Shifts in Fantasy

When my depression sets in I usually find myself blocked from accessing and maintaining the submissive mental space that I hold so dear.  I can catch glimpses of it but the moments are fleeting and I cannot grab on and ride the feelings for any amount of time.  Something else I notice is that to "get there," I have a natural shift in the types of fantasies my brain chases.

In normal times I can linger in a fantasy of a loving and warm, albeit strict form of lifestyle D/s.  I crave the intimacy and personal connection.  I long for the embrace of my soulmate and my heart flutters as I find my life's meaning through submission and service.  This is my ultimate vulnerability and the words of my heart resonate deeply to my core.

As depression slowly erodes my feelings over time, I find the demons screaming at me, attacking my fears and weaknesses.  The defenses around my heart activate and I feel things close off within.  I know this is my coping mechanism.  I know it is effective.  My submissive self is still here and it suffers, unable to feel the way it should.  When an idealized sense of love falls from its view, it continues searching.

It begins to pursue fantasies that exist within the darkness.  Cruel.  Harsh.  Impersonal.  These flash the glimpses that allow for submission under any circumstances.  I cease thinking about myself as a life partner.  I become something lesser.  A slave.  A prisoner.  A servant.  It does not matter who I am, it only matters what I do.  I am an action.  I am a service.  I merely exist at someone else's beck and call.  I have no choices.  No freedom.  No future.  I am there, trapped by the moment, living moment to moment, day by day.  There is no warmth or love waiting at the end of the trials.  The best I can hope for is the absence of pain.  I still want to love... I just do not expect to be loved.

Why do things turn so dark?  Why is this the only way that I feel anything decent?  Is this the manifestation of how I see myself?  Or is this my inner submissive simply scrounging to be fed and it takes whatever crumbs it can get?

This is part of the cycle.  In these times, it is the only way I can get off.  I don't know how I should feel about that, or if I should just ride it, knowing that this is temporary.

Failing

When I felt the depression creeping in I told myself that I would stay active.  I would stay in touch.  I would keep writing.  I would keep chatting.  I would keep reading.  I would keep leaving comments.

Unfortunately I am not doing well with any of these original goals.  I feel like I am falling off the planet, retreating into watching shows and reading so that I don't think about anything and don't feel anything.  I am numb.

I do not have access to the feelings that sustain me and this is bothering me.

It Ends

Originally Posted:  12/18/17

T and I called off our relationship yesterday.   The split was amicable and a couple of years in the making.  We are now roommates.  There is no rush for either of us to move out as both of us find the arrangement to be mutually beneficial.  She lost her sex drive a few years ago and over the past year or two she has lost any romantic feelings for me whatsoever.

I am feeling a bit numb.  There is a twinge of hurt festering inside.  There is also some relief.  I had feared this would blow up in a bad way where I would have to be afraid of what she might do and the stress that would follow.  When our lease expires we may still live together in a new place but we would have separate rooms.  There are 5-6 months before any decisions have to be made on that front.

I am now, for the first time in 12+ years, single.

Thoughts on Personal Acceptance

I will never be enough.  How could someone ever want someone like me?

These thoughts fall at the core of my being.  They are the horrific reality that drives me.

Most people don't think this way.  They have at some point had someone there for them, proving that they were okay.  Proving that they were enough.  Proving that they deserved happiness and the things they wanted.  Proving that they could feel secure with themselves.  All it takes is one to quiet the nagging doubts within.

Unfortunately the experiences of my vanilla self did not have this.  Rather than proof, it simply added to the doubts.  I am not pretty.  I am too short.  I don't project the right kind of confidence.

I have written before that in many ways the birth of my submissive self was heavily rooted within compensating for everything that I am not.  I have strengths, but they never seemed to matter until I became a submissive.  My strengths and desperation made me into a very good submissive.  They made me enough to be chosen.

However, to this day I have never been chosen for who I am.  When I am chosen it is because of who I am willing to be.  I am willing to be anything and everything.  I am willing to be nothing.  I am good at this.  This is what has made me acceptable.

I will act with effort.  I will endure.  I will improve.  I will perfect.  I will be broken.  This is how I have learned to show love.

This is my identity.  This is how I have come to accept myself.  This is how I have come to like myself.  This is where I have pride.

I have spent most of my life insecure and confused.  As such, it becomes very important to me to understand myself.  It becomes absolutely paramount for me to be able to adequately express who I am and what makes me tick.  I crave labels because it gives a name to what I am.  They validate me.

