough information to make informed decisions. (This does not, however, mean I need to tell him every last thought and feeling I have. But that is fodder for another blog so we’ll leave it until then.)
I am responsible for upholding my end of the “deal”; for being what I say I am.
I am responsible for obeying the rules he has laid out for me.
I make choices every single day.
Get him that glass of apple juice or tell him to bugger off? Suck his dick or stomp off in a huff because that’s not what I want to do? Stop typing so he can tell me something about an alien motorcycle part or go on typing and muttering “uh huh. Yeah. I see” in an absent manner while he talks?
See…
I can make those choices in either direction.
He gives me room for that.
There isn’t a flogger attached to his arm that strikes out with every poor choice, failure of my responsibilities, disobedience or less than ideal surrender to his will.
In all honesty the man rarely punishes me at all. Once a year I may - may - find myself punished in some way for disobedience or non submissive behavior.
Mostly he just gives me a whole lot of rope to hang myself with.

Because, you see, too many of those failures, disobediences or unacceptable behaviors and he will simply leave.
If I cannot submit properly to his dominance he will not be my Dominant.
It’s that simple.
(Now you may ask…  where’s the dominance if he doesn’t punish you or force you or whatever? Probably fodder for yet another blog but, just to reassure you, it’s there. In every refusal to take my collar off even though it’s sticking to my sweaty neck and leaving me raw and bruised. In every time I stop typing so I can listen to him blather about motorcycle parts - because he knows I was typing and preoccupied but wants me to listen to him, wants me to do what he wants me to do instead of what I want to do. In every time he does just about anything he is showing me, proving to me, that he is the boss and the world - our world - will revolve around him, his will, his desires, his needs and my agreement to serve those needs, yield to those desires, bend to his will)

So I guess you could say, to me, submission is mostly service and obedience. In serving him and obeying him I am, doubtless, yielding to his power, subjecting myself to someone, conforming to the will of another - all of which are definitions of submission.

It’s not very erotic and exciting, is it? Not very sexy. I haven’t had my hair pulled or my ass paddled even once here, have I?
See that stuff isn’t submission. Oh, sure, there are elements of D/s in that stuff. Without D/s that stuff would be abuse or s/m play. For us, it is s/m play. We incorporate s/m into our D/s, our s/m is saturated in power exchange - but it’s not submission. It’s not dominance. It’s the icing on the D/s cake, the extra, the fun, the occasional ingredient we use to sweeten the daily porridge, the tool he sometimes uses to tighten the screws of my submission. But it’s not submission.

So we’ve established that, for me, submission is primarily about service and obedience. And that Taylor keeps me on a pretty long leash, with enough room to trip myself up if I don’t pay careful attention to what I’m supposed to be paying attention to. (That would be him) Now don’t get me wrong. I have rules and boundaries. I’m not allowed, for example, to take my own collar off or tell him to shut up. I’m not allowed to call him a bastard, although calling him a fucker is okay. I’m expected to set aside what I’m doing when he requests something without too many huffs and puffs and sighs about it. I’m not allowed to behave in a disrespectful manner when we’re in public - for any reason. I don’t get to tickle his feet or poke him in the belly button. I’m expected to run his bath and wash him if he requests it. His word is law and final when it comes to my son. (Though after six years Taylor is more a father figure than his own father so it’s fairly natural. But, believe me, it wasn’t always easy to accept that rule!) Blah blah blah. There are enough little rules, expectations and boundaries to keep me from forgetting (as if that’s really possible) who the submissive is and who gets to be in control.

Neither the rules nor the enforcing of them make me a submissive though.
Obeying them makes me a submissive.
Disobeying them makes me a piss poor submissive.

Now you may be asking…
What about you? What about your needs? What about the stuff you want?

For me, submission isn’t about that.
Sure, I have them - needs and things I want.
Sure, I sometimes struggle with not getting what I want and need when I want and need it.
Perfectly natural, as a human being and a woman.
But I chose a man to be the axis of my world and I chose to surrender my wants and needs to him.
Starved, I waste away to a skeleton of what I have in me to be. No one can run on empty for ever. Bits of who and what they are are chipped away until they are unrecognizable.
I know. I’ve been there.
Well fed, I thrive and grow and provide far more than is possible when one is functioning on not enough fuel.
I know. I’ve been there too.

But it is not up to me to decide whether my life is a feast or famine.
I chose him.
And now he chooses for me.
I am fortunate to have chosen well and wisely, to have chosen a man who feeds my needs and even my wants - although in his own time, at his own bidding, not mine.

That’s submission.

I serve. I obey. I submit.
He controls.
And I am fulfilled - even when I’m miserable.

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”  -Rabindranath Tagore

“Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.”  ~Robertson Davies

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