Reflections part 2: the beginning

I attended several colleges in different states, too depressed to focus on career goals, but I knew That college provided the best opportunity to meet someone.  I did, indirectly.  When you are at a small college with a car, you make lots of friends... and friends of friends.  I met K briefly through a friend of a friend.  We had some overlapping circles but she wasn't a student at the college so things were fleeting at best.  I ran into some financial troubles and had to withdraw from that college and returned to finish up at a state school.

My plan to find love while in college was fading quickly.  I had gotten a bit older.  My plan to save virginity for marriage began to make me look more like a loser than an honorable guy and only added to my insecurities.  Around 8 months after moving, I bumped into K online through some mutual interests.  We began chatting without knowing who we were, but after some references, we put 2+2 together and realized we had briefly met.  We were just friends.  She was having a bit of a rough go of things.  I was having a rough go as usual, with a handful of very short lived relationships and failed dating attempts.

Things with K were complicated.   We spent several months as friends, chatting online for a few hours a day.  Spend enough time with someone and you end up talking about pretty much everything.

I had been set up on a blind date with a classmate's roommate.  The woman and I hit it off really well and things went great for about two weeks.  She hadn't dated much and I could tell she was hesitating and second guessing a lot of the time.  I had given up on holding back so I did my best to make her feel comfortable and cared for.  It turns out this had the opposite effect and she felt I was too serious and my feelings were too strong so she abruptly broke it off with no real explanation or chance to talk it out.  It fucked me up.

K was my shoulder in its aftermath and it was around this time we began to supplement our chats with many extended phone conversations as well.  I explained the whole story and it made her angry at the other woman.  We ended up talking a lot about relationships and I told her about how I went about things and how I wanted to make a woman feel.  K responded with, "you know, you'd be a perfect submissive."  I had spent a few years jerking off to bondage fantasies so this set my mind racing.  She went on to explain to me the principles of BDSM and gave me some resources to read with a plan to talk later.

I read them all as well as some other things that probably pushed the envelope a little far (e.g. Elise Sutton's site) but most of it sounded good to me and turned me on quite a bit.  "What did you think?" she asked the next time we spoke.  "About what?" I replied.  "About being a submissive," she countered.  I can't remember what I said next but it was something along the lines of "sounds good, it's hot, it turned me on."  She was ecstatic and informed me that it was a huge part of her life and she had been holding back from me but now that I had accepted it she could be fully open with me.

K was a very, very, very sexual person.  Her ideal was for people to be aroused 24-7.  She wasn't a slut or an overt bimbo or anything like that, but she was more the type that could spend the whole day with a remote control butterfly or egg in her panties under her jeans for an entire day and you would never know.     

Around this time I got the feeling that K might like me a little bit.  I wasn't sure how well a relationship would work long distance and there was another matter I had to consider.  K had some major health problems... like really major health problems.  It was kind of the elephant in the room.  Over the next couple of years she was going to need some major operations done with a chance she would survive and make a good recovery or a larger chance that it was going to kill her.  K had basically resigned herself to dying and had given up hope for happiness and this had accelerated her decline in health.  K did have her demons.  She had been abused physically and sexually and had very poor self-esteem.  The men in her life had made her only feel worthwhile if she was pretty.  I think we connected pretty deeply because of this as we had experienced similar feelings just for different reasons.

I can say that at the time, my intentions were just to be a good friend and support her as best I could.  K continued to drop hints as we continued to talk about BDSM and the like. To be blunt, my mind was a giant fucking mess through it all.  I know that I made her feel good and we were spending around 8 hours a day chatting via messenger or on the phone.  I made sure she was eating right and taking care of her body.  Her medical conditions started improving and her chances of surviving were increasing. By now, a good chunk of our time was spent talking about BDSM. 

K had spent 7 years in the lifestyle (starting at age 18) in both switch and sub roles.  She had been very active in the local community and was a strong "defender of principles" in that regards.  It was very odd to me.  She had a stubborn will of iron and was extremely fiery.  She would also masturbate at least five times a day.  Some things didn't make sense to me.  I just couldn't picture her as a submissive with the type of personality she had but I understood it with where her self-esteem had been for most of her life.

K's hints grew progressively less subtle.  I was VERY confused and had major reservations on multiple fronts.  She was beautiful, way out of my league, was she okay with that?  How would a BDSM relationship work with two subs?  Could I handle getting into a relationship where there was a good chance she wouldn't last more than two years?  Over the next week or two I began to slowly whittle away at those questions.  To answer the first question, K had seen me, if she was okay with me as I was, that was good enough for me.

The second one took a bit more trolling.  I got the feeling that she may have been hinting that she wanted me to be a switch or a dom.  I could never physically hurt a woman... it's just not possible for me (nor does it do anything for me sexually).  I asked K if she had ever considered being a Domme.  This seemed more likely.  From what I knew of her she got very turned on by kink more than just about anything: bondage, spanking, body worship, behavior control, etc.  She said she would think about it for a day or two (translation: fantasize and masturbate) and see how she felt and we left that part at that. 

This whole time and weeks leading up to it I had been trying to wrap my head around the third question.  I knew I was just being a chicken shit by leaving it lingering.  She cared about me for how I made her feel and that I was willing to see things through (while others would distance myself).  I cared about her too much to let fear of the unknown get in my way and I hardened my resolve.  My rationale was basically:  If she has a year left, she deserves to be as happy as humanly possible for that year.  If she pulls through, great, we can be happy for longer.

The next time we spoke I had already made up my mind.  As it turns out, her fantasies about tying someone else up and spanking them got her off just as hard as her sub fantasies and I asked her how she felt about me.  K admitted she had loved me for a while but held back since she didn't want to put me in the position where I had to face things.  I responded that I would love her through anything and would be by her side no matter what. 

We immediately started making plans to make the most of the time we knew we had.

To be continued.