Is too much introspection dangerous or do we just tell ourselves that to avoid tackling the really big stuff?

My last three posts have generated online and offline commentary from a number of significant quarters, and it is forcing me to question some long-held beliefs…and to wonder if this is a good thing, or whether I am “punch drunk” from too much navel gazing.

On my run this morning, I remembered about a third of the way in, to start reciting my mantras to myself.  Almost as soon as I started, this little old woman [I have mentioned her here] appeared in bright red spandex, doing her early morning run.  I think she must be 75 year old, but she is jogging along, and she never fails to smile at me, only her whole face lights up.  It is beautiful to behold.  I am convinced she is a spiritualist of some kind, there is something about her…  I also noticed today that she wears a slave collar, and can’t help but wonder if her appearance on my running route has a deeper meaning.  Coincidentally, she appears every time I run that particular route, regardless of the time, and always in the same place along the route—she is coming the other direction…and I never see her on the return, but also, she has only begun to appear in recent months, since I began doing this spiritual work.  She does not seem to greet the other runners ahead of me, but when she passes me she makes a huge smile and presses her hands together as if to say “Namaste” but instead says “Hi”.  I am perplexed.  The things we notice…

I think I’m scared by what I have written lately.  Not the words themselves, but their implications.  I can’t quite predict what is going to come out.  I don’t plan this out.  I don’t choose a topic in advance.  Instead, it’s more like whatever bubbles to the surface.  Sometimes a bubble comes, but it doesn’t quite make it out, and so I take note of it, write down some scraps, and move on.  This post begins its life as scrap #413, meaning there are many unfinished posts lying in its wake.  I can’t quite figure out why some of them just burst out fully fledged like a dancer from a cake, but others just get stuck, mired, and fail to fluoresce.  My hypothesis about all of it is that my subconscious is in charge.

Today, I awoke with a feeling of deep bliss and happiness.  It was triggered in part by a message that I received in the middle of the night, one that I found rich and fulfilling, and one that shows a whole world opening to me, on so many levels, and I can taste my own destiny in it, and I love it.

Also, the lingering effects of having glimpsed my spirit guide have been pronounced.  I feel its presence.  I think it is male, but I am not sure, as its beauty was elfin.  Hard to tell.  Non-binary?  I shouldn’t jest about such weight things.  I believe he is male.  I also am not sure if he is divine, or whether Spirit Guides are divine.  In fact, I don’t know much at all.

And if you knew me outside of this context, like if you were my wife, you would most definitely think that my talking about such things as Spirit Guides, or doing any of this spiritual exploration was totally out of character for me.  Was I on a path to become some boring old fuddy-duddy?  I don’t know, but I’ve been all business for the longest time, that I began to forget the real me…the real me who used to wear outrageous clothes, chartreuse suits, velvet suits, wear feathers and dream catchers and other bits of bric–brac.  I miss that.  I miss me.

I’ve been telling my wife about my adventures with the various healers and people in my life, little by little, and she is both encouraging and bemused.  I sure do love her.  And sooner or later, the monolith I face is going to be something I need to have the courage to climb.  I know it but am terrified.

I can’t escape the feeling that I have failed her.  By getting upset all those years ago about her “disgust at my sexuality” I failed her, and I failed myself.  [You can read about that here].  She gave me the terms when I first told her about my nature, and before I had the language to describe things as I do now, and to be able to articulate today is a gift of many years of silent introspection.

“If you want to wear women’s clothes, then wear women’s clothes.  I’m fine with it, but I won’t be party to some secret.  Just do it.”  Tough love.  She was right.  Instead, I hid.  And by hiding, I allowed my life to be ruled by shame.  Shame on me.  And in that sense, if I hide my sexuality, it does become shameful, something to hide, and if that is true, well, being shameful is “disgusting”.  Harsh, and I don’t mean to be, but in a way, she’s right.  The only thing that makes it shameful is that I have been afraid of it, and have hidden it, and have therefore bought into the narrative that it is something to hide.