This is how I accept myself.

I am not enough unless I am willing to __________.

Ramblings

Now is one of those times where I am absolutely furious with my brain for not allowing me to drift into the places that I hold most dear to me.  This cycle is different in that I am actually getting 7-9 hours of sleep every night.  Usually when my depression kicks in I go down to 3-5 hours a night.  I feel like I’m getting old and am running out of things that I want to do (that are possible for me to do now).

UPS isn’t helping and for the second consecutive week my 2-Day Air shipping was delayed because it missed being loaded onto the delivery truck by an hour.  These delay  my feeble attempts to inject excitement into my life leave me feeling like I am drowning in lethargy.

A little lonesome

One of the hard parts of serving as a mentor or teacher is that once people grow beyond the need for you, that contact inevitably fades.  When the topics that were once the center of the connection are no longer relevant, I struggle with feeling like I’ve fallen out of place.

In some ways this is my own fault.  I tend to cycle through interests, with one serving as the primary at any given time.  Normally I would have something going on like a show to watch, a book I am reading, a guitar I am in pursuit of, a video game I’m completing, etc.  Right now my hobby is blogging and its related interactions.  Sadly, this doesn’t give me a lot to really talk about… outside of the topics that are going on for myself or what the people I am close to write about.  It doesn’t really leave a lot of “extra material” for me to talk about.

This is one of those times where I feel a little lonesome.

Evolving Views

I was thinking a bit about how my D/s views have changed since I started blogging back in 2010.  One of the biggest changes I can trace back to 2016, when Lady Grey recommended that I write in a more personal voice.  Before that, the majority of my writing had been of a more detached nature:  educational, informative, conceptual, comparative, etc.

I kept a lot of feelings bottled up as I hadn't really healed up from a lot of the pain of losing K until I wrote my Reflections sets of posts and faced a lot of my trauma and sadness head on.  You might say that was the first time I really had the courage to expose myself openly on my blog.  Since then, I have had very little trouble sharing openly and I have to say that it significantly changed the tone of my posts.

I no longer sound like I'm trying to sell something.

Another factor is that when writing from a more personalized viewpoint is that it's easier for me to call myself out on my own bullshit.  Many of my views have shifted to be more practical and real in that way, with less posturing, less idealism, etc.

One of the scary things is that my personal desires and ideals keep on evolving.

It's interesting how they have evolved beyond what I would recommend for others. I may talk about that more today.

Thoughts on my place

I’ve found myself feeling cloudy-headed and in an increasingly irritable mood lately.  Usually I look for some sort of critical point where things tipped for the worse.  In this case, I’m finding none of those things.  This is a case of erosion.

I’ve been blogging for a long time.  A really long time.  I’ve had friendships made through blogging come and go over the years.  There are a couple of people that I have gotten very close to through this medium.  I’ve had many more fall by the wayside.  My original purpose for blogging was to come to terms with my identity in D/s.  It wasn’t long before things shifted.  I began to write about my thoughts and the things I cared about in the lifestyle.  I began to explore ideas and things I was curious about through words.  I searched for answers to questions.  I has been a lot of fun.

At some point I found that what I mostly do is teach.  People that were eager to learn would find me.  Other times I would stumble upon those in need of guidance.  I like to talk about the ideas that aren’t covered in guides or recited as cliches anywhere you find BDSM on the web. I like to find the magical formulas that make D/s successful (e.g. if communication and consent were enough, almost everyone would be golden, right?). When you have been around the block as many times as I have, you have seen pretty much everything at least once. It makes me feel good to impart what I have learned to others when it will help them. It gives me a sense of purpose while D/s doesn’t exist in my life. Things had been going pretty well on that front recently.

What has been wearing me down isn’t something I can articulate easily. The “scene” I am currently immersed in is not my natural habitat. People have bee accepting of me and open to my ideas but there are times when topics come up that just make me feel off and/or out of place.

The past few times I have hopped in with groups it has been similar. I am the token male sub. The first task is always to break down the stereotypes of F/m. Dommes aren’t raging man-haters that abuse the hell out of some poor soul that shouldn’t even be there in the first place. I don’t even know where this idea comes from. I still end up having to overcome it. A lot of people end up feeling naive that they didn’t understand that D/s is D/s, regardless of if it’s M/f or F/m. Flipping the slash doesn’t make relationships non-loving or miserable.

