The last couple of days have been rough. For a lot of reasons, not all of them kinky, but not all of them not kinky (I’ll take double negatives for 400, Alex). I didn’t start this blog for the purpose of making-me-feel-better writing, but maybe part of what’s making me feel bad would be interesting to other people. Maybe I’m just cheating. Who knows.
I’ve been reading “The Ultimate Guide to Kink” over the last fews days, and it has some really amazing essays in it. I’ve been sleeping in my collar most nights, walking with Sir arm in arm in the specified ways our everyday protocol offers (but doesn’t demand - it’s a voluntary expression from either of us). I’ve been reading first book in the Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by Anne Rice. Sir and I have played a couple times over the last few days, both of them fairly intense (and one of them involving a lot more humiliation play than we’ve ever done before, which I loved, but which presented a really different kind of aftercare, for me). In short, I feel like I’ve been living and breathing kink, eating and shitting kink. Which is awesome. Learning about sex (nerding and geeking about sex) is one of my favorite activities, especially when it’s sex that I really like. But I worry that it’s getting to be too much. And then, being the just-so-full-of-neurosis lady that I am, I worry about the worry. Oh dear.
I’m drawn to kink because I’ve always been drawn to the kink, drawn to submission and masochism because they’re a part of me, and before this little tryst into my subconscious, I’d like to make it clear that those aren’t in question. Kink will, as far as I can tell, always be a part of me, and (with any luck) a part of my sexual and romantic life. Their manifestation, and not their existence, is what I’m parsing.
One of the questions is how much I want kink to be a part of my life. Another is in what way I want kink to be a part of my life. That’s the question I’ve been asking myself when I wake up in the morning, when I go to bed, when I’m knelt at Sir’s feet and taking off his boots at the end of the day. How much of this do I want? And what kinds of this do I want? And if I have the answer to neither, and each affects the other, then what kind of twisty turny shit creek have I gotten myself all up in?
I start to see it as a pie chart, as a mix drink yet to be stirred. One part work life, one part writing life, one part sleeping life, one part social life, one part love life, one part kinky life.
But I’m not sure that’s even right, and here’s where the worrying about worry comes in. I wonder why I’m making that distinction, and why I’m making it the particular way that I am. The only way I can think about it is examples of other things, like: what does it feel like when I’m not writing enough? Well, it feels like I’m not spending enough time with the blank page, and at the computer, and slogging through submissions (heh, no pun intended). So the rememdey is to do those things. When it feels like I’m having too much social life, the remedy is to go home and curl up with a book or a movie, or to sew a new corset, or to do anything that is entirely driven by me, occupied in my own world, quiet, productive, contented. Anything that makes me feel like a whole sturdy person all on my own.
But I’ve never thought about any of these things (writing, work, friends, etc.) astoo much in my life the same way I’ve tried to process kink in the last couple days. I wonder why that is. Maybe it’s the fact that kink influences directly, and obviously, the everyday, mundane aspects of life. Holding hands a certain way is different now; going to bed is different now; my name even, sometimes, is different now. It imbues my life in a way I’m not particularly used to.
But that also raises a distinction that I don’t like, and I think working against this distinction is maybe the answer (if there’s ever going to be something to mercifully clear cut and simple as “the answer”). Just because I’m a good girl, and my partner is Sir, doesn’t mean that I’m not still me, that he’s not still him. It’s easier to see it, with him. I can look at him and see the man I’m in love with, in another role he plays, another expression of himself that’s exciting and gorgeous, but not any less himself. With myself, it’s harder to see… myself (and now we’re getting to the point where I sound like an 80’s teen movie). I can’t see that, being a good girl, or putting a collar on, doesn’t mean that my life isn’t still anything I want it to be, doesn’t mean that I’m still not spit firing below everything. Reconciling these two, letting them exist not even together, but exist as the same thing, is incredibly difficult.
Part of it is that I feel like a freak. Hence the recent obsession with kink literature. I always read, but I’ve been reading *a lot* in the last days. Pouring myself into a community that says “we’re all freaks! A lot of us are way freakier than you, whatever that means! Be okay with it! Be comforted!” And it is comforting, in a many ways. But it’s also a feedback loop. Read more about kink, feel more comfortable about the amount of kink in your life, realize how much kink you’ve been reading, wonder if that’s too much kink in your life, etc…
Part of it is the cycle and method of meaning. Being a submissive headspace (not subspace*), or a masochistic moment, are incredibly meaningful to me. They carry weight. And then I get out into my regular life, and I forget that many, many other things also carry weight. That I don’t have to be actively submissive, nor does my partner have to actively dominant, for a special moment to happen (and blech, that sounds like a hallmark card; bear with me). That I can take pride and meaning in completing a task at work, or doing a good job, without having to define that, or even associate that, with submissive service. In this past couple days, this has been almost impossible for me to believe.
It’s really terrifying, on a certain level. I’m scared I’m creating a life I don’t want, or pouring meaning into something I’m not going to stick with (why this is a fear needs some more sitting, I think, before I can delve into it). I’m scared I’ll disappoint my partner somehow, which is also ridiculous, because he’s an amazingly supportive teammate. I’m scared I’m wading in too deep, too fast, and that I don’t know what I’m doing.
I have some issues with control, and I always have. I like to plan and I like to worry. And it’s a big step, in this part of my life, to try and let that go. To know that no matter how much I talk about it, write about it, read about, that kink is probably going to throw some wrenches at me, some delightful, some probably terrifying. Accepting that is something I’m still working on. And the belief that underneath it all, I get to make a life, and be person, in whichever way I want to be: that’s key. It’s hard too, but that’s essential, and something that maybe one day, I can revel joyful and decadent in.
Ending a sentence with a preposition. Shame on me.
Bruised and confused, but happy enough,
The Good Girl
* “subspace” is a term I don’t like much. I prefer “the forever place,” with no disdain for the other option - I just think “forever place” sums it up better, for me.
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