There has to be balance too.  You don’t need to rub people’s faces in sexuality, no matter what kind…whether “acceptable” or outside of the norms.  But surely there is a happy medium where I can just be me and “out and proud,” but without inflicting myself on others…and not making excuses to myself or anyone else in either direction.

And what is this monolith?  The failure to connect with my wife through the language of the erotic.  I tell myself that I refuse because it reminds me of her “disgust”…but isn’t this just a cop out?  Aren’t I the one who has failed her?  Certainly, society would feel that way—after all, her sexuality is “normal” and mine falls out-of-bounds.  Social convention would dictate that the burden is on me.  I have felt a brat for denying her, and my assertion of a right to my sexual identity feels selfish.

And now, it has been so long that we have touched one another sensually, been naked together, she is a stranger to me.  Her body is an unknown, and mine to her.  And I don’t know what to feel about that.

During my “Catfish Domme” phase, one of the ladies who I was chatting with liked getting me to go to my wife and demonstrate small acts of love.  I am lucky that I found a catfish that was so enlightened and healthy about what we were texting to one another.  I am grateful to her as a right-of-passage to where I am now (and I will write about her one day), but in stepping up to the big leagues, I have had a lingering fear.  I don’t want to be told by someone that I need to fix my relationship with my wife in this way.  I’m not ready.  I believe that I must get ready someday, but maybe that someday will never come.  My ex-talk-therapist told me I should leave my wife the first time we had a session (on the basis of her “shaming” me).  I told her to back off, and that I loved my wife.  And now, I begin to wonder if my wife was trying to heal me in her own way, to heal me by demanding of me that I not want things for myself that I was not willing to show to others…to not live in hiding.

And boy, do I want to.  But who is going to protect me when I go out in a dress?  Because I will need protection.  One of my penpals on Medium has commiserated with me that one of the most socially unacceptable roles is for the submissive male.  But I am desperately proud of my submission to Mistress.  I am proud of the feelings, proud of what it is taking of me to be able to do it without an agenda (as much and as honestly as anything I have ever done), and I so badly want to be “out”.  I’d love to scream from every hilltop that I belong to Mistress, that I am learning to be her slave, and that through these experiences I am learning to express a selfless love which is desperately uplifting.  There is no denying that this process is having hugely beneficial effects on my levels of joy, arousal, and creative output.

But even here, there is a delicate balance.  How to be “out” where and when it is safe to do so.  I met another Domme for a bit of vanilla coaching at one point, and for some advice on how to manage the feelings I was having for Mistress, and she gave me some safe environments for me to express myself, and I will look forward to finding these and others as I go forward.

The Last Few Posts

My last few posts have taken on a tangled life together and have led me to this one…Online and offline commentary, and conversations with others in my life about aspects of it, with friends, acquaintances, has all surfaced some very big implications.  I don’t have answers yet, but I do feel questions looming.  And none of them lead to easy self-examination.  And some important people, including some of the readers of this blog have reached out to me either directly or indirectly about things I have said, written about, or possibly think and feel.

Do I idolize women in an unhealthy way?  And if I do, why do I do it?  More importantly, if it is unhealthy, how do I outgrow it?

More than one woman has attempted to disabuse me of an apparent idolization of women.  I understand on a logical level that bad people are everywhere, and can be of any sex, race, creed, or whatever.  No group has a monopoly on being a jerk.  I don’t know what to do about this.