Once the stereotypes are broken it’s a lot easier to talk about things in a mutually-understood way… for a while. There is a period of connection, friendship building, and camaraderie that feels great. I feel like I belong. That feeling is rare for me. Over time, things inevitably start to eat away at me because of numerous reminders that my role is not perceived as legitimate. This is rarely if ever thrown in my face intentionally. It is rarely blatant. I doubt people even realize they are doing it.
Before I go any farther I do want to mention that I’m debating not posting this. I don’t want to come off as some “whoa is me whiner” with thin skin looking for someone to play a violin for the depressing emo-boy. It took me days to recognize that this is legitimately affecting me in a negative way and not just some downswing in mood. I also don’t mean for this to guilt trip anyone. If anything, I just want people to be aware of it and that it does have an impact.

There are ideas that perpetuate that are really ugly. They are ideas that in any other arena, people would be offended by them. For some reason in M/f, it’s easy for people to believe that this is the correct orientation. Men dominate, women submit. People make these statements. They nod and agree. They will talk about how equality was ruining their marriage and now that the man has taken charge, the woman realizes what a bitch she has been and obviously needed to be dominated. This is the natural order and now everything is perfect. Feminism is destroying the world. They nod and agree.

I sit back and shake my head. D/s isn’t a perfect substitute for maturity. I think in many cases when people take responsibility in their roles they mature. I think this maturing could have been done without D/s. I think people can choose who they want to be instead of just following baser emotions. When people enact D/s they choose who they want to be sometimes for the first time in a long time. I don’t think this has anything to do with natural order. I think it has everything to do with people truly trying to understand the one that they love and what will make them truly happy. This can happen without D/s even if D/s was their vehicle for finding it.

I shouldn’t have to explain why the sexist nature of the common view bothers me. I’ve ranted about it before. I will simply make a comparison statement. If a man said that women shouldn’t be CEOs or in hold government office because men are better take charge leaders, many people would get pretty damn offended. Very few people would nod and agree.

The other factor is at the core of what wears me down. If M/f is the natural order, then I am an abomination. I shouldn’t exist. My existence becomes trivialized. If people really see my role and existence as real, they could not and would not make those types of sexist statements, nor agree with them. They would probably get offended.

If someone truly sees me and accepts me, they would not even think those things.

I’m not really going to take this any farther as anything more I could say is only beating a dead horse. What I can say is that experiencing weeks of this has worn me down and I feel unnerved. It doesn’t feel good. A Domme friend of mine told me that she thinks it’s easier for a man to come out as gay than to come out as submissive. I’ve agreed with her since I read that statement the first time and still agree with it now.

Hopefully I didn’t piss anyone off by writing this. If so, I apologize in advance as it wasn’t my intent.

Blocked

For those who have followed me for a while, you will probably remember at least one time where I have described myself as feeling “blocked.”  The coincides with a decreased number of posts and fewer of those posts reflecting my own personal feelings.  I refer to this state as blocked because what is going on is that something is preventing me from readily accessing my deeper feelings, and most notably, my ability to enter the vulnerable emotional state where the feelings behind my submission reside.

In most cases there is a definite cause.  e.g. a bad fight with T, my depression setting in, etc.  Other times it is a prolonged period of minor disruptions to my world that gradually wear me down.  When it happens in the slow way it will often take me a while to pinpoint what has changed and led to this.  I had been feeling this way for about a week and trying different methods of reconnecting with myself, often with the help of those who are close to me.  I finally got to the bottom of it last night.
What I am about to write will probably make very little sense to some people but I will try to describe it as best I can.  Lately I have felt too comfortable with myself.  People have been too supportive, too accepting, and too kind.  My submissive side was born of pain and rejection.  It was nurtured by being made to feel “safe,” but not “good.”

Praise or encouragement for the things that I do, the things that I write, the help and support that I may provide, etc. are okay.  Unconditional acceptance for who I am rather than for what I do… is foreign to me.  I’m not used to it.  It actually makes me feel a little uneasy inside.  It conflicts with my perceived reality.  I’m screwed up.  Slowly I start to acclimate.  I start to believe with my rational mind.  You would think that this would help me.

