In the Light of Day

I had  dream last night...Honestly, I don't even remember it, but I remember the feeling. A feeling that I can't seem to feel anymore. There's a hollow place where it once took up so much of my being...

I woke up remembering the feeling, a glimpse in a dream, and I grabbed at it, tried to wrap it around me and pull it out of bed with me. I tried to hold it close to my chest, to sink into it and forget the rest..But in the light of day, slowly it fades away.

It was that feeling that only comes when there is no thought, no self, no control of self, just a sea of Dominance to drown in and surround me. That feeling of being owned wherein the world doesn't exist--just a million stars floating on a thousand waves in the deep end of an endless ocean of master and slave. The knowledge of predator and prey...That the prey will always willingly bleed a thousand seas to feed the beast, and that all is as it should be.

I woke up with a feeling, and I tried to grab it, to sink into it, to once again be it. Complete. yet slowly it fades away with the light of day.

I might be an up and down kind of person, with mood swings to rival an unpredictable storm, but I know things about myself. One of those things is that true happiness, for me, only exists when I can feel that feeling.

I know things about reality too, like we have to live in it, and if we don't make our current reality work, we are in for a world of hurt. He doesn't have the time or the energy to do what it takes to get me to that place, to fight me because I cannot seem to yield, to put me in our space, and keep me even remotely near. Because I'm a million miles away, in yesterday, tomorrow, and today. I'm on the other side of the world every time he reaches for me, and I can't even seem to dip my toes into the sea.

I'm not happy here, and I am aware that we are in the midst of what is (hopefully) a peak time of stress, so it's unfair to make a blanket statement about how much it all sucks.
Yes, we are a team. An apparently professional and competent duo who have been fortunate enough to find themselves on a team of consummate professionals with amazing minds and incredible drive.

Yet...I am becoming painfully aware that I am no longer me and we are no longer us.

I woke up remembering a feeling, a glimpse in a dream, and I grabbed at it, tried to wrap it around me and pull it out of bed with me. I tried to hold it close to my chest, to sink into it and forget the rest..But in the light of day, slowly it fades away.

Having a Moment

I had a moment this morning...Okay, in all fairness, I'm clearly still mid-moment.

I wonder(ed) if I'm making a terrible mistake. Suddenly, we both work.
All. The. Fucking. Time. In fact, we have meetings this morning and tomorrow, and I have a couple of weeks to finish something I thought was done but it isn't. Not even fucking close.
I finally let the big guy start using the stove when I'm not home 'cause, well, they gotta eat. And if I'm home three hours after dinner-time, it hardly seems right to make them live out of the microwave. And yes, I was cooking on a wood stove when I was younger than him, so mr. responsible can handle the electric oven.

I was a the park yesterday with the little guy, and yes, it was by default because I was working and had to wait for the printer, but...There was apparently a birthday party going on with lots of people. People like the people I tend to interact with these days are likely very uncomfortable around. The tattoos, the beards, the huge gruff guys squeezing onto tiny slides with their little kids whom they have too many of, and gods only know what they do to put food on the table, but everybody knows better than to ask because we know that kids need to be fed...And it reminded me of home. I miss it. Gods do I miss it.
They might be some unsavory fucked up people, but they know who they are, and they aren't afraid of the world knowing. Somehow that is so often more appealing to me than the suits and ties, the power plays, the hidden agendas where everybody want people to see what they project and nobody wants to be known for what they really are under all of the glitter...
Yes, there's the possibility of going back in one of two ways--wondering how on earth we'll feed our kids, or knowing that we won't have to worry about it at all. Either way, it's not going to be anytime soon.

I had a minor break related to my project the other night...Shared it with the whole team too. Yea...On the bright side, it prompted their realization that this is hard on our family, us both working these insane hours all the time...On the not-so-bright side, I much prefer to keep those moments private. Or at least somewhat anonymous. Lol.

I'm having a moment this morning. A long moment. I wonder if I'm making a terrible mistake and doing an awful disservice to my children. The little guys has been asking me to volunteer for his field day, and I can't...I can't commit knowing that by Monday my Friday might be full and there's a chance that I won't walk back in the door until 9:00 at night.
At the same time...If we don't make this work, we'll have done our children a terrible disservice and they will have to live through us starting from scratch, much as we did before they were born.

So yea...I'm having a moment...

How to Make Someone Dominant or Submissive

I get a lot of visits from searches based on "how to make (insert person and characteristic here)". I get it. People want their husband or wife to be dominant or submissive, and they are looking for ways to make those desires a reality. I get it. Really, I do--there is need, and needs always want to feed.

The thing is...It always makes me sigh. You can make people do things, and yes, over time you can even mold someone into something they previously may not have been. Dominants are made over time. Experience shapes their approach, refines their methods, defines who they decide to be as dominants. Submissives are shaped and molded one step a a time over the course of a relationship, a little bend here, a nudge there, sometimes so subtle that we aren't even aware of the changes until something calls our attention to the fact that our reaction is different than it was before.

Yes, people change other people. Yet...You cannot force someone to become something that they aren't, in some shape or form, already.