My ex-therapist thinks that the issue of putting people on pedestals, whether a group of people or just one, is that it means I put them above me, and that this is not healthy.  [Miss Rosa aka @SilkenClaws wrote an excellent post about this here]. Makes sense.  But…and there is always a “but” right?  What do I do as a submissive male exploring the concept of submission to a dominant female?  Okay, I admit, it would ideally only be to one woman, my wife, if I wasn’t afraid of what that might do to me or do to my relationship.  If it was even possible.  Fear.  So, instead, is what I am doing an exploration of submission with a Dominatrix a coward’s path?  I sure hope not.  But I do need to reconcile things.  And while I feel that I am the equal of Mistress, and she has sought to clarify in instances where things I have expressed imply that I do not truly believe it (you see how conscientious she is), I cannot help but look at the vast landscape of submissives online, and how most Dommes treat them, and there is clearly an imbalance of equality, and an expectation of same—on both sides!  But when the landscape of D/s is “play” are there really two sides to the coin?  Is there a coin at all?  Does it even matter?

While in this we appear to be in the minority, what I would note is that it appears that most healthy long-term D/s relationships that are lifestyle relationships possess a deep understanding of equality.  Blogger @SilkenClaws has written very eloquently on the importance of equality within D/s and has explained how what two people might bring to a D/s dynamic has to be equal in order for it to work, exactly what those things are will vary enormously from couple to couple [you can find these posts of hers on this topic, here and here].  Getting my head around this idea and relaxing into it, learning how to accept myself in the context of submission, was one of the first big hurdles I faced with Mistress [written about here].

@Silkenclaws is a lifestyle Domme, but the lessons apply in the professional context.  There are some really excellent pro-Dommes out there, and by excellent I mean simply this: that they care for their subs in a genuine way, and that they cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship that is designed for long-term success.  This requires patience and skill.  But as another lifestyle Domme who writes beautifully of her own relationship with her sub, no Domme, whether pro or otherwise, would do it for long if they didn’t have a genuine taste for it.  If you don’t follow O Miss Pearl, you should definitely check her out [you can find her here].  Both parties bring different but equal, and from this lies their success.  There are definitely pro-Dommes out there who also have this worldview of D/s, and perhaps I see a lot more of them than their counterparts, a simple function of being recommended likes based on my existing likes online is a great way to create an echo chamber, but here, I do believe that this healthy attitude to kink is not the majority view.  Perhaps it is more than I realise within the community, but outside of the community, all an outsider has to go on is the pop-culture narrative of it, which is most definitely not in line with my limited experience.

[As an aside, I am struck by how many lifestyle Dommes take pot-shots at the pro-Domme community. I can’t see why. They face discrimination, are independent business owners, really put themselves out there, taking risks that are both physical and long-term…it takes tremendous courage and skill to do that. The two I have referenced above, both lifestyle Dommes, have created space for pro-Dommes in their writing and speaking, and I think it is laudable and correct to do so. Do give them a follow if you are interested in power dynamics written about from a balanced and articulate Domme perpsective].

And I see this in a very practical way as I open up to selective people around me.  Starting with my ex-talk-therapist, who had many questions and notions that needed puncturing (for instance, “isn’t the sub really the one in charge?”).  Or some of my friends (“But, what about the sex?”).  Or my REIKI master (“I thought femdom was all about degradation of the submissive”).  And maybe this is what other people’s dynamics are like—there is no reason why they couldn’t be, or why there cannot be infinite variety in the nature of interactions.  But it isn’t my experience, and I have particularly enjoyed saying what my experiences have been, because it has contributed to the enlightenment of these people, and I think that what I am doing with Mistress is beyond healthy…it is really inspiring.

I mean, I am deeply drawn to the idea of D/s as opposite sides of the same coin.  The weight of social judgement is firmly against the /s, and whoa, if the /s is male, well, that’s it.  I know that [if I actually had a job], not only could it cost me said job, but it would too…and all the nasty things that flow from that—economic deprivation, inability to provide, the real chance to fail as a man.  Do I hear alternative career coming along?  But still, despite these obstacles, I am desperately proud of the exploration I have with a gifted Domme.  She is teaching me and showing things about life and about love and about the self and expression that were totally inaccessible to me.  And you know what?  There is no other way to get it out.