The words actually remove me from my vulnerable self.  They feed my alpha.  They create a fragile and precarious balance.  They feel like niceties fed to me and create an artificial sense of comfort.  I feel like a kid with one leg being told he can be a professional soccer player.  Do I dare believe?
My damaged heart does not.  It walls off in lieu of wishful thinking.  I appreciate the people that try to build me up.  I wish I could respond to it like a “normal” person would.

Last night a good friend of mine did me a very large favor.  She was honest with me.  It took work.  It took prodding.  The words were blunt.  “What a sad broken little man who has to wear that to get aroused.”  These ripped down my walls and pierced deeply into my truest self.  The result was a sense of peace while I plummeted into my subspace, surrounded by my vulnerabilities and swimming within the feelings that resonate so deeply within me.  This is my truth.  This is the truth behind the faces.  This is what is spoken behind closed doors.  This is what is spoken in my absence.  What a rare treat it is to experience this level of honesty.  I was thankful for her words.

Accepting myself was accepting my truth.  It was not convincing myself of something false, it was accepting what is the truth.  I am not afraid to face it.  In fact, by facing it I feel real.  Those who accept me as a sad broken little man are those who I hold dearest.  You make me feel safe without trying to convince me of something that I am not.  Through this I felt unblocked.

Controlling the Narrative

The feedback on a recent post on Labels as well as a discussion with some blogging friends got me thinking about the role that labels have played in my life in the world of BDSM.  It seems that most people do not like feeling constrained by the limits that labels impose or imply.  I can understand that point of view.

I have a slightly different view upon labels, not because I necessarily enjoy them, but because I look at them pragmatically.  Just because we wish to avoid labels doesn’t mean that we will avoid being labeled.  The people we encounter will generate their own labels for us, whether they be good or bad.  However, I find that by labeling ourselves it gives us some power to “control the narrative.”  That is, when we provide ourselves with a label, however general or specific it may be, it sets the initial tone for how they will perceive us that may be better than what they may have drawn on their own.

An easy example is if someone labels themselves a “brat,” this provides a basic lens to view us through.  Without such a label in mind, an outside audience may draw other interpretations and labels from recounted events, such as a SAM (smart-ass masochist), someone that tops from the bottom/tries to manipulate, etc.  “Brat” gives a more clear idea that someone’s defiance may be part of a push/pull dynamic that both dominant and submissive find enjoyable, and ideally tempers the reader against forming negative judgments.

What I have found over the years is that people who are the most comfortable with labels are the ones who have had to explain themselves… repeatedly… over and over… to nearly everyone.  “Just give me one word that sums most of it up so that I don’t have to try to make someone understand every time I meet someone.”  Rarely does anyone rigidly conform to a label, so of course there is some explanation of some of the finer details that inevitably must be done, but that’s a lot easier to do when you can say one word and that gives at least a general impression of what you are about.  You will find that littles and gentle doms often have very little trouble giving themselves a label.  This is also frequently true for slaves, pain sluts, and exhibitionists.

It is common to find greater reluctance when people do not embrace their label.  A “do me” sub doesn’t want to be labeled as a “do me” sub.  A sadist often does not want to think of themselves as a sadist.

Part of my uneasiness comes from having experience with strictly controlling my narrative for the past decade.  The “sissy” label I carried with me was a source of constant anguish.  Hell, it is the reason I started blogging in the first place, as an attempt to come to terms with something I didn’t want to accept.  Accepting the label helped me get used to the prejudices and unavoidable judgments.  There was some solace in knowing what to expect.  Realizing that label was incorrect feels very different.

Right now I feel uncertain on how to control my narrative.  It’s a loss of control that I am not accustomed to.  Thankfully the supportive environment that is in place around me makes it less bothersome.  That being said, it will probably continue to haunt me until I understand my new narrative.

Thoughts on Labels and Identity

I know that a lot of people want to shy away from labels.  They don’t want to be contained by a set of characteristics that constrain them. I tend to agree.  When you are in the midst of a relationship with active D/s, it is important to find your own way.  You find what works in a practical way and this frequently requires breaking away from set conventions and definitions.

Things are a bit different when you are not actively practicing D/s.  When faced with starting over, your labels become you.  They become your identity unless people decide to delve deeper.  Without labels, you are nothing that people are looking for.  The labels are necessary to serve as the starting point… the filter.