I think that sometimes we are unhappy, and our first choice is often to look outside of ourselves at the people we are with to try and make them into what we believe will make us happy. The interesting thing about changing someone we love, I mean really making them into something they are not, has the terrible potential to create something we no longer love.
One of the things Alpha and I have fought most about in our time together is his sense of loyalty--how far he will let another person go, how much shit he will take, how forgiving he is willing to be of those that do not return his loyalties; of those who, for whatever reason, he deems worthy of his loyalty. He is solid and immovable in this. Once won, his loyalty is non-negotiable, unconditional, and comes with no strings attached. Sometimes this absolutely infuriates me. Because people are assholes. And, why? I mean, after all--assholes.
At the same time...His sense of ridiculously unshakeable loyalty is one of the things that I love most about him. If I had been able to change that, to make him into something he is not, he would not be the man that he is. He would not be the man that I fall in love with just a little bit more each day. Because he would no longer be himself.

I'm not saying that trying to makes someone dominant or submissive is exactly the same, and things work out differently if it turns out we are just helping someone become what they already are; however, what about ourselves? If we want our significant other to be dominant, are we truly willing to be the counterpart to that, so submit, to surrender to their will? Conversely, if we want our other half to be submissive, to surrender their all, can we become the dominant, the last call, the final say, the one who carries the weight of that responsibility? And if we are successful in bringing about these changes, will we still love what they have become?
All too often, I don't think that people ask themselves these questions. If we want to change someone else, we have to start by asking ourselves if we can be what they need should such changes occur. One must be careful when attempting to change that which they love, because the caterpillar turns into a butterfly and we will have to accept what they become with the knowledge that we asked for their metamorphosis.

We can help someone to become what they truly are, but we cannot make them be something they are not. And if we are asking them to become something which, by nature, requires a counterpart, we had better be damn sure of our ability to feed the beast we help to create. Because we are all so much more than the sum of our parts.

And It Was Good

We have been so caught up in survival lately, that there hasn't been much room for being caught up in each other. Okay, there hasn't been any room.

The dog woke me up at 4:00 his morning. Apparently, when a large male dog needs to pee bad enough to run back and forth down the hallway, he can still hold it for long enough to make sure he takes the time to go in six different places. Really. Six. While I stand in front of the door wrapped in a towel waiting.

Got a tad distracted...

I crawled back in bed and did the usual, "Must go back to sleep, it's to early to gt up, need to do this and this and that for work, we are so behind, I wonder, he really needs to get more sleep, did he even eat at all today, I mean yesterday? Today I need to, tomorrow I've got to, last week I should have, next will I'll have to..."

He rolled over and put his hand on my thigh. Just like he always does. Every time I get up at night and come back to bed, he places his hand on my thigh or on my hip in his sleep. Every night for nearly 17 years.

In contemplation of what my nights would be like without it, I went back to sleep with a deep seated appreciation for that touch.

I dreamed. Of power and dominance, of the comforts that come with being owned, the adventure that fills ones soul when they let go.

There was peace in the darkness like a thousand quiet candles lighting my way home. And it was was good.

Well Then...

You know how sometimes you come across a post and you waffle about leaving a comment? "I should. No...I probably shouldn't...But maybe I actually should. I totally shouldn't. Yep, definitely not." Then you do, and later something happens or someone says something, and you know that you really actually shouldn't have?

Yea...

Shit happens, right?

That's Us

I wandered into the bedroom last night to find Alpha watching TV on the computer. When I asked what he was watching, he said, "look at these people, this is the story of our life!" I had my doubts until one woman was talking about a new set of hurdles for their business, and she said, "It's okay, I don't sleep anyways. Ever! Just look at the bags under my eyes." And I thought, "Oh shit. Yea...That's us!"

Yep--that's me these days! Bet you didn't know my beauty was so overwhelming.

Lines

While I have acknowledged that there are some key definitive differences between slavery and submission, for me they are so intertwined as to have become interchangeable forms of expression...

So often we circle back to the fact that if I'm drawing the line anywhere, we are not what we believe ourselves to be. Because that's just not how this works for us.
It's those things really...The things where I want to pull up short, draw the line in the sand, and exert my nonexistent veto power. Those are the things that define my slavery. Surrendering regardless of the doubt, the distaste, the overwhelming desire not to.

It is easy, is it not? To submit to that which one finds pleasing and appealing. That is not, however, what I believe slavery to be. Yes, there are times when I am more than willing, wanting, needing, desiring. The flow is...Easy. It is those edges I pull up short on though, those places I do not want to go, the experiences that make me cringe, those are the things which feed the junky in me. No choices to make, no options offered or allowed, being forced into that which I either abhor or want desperately to pretend is against what I desire...

Truly, to me, slavery is defined in that one small sentence--it is about one's willingness to accept things which one is absolutely unwilling to experience. The knowledge that I will be shattered into a million tiny pieces, carefully collected, and put back together again. Each piece treated like a fragile scrap of glass to be gathered with the utmost care...

Our arrangement is based on core agreements that I will not renege on, nor do I wish to revoke them.

Ultimately, I will accept anything he asks of me. He will draw my lines in the sand, define the places I will not go, the things I will not do, and make he determination of what is too much or not enough. Some people will think it's wrong, others that it is not actually possible.

The thing is, in the end, he has always been better than me at weighing my discomfort against actual harm.I have a thousand tiny scars accumulated in a very short span of time before he came into my life. When weighing my personal desires against their ability to damage me, well, I don't actually do that and I never really have. He does.

He tells me that everyone has a box full of darkness, and it's a privilege to be allowed to see inside. Our boxes of darkness belong to us, and no one is obligated to let another look inside. He explores mine carefully with unfettered access, stepping gently in the absence of light without offering judgement on the shadows. He opens his own and invites me to cast a glance inside. All that he asks is that I return the favor and not pass judgement on his demons.