So, have I answered my own question?  I have certainly answered a different one—that all relationships take work.  That the submissive has just as much responsibility towards creating a healthy dynamic as a Domme, even though the Domme is in charge, perhaps more.  But ultimately, none of this matters if the emotional connection doesn’t take root and grow.  And that might be easy to see in a lifestyle context, but there is no reason the rule shouldn’t apply in any context, as it is the foundation of all deep relationships.  And without that depth, true power exchange is an impossibility.

A dream of just being

I dream of the day when all the threads can be tied together.  What does that mean?  It means that I can tell anyone and everyone that I am a slave, that I am also happily married, that I am non-binary, that I have always thought of myself as a lesbian [never mind that this post is challenging that most cherished ideal—I’m not ready or convinced that I need to give this up just yet].  What a mess, right?!  But what a glorious mess.  I love just how crazy-ass complex it is.  There are knots that cannot or should not be untied.  Right?  Is it possible to just accept some things or should we turn everything over?

I can tell you one thing.  All this introspection is wearing me out.  In truth, all I want to do is hang with my wife, see my kids, and curl up at the feet of Mistress.  Is that too much to ask?  Yes, it is.  But I’ve got it already [written about here].  Which is why I know how blessed I am to be able to have my cake and eat it.  But I get to see each-and-every one of them very soon, and I also get to serve remotely—to all of them.

Mistress is teaching me to relax into things, to let the knots loosen, to feel the deep, cool, clear, flowing water, and not to get lost in the problems and challenges that characterise the surface.  She is right, and I will learn, and I will put in the work to make sure I do.  I have made a determined search to replace my talk therapist.  There is no way that I can do this without a full-on therapist.  The first time I met Mistress, I told her that I did not regard her as a potential therapist, and while I didn’t have a therapist at the time, I soon realised that the landscape that Mistress was showing me asked that of me.

I promised Mistress that I would follow her wherever she chose to lead, and that if I could not, I would tell her to wait, and to give me another chance to try, and to try again.  I am determined and committed.  Another Domme, one whom I haven’t met, but who is quite active on Twitter, Mistress Faustine Cox from San Francisco @DominaFaustine (if you don’t follow her on Twitter and you are curious, she is one of the good ones it seems to me).  Recently she posted a thought-provoking question to her Dominatrix colleagues, “what is that you really want to see in a sub?”  She received a very large number of responses, and I have to say they need to added to the required reading list of both subs and Dommes.  [You can find the thread here].

My favourite responses?  Consistency.  Transparency.  Honesty.  Generosity of spirit.  A willingness to grow.  A willingness to put in the work.  And, yup, talk therapy.  It’s a good sign, shows commitment.  I’m not doing it for the symbolism, but because it is part of being anointed before going to see the Goddess.  Just as full-body internal and external cleanliness is part of the ritual preparation to come before Mistress with purity, so too is psychotherapy (along with mindfulness practices) an excellent way to cleanse the psyche before play.

Time is the only thing we can’t have more of, so best to make it count

And you know what?  I don’t want to waste Mistress’s time.  I don’t want to waste mine either.  I couldn’t do this every day with her, I couldn’t keep up.  As it is, at times I struggle on our quasi-monthly rhythm.  While at other times, I can soak it up and grow in leaps and bounds with tightly spaced visits.  But I regard our time together as an investment.  I have written about getting my body ready to be with Her, which is a basic mark of respect to Her and to myself.  [Read about those rituals here].  But there is more.  Mental health is the same.  Being willing to put in the work, and to do it without burdening the Mistress is also a sign of respect, for Her and for the self.  There is no way that I will drop the ball on this—showing up with respectful intent is one of the most important things to me about being with Mistress.  Nothing less than a total commitment to growth will do—and that is borne out by action, by doing the work, not by words.

I understand that a cynic might look at someone like me or any Pro-Domme as part of an unhealthy fringe, but my gosh, who doesn’t have issues?  And who could possibly say that the issues that many of these Dominas raise with one another, with society at large, and with those of us cherished few who get to discover them, are not issues that must be raised, and which are issues that provoke healing, both on an individual level and on a community level?