I find myself confused without a firm grasp of my labels.  10+ years of understanding just vanished for me.  This was 10+ years of being able to explain myself, describe myself, and have a fairly accurate idea of how people perceive me.  I feel kind of naked.  Understanding myself has always given me confidence.  Being able to share how the parts of myself work has given me peace of mind.  Currently I just feel a bit… lost.

I want to write more but I’m feeling a bit… out of touch with myself.  Until I find the new edges and boundaries of myself, I fear this will continue.  What I want has not changed… but the reasons why have become drastically different.

I know the understanding will come with time… and getting over this cold will help clear my head to figure things out.  I just wish it was happening sooner and in a way that was more familiar to me.

Thoughts on Weakness

So often I find that people try to hide their weaknesses.  They mask them.  They ignore them.  They don’t want anyone to see them.  I’ve never really been a fan of this… because most of the time, everyone can still see them anyways.

I see my weaknesses every time I look at myself.  I see every flaw, bad habit, negative tendency, and struggle.  I try to fix what I can fix.  What I can’t fix I try to compensate for… or over-compensate for in order to make it less detrimental.

So often people cater to their strengths and avoid dealing with their weaknesses at all costs.  Does this ever make us stronger?   With enough work, we can turn weaknesses into strengths.  Well, not always, but we can usually turn weaknesses into sources of strength.

Thoughts like these make me worry about healing.  If I felt good about myself, would I still be able to find the endless motivation to continue my never-ending quest for improvement?  If I ever felt, “good enough,” would this in fact actually be good enough?  Or would I be setting myself up for another string of failures?  These questions scare me enough to wonder if healing is every the right choice for me.

I’ve felt invisible for so long.  Hidden from the world.  Camouflaged in with the masses.  Sometimes I can even pass as normal.  Deep down, I want (some) people to see me… all of me… all of my fucked up broken-ness and accept me.  The thought of this is both terrifying and peaceful.  The more that it happens, the more addicted to it I become.  Will I ever feel safe needing this?  I don’t know.

I am not immune…

Originally Written 10/30/17

 

I am not immune to the ache.  While the absence of D/s in my life has forced me to develop a very large number of coping methods, my system is far from perfect.  Self-maintenance, living vicariously through others, and crafting fantasies to satiate my mind help quite a bit, but sometimes it is not enough. 

 

Weekends are the hardest for me because I do not have the same type scheduled privacy that allows me to induce my own submissive mental space through the easiest triggers.  For those who have read my writing for an extended period you can probably notice the tonal difference between when I am writing from subspace and when I am not.  It is also probably quite evident when I have frustration built up due to being blocked or prevented from accessing this space for a while.  I would have to imagine they almost sound like they are being written by different people.  That probably isn’t too far from the truth.

I sit now and ache… knowing that I am a few hours away from being able to find myself.  I wish that knowledge made me more patient, but it just makes me want it even more.

Hitting the Wall

I'm sorry about that little outburst in the last post.  After having a chance to calm myself I can tell exactly what happened.

My mania just crashed.  Hard.

In hindsight it is clear as day.  The last 3-4 days have had a tension buildup that I was sensing but couldn't quite place.  I want to apologize to anyone out there that I have interacted with over the past couple of days and managed to offend.  I got really out of control and just started riding feelings rather than paying attention to how I was acting and what I was saying.

I'm currently feeling the pangs of regret in knowing that I made an ass of myself on more than one occasion.  The good news is, you won't have to deal with me making 3, 4, or 5 posts a day :D

I’ll Take Emo Word Vomits for $800, Alex

I’m sitting here and wondering if I am a bad person inside.

I like helping people.  Is this only because I like how it feels to make an impact?  Am I just trolling for people to be grateful to me and make me feel appreciated?

I’m feeling disconnected from myself.  I can’t tell why I do what I do.  I can’t tell who I am.

I know this is momentary.  I know it will pass.  I just feel completely confused and out of control in a wave that has decimated my understanding of self.

I haven’t felt this way in a very long time.  I don’t remember what I’m supposed to do.

Thoughts on my reality

I realize now that a post I made recently may have done the opposite of what I intended.  I had hoped to help but I think it may have felt like I was diminishing their existence.  I am frustrated with myself that I didn’t see this interpretation before I posted it and I have spent the last couple of days thinking about what I didn’t see.  I figured it out earlier today:  my reality is different from theirs.

I forgot about this and that is my fault.

