Big things have been moving inside of me lately. What has been a general pattern of rather significant change ticked up noticeably after I qualified as a Reiki practitioner. Most significant is my relationship to my own submissive nature and desires. Today, when I woke up, I had this overwhelming feeling that my joy and pleasure in seeing pro-Dommes represents the past, represents the shadow side, represents the things that I do not wish to confront.
Like, the part of me that is drawn to the this world is an unhealthy part of me. Not at all that they are unhealthy, or that I shouldn’t see them, play with them, but that rather that my logic and reasoning and desire, the underlying motivation, is not coming from a strong place, but a place I need to grow out of.
Strangely, however, I do not feel the same way about the FSSW who I saw some months ago and who I plan to see again. I think I understand why, and it has to do with feeling that someone is going to teach me things that I need to learn. And this also has to do with the nature of boundaries, love languages, and the kind of healing that I need. Touch has become the most important thing in my connection with others. And what I can learn with an FSSW is how to touch, because that is part of what we do together, and not something I need to worry about in relation to boundaries.
Don’t misunderstand. Being respectful and checking about boundaries and about touch is still there. 100%. I couldn’t imagine doing that without asking. But knowing that with other clients, they go all the way to places that I can’t even go anymore, means I am safe within the boundaries. And as my body becomes increasingly female in both response and capability, learning what I would have learned as a girl-loving girl requires some catch up. And so, I approach this with all the respect and feeling that it is purely healthy.
I am relentlessly curious about other people, not in an intrusive way. Please don’t misunderstand. I love every minute of what I have done with the pro-BDSM players I have met professionally, and with others, socially. I will eagerly continue to court and cultivate relationships in that community. Not least because I believe in them collectively, believe in SW collectively, that it is a desperately important profession and one that is unfairly maligned. I link this to just how fundamentally discriminatory society is. And you can imagine that fighting against this tide, a fight made more personal by my own status as a member of the marginalized peoples of this world. And should my life take a turn which allows me to serve the SW community through charitable efforts, then I will know that I have finally come home.
What is it about the BDSM world that I feel is coming from an unhealthy place inside of me? Without judgement about what I have done, or what others do. Even if ex-Mistress is ex and even if we did things that might have been wrong or unhealthy, or without purity of intent, I generally think that we both tried our best to serve each other and that it was largely clean. I think this of current Mistress too, even more so. But not all is well with me in this world. Why not?
I wonder if I want something that I am not articulating or am even sublimating. I wonder if I have expectations even when I try very hard not to. I wonder if the things I am trying to work through are now no longer solvable through kink (in part because my libido is dead). I wonder if the really hard work that lies ahead of me relates to spiritual growth, and to digging into to some really deep trauma and the ugliness that it has born into me. And I can’t help but thinking that what I am “asking for” with a pro-Domme is for her to take my burden from me, to solve my problem for me, to heal me, to be the mommy that I didn’t have, to be the Daddy I didn’t have, to help me be the me that wanted to be but didn’t rise to. In other words, that I am asking for them to carry the load, when it should be mine alone to carry.
I did ask ex-Mistress to help re-make me in her image, perhaps with slightly different words. What I asked of her was “to help me to become the kind of slave that you would be proud to own.” And I meant that, and I do believe that she tried. In the end it cratered for reasons which I understand and others I do not. And maybe, in its purity, that is a reasonable ask, an aspiration that can be appropriate in a Master/slave dynamic. She felt that I needed a lifestyle domme partner. The idea of that scares the dickens out of me. No safety rails.
And yet, she is probably right. I am so scared of it, though, that I dance around it. It is easier to see professionals, because there is an immediate understanding of the boundaries and the game. With a true partner, you have to discover it all. And that is scary.
But this conundrum is not limited to the pro-BDSM kink of mine. It applies to all forms of self-help…and yes, I do regard BDSM as self-help. And what is it? It boils down to this. Paying for enlightenment is just not where I am. Loving is where I am. So I pay to be with people who I love because of what they do, in general, not necessarily to me. And that seems like a screwed up motivation. But I also think, dang, I am capable of changing me, I am capable of doing the hard work, of re-tooling myself, and that I will go to the darkest places and wrestle with my demons. I am prepared for the worst, prepared to confront my deepest ugliness.
One of my new friends, a lifestyle domme who in front of her husband invited herself out with me for dinner, “he will stay at home,” and he didn’t say a word. And yes, we went out, had a lovely meal one time, and another time went out on the town…and I know she doesn’t think I am just “one of the girls”, because she said, “interesting, we should go out some time,” after I told her that I was a slave. And then she invited me to her birthday party which involved an international flight to my favourite city on earth. And yes, she is expecting of me. And I shall let her. What she told me was “be careful who you tell that you are a slave, because some people will take advantage of you.”
And I guess I should be careful.