I recently had the temerity to suggest to Mistress that I could learn my lesson without the whipping, that it was enough for me to just sit by her, and to feel her energy.  She was quite good about it and explained to me that “whipping” or anything that evokes that kind of response is simply a way to open a door, and that we need to open the doors to be able to move forward.  Is there a little of the “this hurts me more than it hurts you,” in that?  I am just teasing.  I got my flogging anyway.  And strangely enough, even though it was “gentler” than at other times, I felt myself more open before and after…and that is really the essence of what is happening to me.

When Mistress says, “relax into”, so that I might learn, experience, and let go, I am finding that I crave this feeling, even though I don’t really yet know “how to do it.”  It comes when she summons it, sometimes more easily than others, or it bubbles out of me without warning.  But I have tasted it, and I do just wish to surrender.  Totally and utterly.  And sometimes I see exchanges between subs and their Dommes and I think that the sub is being demanding, and I don’t understand it.  I am not giving self-praise here, but I certainly don’t understand at all this concept of “topping from the bottom.”  I can’t imagine where it might come from, how it could work, or even what it is.  Okay, if Mistress asked me to be a Top, then I would most certainly give it my best shot, but the entire time I would be secretly pleading, just waiting for the moment when I could be once again on my knees.  And I guess, that it might be boring if a sub were like this with anyone who came along.  We all like a challenge, right?

But no, I have this feeling for one person only.

Key message?  I submit to only one Domme, no others, unless She were to ask.  To all, however, I would be deferential.  Deference is not the same as submission.  And it is a joy and a relief to submit to Her in a way that it would not be with my wife, even if we were in a D/s relationship together.  Mistress gives the room to play and explore and discover in a way that allows for the growth without permanent consequences which are out of our control. 

Is this a dress rehearsal?  Maybe.  I don’t regard what we do together as play, even though we call it so, because all of my feelings are genuine.  And when I say I want to be her slave, to submit, to learn to be selfless, I really mean it, and really seek to discover how that can manifest itself in my life in a healthy and beautiful way, and in a way that allows for me to continue to feed and enrich and to create for the people I love and who I have the blessing of having around me.

The myths of D/s from inside the community

Take this with a grain of salt, especially because of my inexperience.  

If there is a genuine D/s dynamic happening between two consenting adults, topping from the bottom is an impossibility.  If a submissive is true to itself in the dynamic, then “topping” is the wrong term.  It might be something else.  It might be a sub trying to find that the guardrails really do exist, or it might be just a form of play.  I’m not saying this because I am any good at any of this, or even that there is a such thing as being “good at” D/s.  What I am saying is that for me, submission is about letting go of the ego, letting go of that part of you which has kept yourself in check all these years, that part of your personality that controls you, shames you, tells you about social expectations.  If there is no letting go of same, there is no submission, and there is no dynamic.  There is just the illusion.  The same would apply for bottoming from the top.  Through the bonds of trust and through ritual interactions, the sub let’s go of his/her own ego to have it replaced by the dictates of the Dominant partner.  That for me is a foundational characteristic for there to be power exchange.  “Topping from the bottom”, if really happening, by definition negates this idea, and therefore negates that a D/s dynamic is even in play. 

Submission as a gift.  This strikes me as very self-serving and non-sensical.  It isn’t a gift.  Nor it is something which happens in isolation.  Quite simply, submission on the one hand requires dominance on the other.  That is why it doesn’t occur to me to refer to Mistress as “mine” in any way.  “My Mistress,” for example.  Not so.  [I wrote about why in this post here].  Our only true owners are ourselves.  What is happening in a dynamic is that we are accepting one another’s roles, but they are yin-yang—two parts of one whole.  And it is a dynamic that is created by both parties.  How I submit, how I feel, and what we do as I submit, is just as much about how She dominates, and how She likes to dominate.  If there is any gift giving going on, it is that both D/ and /s are “giving” in the sense that they are co-authoring an emotional-physical-spiritual-erotic landscape that meets both of their needs, ideally on increasingly deep levels…and in this sense, together, we make a gift that each of us gives to and takes from in different ways.