I have never felt desirable.  I have never had someone want me for my looks, my body, my car, money or status, or anything like that.  I have never had anyone want me for my abilities or because I was a part of a team or a band.  I do not know what it is like to be desired, and especially, I do not know what it is like to be desired for wrong or empty reasons.

As I have found myself starting over several times since I entered this lifestyle (something I had hoped I would never have had to do).  Having been in both online and local communities, spending months upon months searching for a partner, you get a feel for what people find desirable.  While I know that personal connection and love trumps all, those are things that must be found and nurtured over time.  The start of the process is not so kind because of what people have to go on.  Online, it’s who we are on paper.  In the real world, it’s about how we look.

Online searches always start with the idea of us.  It is not us.  Not who we are, but the idea of what we are.  The concept of desirable starts here. There is an inherent inequality between who desires and who is desired.  Supply and demand plays a large part.  Gender and role serve as the basic filter.  Dominant women are the rarest.  Male submissives, the most numerous.  Those who are particularly beautiful or handsome have the greatest superficial draw.  After that it falls to race, age, interests, and how we present ourselves.  People with the most common and sought after interests rise. Those with less desirable interests or interests that carry negative stereotypes fall.

A lot of filtering goes on before anyone ever sees who we are.  A lot of filtering goes on before anyone even cares about who we are.  This isn’t the right way that things should be, but it is how I perceive reality.

Those who are most sought after will get worn down by volume.  The balance for this is availability and options.  They will have every option in the world to choose from.  Even if 99% of them are bad, it still yields many options from only that top 1%.  This is empowering.  It can also be frustrating.  It could be worse.

Those who are the least sought after will get worn down in different ways.  No one writes to them, so they must make the first move, knowing they are one of one-thousand who chose to write that day.  How do you separate yourself?  In this type you are wholly dependent upon the impression you can make with your words and your self-portrayal.  You try to be as honest and genuine as you can.  You try to give an accurate picture of yourself, highlighting your strengths while admitting your weaknesses.  You try to be interesting.  When you feel good about what you have written, it dawns on you: many people lie about themselves on their profile.  All the time and effort goes in only to hope that someone will care enough to dig further and if they dig, they will actually believe you.  You have no leverage.  You have no bargaining power.  You are at the mercy of it all.  You have no options.  It is the desired that has the options.

In D/s, I am one of the undesirables.  I am a male sub.  I am not handsome.  I’m short. I am a minority.  I have kinks that relate to feminization.  Each of these characteristics diminishes interest in me, yet none of them summarize who I am.  Who I am is never seen, because I never clear the bar.  I am virtually invisible.

I have always wondered what it would feel like to be one of the desired.  To have a specific quality, characteristic, or role that would automatically propel me to the top of the list of someone’s potentials.  In my imagination, I picture this as being a good thing.  Everyone has a reason to meet you.  Everyone that meets you has the potential to see the real you.  Everyone that sees the real you has the potential to be the one.

I can only picture the benefits but I lose sight of what I don’t know.  I can’t see the headaches or what this would do to a sense of self and sense of worth.  I can only guess.  I can’t see how prolonged experiences with having loads of options but finding none of them worthy would feel.  I can only guess.  I can’t truly understand what it is like to be desired for the wrong reasons.  I can only guess.

This is my reality.  I will be more careful in the future when trying to picture someone else’s.

In Hindsight

I really don't think I will ever let things slide like I did this past week.  It was a lot more work to try and catch things up than it is to just post them in both spots when I write them.

I have been writing a LOT lately.  A lot of those posts have been inspired by comments from readers on WP.  Receiving 10, 20, or 30 comments on a post with a long series of back and forth discussion is incredibly motivating.  I haven't experienced that before.  A lot of the posts were responses to questions or drawn from topics that were mentioned in said comments.  I did leave out 3-4 posts still, but this is the bulk of them. 

I sort of feel like deciding to go with a non-pink blog and separating the forced feminization aspects did open me up to another demographic of readers that I would not have had otherwise. 

Returning to Earth

I've been pretty damn emo with some of my posts lately.  While it might seem like wanton gut-spilling, I'm actually finding that it is helping me to solidify my understanding of what is going on inside. 

When analyzing myself I've always believed in brutal honesty.  Even if it is unpleasant and hurts, I've never felt there was a point to it unless I lay it out there as objectively as possible.  If I'm going to learn anything from it, I have to be willing to face the worst and most shameful parts of myself. 

