Belonging

One of the things I loved about Blogland was the feeling of belonging it gave me. Coming back after having built this blog, and my entire life really, around Alpha, I feel a bit like I don't belong. This blog was very much OUR story. And now...Now it's mine. And in a place that is so much based upon belonging TO someone...It feels a bit odd. But I am who I am. And it is what it is.

I watched a movie the other day, and the main character was having a conversation in which she said, "I'm much more stable when I write, I haven't written much lately." and the other character replies with, "How are you doing with that?" to which she responds with, "Not well, not well at all."
That resonated deeply with me. B has asked me to write on more than one occasion in the last couple years, because she knows it's good for me, knows I need it. But so often...So often, the words haven't been there. too much pain, too much bitterness, too much confusion, too little drive to stare at the blinking cursor and make it move. And above all perhaps, when it comes to here, too much fear that he would read it and lash out.

I don't know where I belong. But I do know that I am still me. I still need this thing we call D/s, I still need the physical pain he trained out of me in favor of control over all those years. I still crave control, yet have developed a deep and abiding angst around any efforts to do so. I know that I'm a monster, and I'm working with that lol.

I have learned how to take care of myself because it was that or die. And for a while, not gonna lie, I just wanted to die. I got these kids though...so I didn't.

I took care of him and the kids for years with these:

It's a rough life, and not ideal for a mother; living in the hills away from your children, only seeing them when you come home to dump piles of money on the table, and hear a week later that the rent it was intended to pay was already spent. But I was good at it. And I built a reputation on my hands and my name. My hands were good and I made my name gold. Because I could be trusted and I always landed top chair. And I belonged. With the crazies, the misfits, the storms, the underground castoffs...
Then...I couldn't do it any more. Too unstable, too dangerous, too tired of living in a tent, too tired of not seeing my kids, too tired of all the bullshit, the backstabbing, being taken advantage of, the cold and the rain. Too fucking old to be living on the hill telling people to get their fucking drugs off my table and working 18 hours a day. Too damn good at what I did to accept the wages they began offering.

So I learned something new. It's hard to start over and suck at something new. But I have learned that it is also brave, and can be well worth it. so I traded in those scissors for these:

I can't threaten to stab the people who piss me off anymore, but I do provide health insurance for my kids, I sleep inside in the same bed every night, I can support myself in a very stable manner, and I work with one crew who has my back, not because they need me, but because I have shown them who I am and we have each others backs. And I still kinda suck at it, but I do belong.

It has been a lifelong fault of mine, this desire to belong. And I have fought against it so much...But I have learned that a refusal to base my life on that desire always lands me in the places where I truly do belong.

I do belong to someone...This girl. This girl he wanted me to want because he wanted her. This girl he left me for who would have left him in a heartbeat if I had asked her to, this girl who loves me like he once did...This girl who broke my heart and put me back together when he told me over and over to just die. In a way, she's getting shorted. But she has my back.
The sub in me can't give her what she knows me to be at my core right now. What she really needs in a relationship. Yet...In a way she's also getting the best of me, because I hold my shit down. I pay the bills, and I work my ass off.

I guess...I guess I belong wherever I choose to be. And maybe that's just one of the things we learn about life along the way, that we belong where we choose. I choose to be here again. And so, as odd and strange as it is, as much as it may challenge all that I believed and pick at not-so-old wounds, I still belong here. Because I am what I am. And I built this space, and I still hold to many of the core beliefs I have expressed here.