In these two regards, I am confident in how we explore.

Do I idolize chaste love simply because I am afraid of sex?

What if this is so?  I have written about chaste love, and also about how my own body image has stopped me from masturbating in a way that the male-bodied often do.  But now I have met a REIKI master who has told me to reconcile myself with my body.  [Written about here]…and indeed, she gave me bonus mantras about my body image that I have yet to try, but which are sitting there on the shelf feeling like a psychic ball and chain, and I am not sure how I feel about them…mainly not because I don’t know she is right—I know she is right, but because this is a big ask…but who is doing the asking?  I must ask this of myself.  I know that I have to let go of this body hate.

So far, my way of managing body dysmorphia has been to focus on fitness and keeping my body as toned as I can, keeping my physique as female as I can make it within the constructs of a male physique.  It has helped immensely, but that was just a coping mechanism.  It isn’t the same as accepting myself.  But do I really have to accept myself as a male-bodied person?  Feel free to chime in.  Especially until I find a new talk therapist!

Why does all of this matter?  Well, in relation to the sub-heading above, what if my fetishization of chastity is the result of a fear of being sexual?  Assuming even that this is exactly what I am doing.  And combined with the sub-heading above this one, of the fear of sexualising women?  Oh my.  Yes, and the pedestal and co-dependency of my relationship with my mother.  And heavens, I still ache for a woman to put me back in diapers!

And then, along comes a man, any man, and he speaks in a blokey way about female anatomy, or in a derogatory way about women, and all my gears slip.  And the only way I have been able to cope with that is to think that men are vulgar, that they are desecrators…and I know that this isn’t right, surely not all of them are.  After all, most of the world is having consensual heterosexual sex.  And I have tried.  And sometimes successfully sustained the illusion for several years, but most of the time it rings false.  If sex is a gateway to the intermingling of souls, it has only rarely worked for me.  Touch, yes.  Spirituality, yes.

And then along comes D/s and a Mistress.  Here is a woman who does not judge me, so whatever feelings I have are free to take flight and be free, and I don’t have to edit myself…and that is just so doggone liberating.  And what is left is raw me, emotional me…and then after some kind of emotional or physical stimulation, I am able to experience this “slipping of all gears” and experience a kind of ecstatic love…and while I may be crying, and the tears are cathartic tears of love, tears of joy, my spirit is dancing to the heavens and back and caressing the spirit of the person who got me there.  But more importantly, she brings me into the present, right into my feelings, and even though it is too much, it is a good kind of too much.

And yes, being with Mistress is allowing me to dig deeper and deeper into chaste love, and I quite literally, love it.  Is that wrong of me?  Can and should I learn to feel both kinds?  I know that a big part of why I can allow myself to feel so intensely with Mistress is precisely because I know it doesn’t tip into sex, and won’t, and I won’t want it to.  It means there is no tension between how much what we do together arouses me and the boundaries we both value.

But the question remains, am I just afraid?  Maybe.  And maybe I do resent other males for an apparent ease (whether real or blokish faking) at piercing the veil with women, because I think that “you just don’t do that.”  And that feels like an elephant in the room.  

That’s one post and two elephants.  Pretty soon we’ll be on safari because I’m not finished.

Is hating men just a way to hide my own fear of being one?

There are a million reasons I am afraid of men.  I am afraid of what “maleness” does to my psyche in relation to women.  I am afraid of male judgement.  I never feel the weight of female judgement in the same way…there is always an assumed reasonableness, whether real or imagined.  I am also afraid of men in public when I am allowing myself to express my non-binary self, afraid of male violence.