I'm going to try to dial it back a bit on that front, but I am feeling like I am in a better place with what I've been digging through.  Often the thoughts are fleeting and it felt beneficial to organize them all in one place and commit them to the written word.

Thank you for reading.

What would they think?

I have to say that I am having some very excellent conversations with others via comments both on my blog and on theirs.  This is the part that I love so much about blogging and the blog community. I have recently had a couple of recurring themes popping up that relate to some of my more recent posts.  A lot of it focuses around shame and self-acceptance.

It took me years before I spilled my guts on my sexuality during adolescence.  In case it got lost on anyone, I will spell it out right here (and yes, I am blushing).

I have never had an orgasm outside of a Femdom context.  My earliest masturbation habits always involved being dominated by a woman (I was probably 11-12).  I cannot get an erection to "standard" things like porn and naked women.

For the entirety of my life I have been haunted by one big question:  What would they think? 

What would women think if they knew about me?  What would they think if they knew what got me off?  If they knew the extent of my perversions?

I know that nearly everyone who is involved in kink has probably had thoughts or doubts that are similar to these.  However, most people that I know who are involved in kink have a couple of key characteristics for them to fall back on:

1. The majority of them can still achieve climax and arousal by "standard" means, e.g. vanilla sex.
2. The majority of them did not have to worry about these fears until after they reached adulthood.  18+, 21+, whatever.  Most people don't get into kink until it is legal to be into kink and people with sexual experience are more likely to experiment.

Basically, they can still pass themselves as "normal," even if they find a vanilla life unfulfilling.  They can fake it.  Also, for many, they weren't plagued with all sorts of confusion about their sexuality.  They wanted to fondle breasts.  They wanted to fuck.  They wanted to get/give oral.

Society told me I wanted those things.  The "guys" talked like everyone needed to want those things.  I wanted to be tied up and kept as her pet.  I hid this.  I tried to bury it.  I always lost.  It always won.  I would jerk off and hate myself for it.  I would jerk off and want to cry at how fucked up I was.  While I wanted to be loved, I was terrified at revealing my true self.  I was terrified that I would be rejected.  I was terrified that they would tell everyone else and no one would want me.  I was absolutely convinced that it would lead to abandonment.  Not a great fear for someone who was put up for adoption.

As much as I wanted love, the thought of being unable to perform scared the living hell out of me.  It bothered me that I didn't get an erection the first time I held hands with and embraced a girl.  It bothered me that I didn't get an erection the first time I kissed a girl.  It bothered me that I needed to picture her straddling me while I was bound and helpless to get aroused.  It bothered me that if a girl in a fur-trimmed coat gave me a hug and it brushed my cheek that I immediately got an erection and pictured her straddling me while I was bound and helpless.

What would they think of me if they knew the true me?  This thought was always present in the back of my mind from age 13 to 24, and still lingers in some deep part of my soul.

I have a pretty good read of people.  I have known people from all walks, all backgrounds, that were of varying race, religion, and sexuality.  My educational background in college had me studying many different fields with a sound understanding of demographics.  Getting to know people on a personal level (while hiding my secret) allowed me to understand a lot of how people tick.

While everyone is unique, people also have a lot of similarities.  When you look at populations you start to see trends with historical evidence to back them up.  People fear and shun what is different.  People are made uncomfortable by concepts that are unfamiliar to them.  When confronted with something that makes them uncomfortable, they will fall back on ingrained personal principles to cope with it.  Not all of these principles are kind, accepting, or tolerant.

What would they think of me if they knew the real me?  Well, if we took a random assortment of 10 vanilla women +/- 5 years of me, I'm pretty certain that at least 2-3 of them would be offended my existence.  I would be a blight of society and a symbol of the failings of religion and public education.  I would be the person that wasn't missed if the gestapo came and dragged me away.

There would probably be 1-2 that were intrigued.  These are the types that enjoy being the beard to a gay male.  Because I am straight, they would likely poke and prod a bit, possibly being a little bit playful, but altogether, having a secret pervert for a friend does not provide the same novelty. In most cases they would keep their distance, never being overtly rude, but placing a glass ceiling on how close we would get as friends.  They might even go out of their way to make sure they did not cater to my fetish set in any way.  The idea that I would be attracted to them would make them uncomfortable in a bad way.  As much as they might enjoy my uniqueness, I mostly provide value as an "I know this guy that's into ______," story to impress others.