I don’t need to pay to be dominated, for nearly everyone does when I let them. And that is just the point. We are in control of ourselves. That’s kind of beautiful. Star Child pretended that she wasn’t dominating me, but she spent two weeks with me in my lovely villa in Italy riding the elevator, being waited on hand and foot, getting up at 2, being pampered, being treated at every turn. My favourite part? Bringing her the coffee exactly the way she liked it every morning to her whilst she was still in bed. And it was sheer bliss. And talk about tease and denial. She told me stories about her lovers and speculated about one of her ex-boyfriends being in lifetime chastity.
And of course, that is exactly what I have done to myself. And she was a welcome and beautiful foil for this chivalrous knight, this hand-maiden. My deepest fantasy seems to be having beautiful women come and stay with me and let me take care of her. And it seems that this is possible, and because it is so innocent, it is accessible to the otherwise vanilla people. Star child is not “kinky”, and yet she can appreciate that it is nice to have a paid vacation without expectation or kink, even if she knows very well that I do it because I am a slave.
And what is a strange and beautiful phenomenon in my life is that my vanilla life is beginning to align with my submissive life. I believe that I will get to have my cake and eat it. It seems that many of my new women friends are interested in being or becoming dominatrixes or are interested in cultivating these aspects of their personalities. And I can think of no higher honour than being the midwife to these feelings, feelings of female empowerment.
My conclusion? That this is coming about because I am owning myself, am stepping into this on my own. Turning to someone else to take control of me feels like a cop out. Why would I do this? Why should I want someone else to do this for me? And I know the answer. The container. They provide a safe container to play within, to explore, to feel. But maybe I don’t need that container anymore. And this is true for all the gurus and self-help-people as much as for anyone that I have turned to…My thinking that this is a consequence of stepping into my power, stepping into my witchiness, being prepared to own me.
I said to my therapist the other day that “I finally understand, not mentally, but on an emotional level, what it means to be my own slave, to be my own Mistress.” And this is what is leading me to this inflection point. It feels as if I have crossed a rubicon. And now I think, what I might rather do is whip someone than be whipped.
Enter the Divine
My relationship with the divine is personal. I don’t use the word ‘God’ because it is loaded, but you could just as well read that into it depending on how you load it.
Part of this feeling is born from my therapists’ admonition to parent myself, to be my own domme, to be my own slave—that this is also being whole. And when we are truly whole, we approach the divine. I am sure this process stems from what has shifted since Reiki. The energy and vibrations are moving differently inside of me.
Better and more magical things are happening to me.
I met a lifestyle domme the other day whose love languages (to receive) are the same as mine to give. We had a lovely evening together. And please don’t misunderstand. She is married anyway. So, is not “mine”…but we could understand each other…and beauty begins with understanding. And what has happened? She has asked me to step into a role in her life that is a very prestigious one to occupy, and I will most likely take up the position. It does involve helping to raise money, to administrate, to strategize, and to support an issue, issues, which I care deeply about. You get the picture. This is real service. And it is my life mission to give back.
Despite the above, or perhaps because of it, my desire to keep the company of Dommes or SW’s is increasing. But it is not coming from a place of being a client, but rather of a person who loves what they do, the liminal space they occupy, and out of a deep respect for the kind of woman it takes to succeed in the industry—an incredible mix of empathy, ability to hold space like a mother to a child, a willingness to go to the language of God, Sex, to help people heal (and that’s what getting off can be with the right intention), and to do so with all the structural and moral weight of society pushing against them.
Being Other
I have “othered” myself in order to step into the witch inside me that would have never grown or come out in any other way. Being trans is the essential starting point for me to manifest this. So, I will no longer be a client, but I will be a witch, will be in service, will begin to live my second life. The day I came out, really, really, was at an Ayahausca ceremony. I gave birth to myself…and this was after already coming out to my wife, but those first baby steps were just words…no, Ayahuasca was the water shed. And in that moment of my true rebirth, the door to the rest of my life opened up.
My giving love language is submission. Not mindless, boring, sex-infused submission, but genuine submission. I will fail endlessly but can also imagine myself skinning my knees and getting up again. And that means being emotionally available to people I love. It means serving with an open heart. It means being nurturing. But it also means confronting my own ugliness, my own failings, and being relentless in my willingness to do this.
And I hope that this will bring the right people into my life, will help me to create the perfect outcome that I began to think about under ex-Mistress’s guidance. And what is so weird is that I am not doing any of the structural things I felt I needed to do to make that come about. It is just happening. Community is coalescing. And this was a glimmer of beauty, a true pearl of wisdom given to me by Miss Kim, whom I interviewed here. “I don’t look for community, I make it.” And that is a pretty special attitude to have.
The epiphany which lies behind this is that it is “unhealthy” for me to look for something in someone else, from someone else, which should exist in me. Finding that energy inside of me, might have seemed impossible, theoretical, silly, just some kind of nice words, but it doesn’t anymore. And that difference is not a conscious or mental process.
And this is why everything is falling into place. Just being me is enough to have the universe adapt to the me that I am. Please take this to heart in your own lives. When you are truly yourself, you will attract that which is going to fit with that, and the rest will be pushed away…and when that happens, your life will only get more beautiful.
Cheers to the beautiful people who smile back at me.
Beyond Non-Binary 