And I don’t question for a moment the legitimacy or origin of this fear of men as one that came with birth and growing up, but that doesn’t explain why it took shape in the way that it has, in a way that regards male behaviour as a violation of a quasi-religious reverence for the female.  This is healthy, perhaps, up to a point.  And I am proud of the respect for women that it has led to in me…but it is also not healthy, in the sense that it has made me fearful of women (that I might do something wrong, cross a line, etc), and that is not good.  One should not fear anyone, the self, or anyone else.  This is a shibboleth that needs dismantling.

My REIKI Master said, “you have to be willing to do the work, otherwise don’t come back.”  Faustine Cox’s thread had a few Dommes say, “the sub needs to be prepared to do the work.”  I am, but shit, some of this stuff is hard…and certainly complicated.  The more I wrestle with it, the more I just want to let go.  For those of you who might wonder where the genesis of desire for a whipping comes from, this might be a good place to start!  I find that the more challenging the emotional issue I have been wrestling with, the more I want to feel pain or something else that immediately takes me into sub space, a feeling of total trust and bliss.  It’s like, the deeper I go, or the tighter the knot that I am dealing with, my body is telling me, just hit me harder, choke me, take control.  In that sense, a whipping is a much faster and less painful way to achieve release, to untie the knot.  But you can’t have one without the other.

And how do you have sex with an idol?

I would say that I only really had great sex with one or two GF’s along the way, consistent, and connecting, emotional, physical, present sex.  With the others, it might have happened from time to time, if at all.  Why?  Because my mind was always somewhere else…in a different situation, with a different person, something, anything that took my mind off of the mechanics of what I was doing.  It just never felt comfortable.  I am even “afraid” to be naked.  But with Mistress I am not.  Why is she so able to reset everything?

With my GFs with whom I had great sex, there was an emotional dynamic in all cases that bled into aspects of abuse (her of me), or kink, without which, I never found the same depth of emotional connection.  There was one woman with whom we were together on a path of body exploration that might have led to the promised land, and of all the people that I didn’t end up with, she is the only one I ever miss.  A true sweet angel, and one that I lost because of life circumstances, and physical separation.  I digress.

Is it possible that my “need” for a mental landscape that includes all of these other things, power dynamics, fetishes, dirty talk, whatever, are simply ways to yank me out of the present…to deny the here and now.  And what is the here and now?  The vulva.  What if all of this, all the points above, are just a giant construction to keep me from the vulva?  A self-imposed exile?

Does it seem far-fetched?  What if I told you that my greatest fear of seeing a Domme was that she was going to tell me to go home and have sex with my SO.  Can you believe it?  It’s true.  Would she be wrong to do so?

I feel like there is an inevitability to it.  I am afraid of it, I don’t want it, but I also know that someday I have to do it, I have to grow up enough to be able to do it.  I have to be present for my partner in that way, and more importantly, present for myself in that way.  And you know what?  I understand people who don’t bother, who give up.  It is immense.  I have this overwhelming feeling of sitting cross-legged at the foot of El Capitan or Half-Dome, as popularized in the incredible prints of Ansel Adams, one of which is the signature picture of this post.  No ropes, no carabiners, no one to belay, and just this sheer rock face to climb.  It is daunting.

Conclusion

So, you will excuse me if I sit down for a moment and contemplate the immensity of the task ahead.  Of the risk of failure, of my own fear of heights, literal and figurative.  And I will call on my new-found spirit friends, and new-found strength in self, and figure out how to move the darn thing…and you could surround me with a whole series of such mountains, and I will figure it out and take them down.  I will move mountains, and not just those of the self, but also any obstacles that stand in my way…and I will do this in service to myself, and in service to a Mistress who expects nothing less…and you know, by doing this, I am better able to serve everyone in my life who matters.  That’s what growth is.  I’m ready, but I am also ready Mistress to just relax into you.

This stuff is hard to understand.  Sometimes I just want to cuddle.