That leaves 5-7 others.  The middle ground is always the hardest because these people will struggle as their idealized ethics and morality will conflict with their actual thoughts.  They might want to know why.  They might be curious about basics.  They want to be open-minded, so overt rudeness is unlikely.  "To each their own."  "Whatever makes you happy."  "Whatever floats your boat."  The niceties are code words for, "you make me uncomfortable, but I am determined to remain polite."
 If they brave to know more beyond their comfort zone, that is where the reactions can't be hidden so easily.  Gasps.  Gum smacking.  Smirks.  Frowning head shakes.  These mannerisms tell the story, they are judging me.  The interactions will devolve from here.  The barriers will go up as they process.  Most likely they will have no interest in interacting ever again but they will have an "oh my God, I met this freak" story to tell their closest friends over drinks.

The process will vary a lot within these.  The battle going on will be of varying degrees.  There will be some sympathy, but how much is shown will depend upon how foreign I am to them.  If one of them had a gay uncle they were close with that was ostracized by the family when he came out and eventually committed suicide, they will likely express this sympathy.   If 95% of the people they have interacted with at length were the same race, religion, and economic background, there is a greater chance they will lean to hidden disgust.

For someone to accept me, a sample size of 10 is probably too small.  60 might find someone who would actually feel comfortable engaging me on a personal and friendly level.

I'm certain that someone has rolled their eyes by now and are thinking "dude, you're so full of shit, you can't cram people into a box like that and treat generalizations like they are fact."  I won't argue with that, but I would counter that I'm not trying to say all of this is true, it is merely how my brain perceives it being true to me.  Yes, I am a 10th degree black belt at twisting semantics to justify flawed logic in a manner that fits the broken way that my heart perceives my place in this world.

Something I haven't really written about in detail is that I have outed myself as a submissive to at least 20 vanilla friends.  21 actually if I count them all.  17 were women, 4 were men.  I have 3 friends left:  2 men, 1 woman.  With the majority of them I only grazed the surface.  Some principles about D/s and the like.  I have watched people shift their perception of me on a dime.  I have watched them fade away because they had no interest in being a part of my life after that.  While I may have made up some numbers for this example, the truth of it is that they are based upon my experiences. 

I am a subscriber to Cooley's theory of the looking-glass self.  My perceptions were formed by where I fit and how others have acted/reacted to me.  This is the source of my inherent shame.

What would they think of me?  I painfully know the answer to that.

When I get teased, I feel the truth shining through.  I feel shame because I am shameful.  I feel like if I try to believe a different perspective that I will simply be lying to myself.  Instead, I accept it as truth.  When I feel someone being that honest with me, I feel warm inside.  It means they see the real me, the true me, and they do not reject me.

My means of coping with this is that really, I only need one person on the planet to accept all of me.  I value her honesty and do not mind if she uses it to control me.  She becomes the only one that I need.  She is my savior.  She is the one I have been searching for.  I will love her with my all.  She is the beautiful and amazing Goddess that sees a shameful wretch like me and understands what I can become.  This is the blissful existence I long for. 

Is that wrong? 

Writing Mania

When I average more than a post a day for an extended period of time I think it's pretty safe to say that I'm in a mania.  It is part of my depression cycle but I honestly don't mind the absurdly motivated state that I get into with this phase. 

The downside of it is that I get hooked by the attention.  I love hearing from people and interacting with them.  The more comments I receive, the more I want to write.  When I start banging away on a keyboard I can usually make posts take shape fairly quickly.  The downside is that I inevitably will run out of topics that are meaningful to me right now and start rehashing things over and over again.

While my Wordpress blog is fairly new so it probably isn't as big of a factor there, it probably gets a bit stale for the veteran readers on Blogger.  I also worry that I may be likely to "chase reactions" by choosing topics and views that are most likely to flow with the "tone" of the feedback that I do get. 

It's not that what I write about aren't things I am interested in... it's just that there's an obvious difference in quality and a fresher point of view when it is something that currently relates to my current feelings and experiences. 

I don't know, I guess I just feel like I'm getting a little bit crazy and I'm having trouble differentiating if what I have been writing is good and interesting or not or if I am merely writing to hear from people.  I'm also wondering if this is a bad thing.  I feel better when I write than when I don't.

Historically, when I slip off the deep end someone usually scolds me and I crash back to reality.

That being said, if anyone has any questions or topics they would like me to write about, I'm always looking for ideas.