Stranger in My Own Skin

I come here to flip through the pages of my past

like a stranger in a strange world

a stranger in my own skin

a stranger to my own words.

I come here to gaze at the memories of who I was

to scratch the itch of remembering where I came from

like a stranger in my own pages

reading the words of someone else

living a life of fantasy

like a dream where you look in and say 

"I wish that was me".

Stretched far too thin

I have become a stranger in my own skin

looking in

reading through the pages of my own story

some former kind of glory.

I come to scratch the itch of remembering

where I came from

recalling who I was

to scratch the itch under my skin

like reading a book that someone else wrote

trying to get lost in the fantasies of their mind

amazed that all of these words were once mine.

I have become

a stranger in my own skin

standing on the outside looking in

at what I was and what I have become

the words on these pages, familiar like a stranger's story

read time and time again until they become like a distant memory

of what should be

or what could have been.

My life has become a memory

and so I dip my fingers into the water and watch the ripples roll out 

a moment in time

flipping through these pages wondering in amazement

that this was all mine.

Like staring through the mists into another land

I reach out for that feeling of just

being

and it slips through my fingers as I close my hands around it

a moment of forever in time

captured in words

a fantasy of what I was and what was mine

but I am a stranger here

a stranger to my mind

a stranger to the words on the pages I wrote.

A million tiny expressions of my soul

poured out through my fingertips over the years

like the soft rush of air from my lips 

the firm grip of his hands on my hips

the feeling of chains stretching across my skin

the brutal kiss of the whip

the sensation of my soul drowning in his control.

Standing on the outside looking in

wondering at what is and what could have been.

I look into the mirror and I wonder at the woman looking back at me

eyes of a familiar color

no longer flashing the wild abandon of the lover

no longer reflecting the untamed wilderness of a soul

begging to be chained.

I am now

stretched too thin

standing on the outside looking in

I have become a stranger to the life I used to live

a stranger to the beauty of my own story.

I am

a stranger in my own skin.

Ramblings of the Most Boring Kind

Has is really been more than two weeks since I last came here to ramble?? Since I cannot seem to keep track of the days, I will take Blogger's word for it. No wonder I woke up missing it here. Not even here really...I have nothing interesting to say or share, or even to vent. Sure, I could do lots of venting, but its not interesting. I miss you though. The people who come here. And I miss roaming around Blogland in my free time. Free time...Ha. 55-60 hour work weeks just don't seem to offer much of that!

I have been waking up with a case of the funks lately. Well, for the few minutes I have to think about those funks anyways.
I'm tempted to do my normal bit and run straight to the paperwork. My deadline got moved up...In no uncertain terms I was informed just how unhappy our general manager would be and how freely he would make sure that no one else was happy if I missed the deadline. I refrained from pointing out that, given the people he's talking about, very few of us would not return the favor...
My son asked if I'd get fired for taking a day off. I laughed--not this week kiddo, not this week. This week my job is the most secure it will ever be because 90% of the paperwork this company needs to get going lives only on my desktop at the moment. It's a terrible thing really. We'll see how well (or badly) I have done after the state audits them. I am going to audit them myself first. You know, with all that extra time I have to do so before someone has a hissy of epic proportions...Wish me luck.

Someone gave us a very nice bottle of champagne (I can't even spell that) for our anniversary, I'm saving it until after we see how all my paperwork pans out. My backup plan, should it go south, is Tequila. Sounds reasonable, right?

Did I mention that I miss you? I miss the interaction, the visitors, the knowledge that my words are never lonely because there's always someone there to read them, someone there who knows that they exist, someone who understands what they mean when they pour out of me.

He read here the other day, and he was not happy with what he saw. We both have good, if very stressful jobs. Somehow I fell into a position by default of starting to work for free because it had to be done,  knowledge, drive, and brains, that I would never have gotten back home. He's got his dream job. The kids are healthy and mostly happy. I stick to my food budget, but I don't add the pennies. Life is not bad here.

There's this concept, well lots of them really, but one in particular that I doubt I'll ever adapt to. In fact, I hope that I do not, and I certainly wouldn't wish for my children to do so. It's about seeing people not as who they are, but how they exist as assets--it's not about valuing people for who they are, but only what they can do for you. And I don't like it. I think its a crappy approach to humanity.

Life is not bad here...
Yet...It's still not "my" life.

Odd feeling, that...

I actually took yesterday off, so I had better make up for it today.

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?