Times, they are a Changin’

Great gods, how did I let so much time go by without writing? I am so sorry, honestly, both to those that enjoy reading this blog and to myself for cutting off a good source of processing and catharsis.

Obviously, I still live. I still breathe. I still am kinky, and poly, and all my relationships are in tact. Even Ryan and I, despite what my last entry may have led readers to think. We’ve had our bumps. We continue to. But we are still a we.

I have many things to catch you all up on. I have a new partner, a new title (Church of All Words May Queen..there’s a story, I promise. Or more than likely a blog entry all its own), a fiance (also a story/blog entry), a job that I continue to love every day, and still no damn clue what I am doing! WEEEEEEEE. Oh, and I had an Ace at Fusion with me this year. Multiple times, in multiple ways, and I left marks.

I am sitting in my favorite cafe, munching on one of my favorite sandwiches while I wait for James and for BaGG. I’ve struggled with anxiety, mental illness, and the need at timesto take time away from the community I love with everything in it. I’ve questioned my role in it so many times, because if I’m not killing myself being super sub what am I even doing?

And I’m still here. I’m still kinky, a bit more queer than I was at the start of this journey, much more switchy… and ready for more.

I’m going to catch you all up as much as I can, I promise. To start, I would like to write the entry that I needed to read over two years ago.

I am still yours, dear reader.

And I’m back

-Rene

Same Dance, Different Steps

 

The rhythm of routine is a comforting one in a world that no longer makes sense to me.

I see hate in so many places and cruelty where there once was kindess. I admit that I hade in the welcoming arms of my community. I mark, I protest, I growl with the rest of them, and then I run back to my land of misfits to dance another day.

My routines are simple, and exhausting. And I suppose, simply exhausting. I go to BaGG every week, managing to show up hours early to sit across from the stubborn asshole I love while he works and I work.. and then we dance.

We have yet to physically play, James and I. Not since he took my collar, slave ring, and pendant. I often wonder about the box they’re placed in. Is it plain, decorated. Does he take it out, along with photos and momentos, love letters and notes, and godde knows how many gifts, or does it stay locked away in some corner of his closet, another mistake he doesn’t want to look at? I don’t know. It’s eight months today, and I still don’t know.

What we do end up doing is dueling. Trading cards. An old game called Yu-Gi-Oh that he’s been into for eons, and that I enjoyed as a kid. I never played before him. I ‘built’ decks in the loosest of terms, with the childlike mindset of “Oh, this is pretty! Let’s put this with this!” and never had anyone to actually play with. Eons ago, a world ago, he tasked me with learning the game again. I did…and then the world exploded. And exploded. And exploded, and playing cards was the furthest thing from my mind.

After I was released, there was a time when playing cards was…all we ended up having. He shoved the fact that I hadn’t build a deck in my face during our breakup, and my rebuttle was to show up at the Citadel two days later with my skeleton of a deck, ready to duel. Since then, it’s been the only thing guaranteed safe to talk about. When he’s in a foul mood during a ride I bring up Yu-Gi-Oh. When he’s overly stressed and obviously needs a break from work, like he did today. When the dungeon is slow on a work night and I can seek him getting stressed. We duel.

It’s become such a lovely ritual as time has gone on. The banter has increased, to the point where there is quite a bit of sexual tension with our duels. There’s more joking, more teasing, more… comfort, and slowly, bit by bit, we have begun to feel like our old selves. He’s more approachable and less intimidating, and things like sitting in silence together have stopped feeling so uncomfortable. They are, in many ways, oddly comfortable. I know why he’s quiet some nights; I can still read his body like a book and can tell when he’s stressed, or sore, or in a mood.

That being said… the duels are all I get. I can’t touch him. I can’t snuggle him, or kneel at his feet, or go in for the big, long hugs that other can. I still am only permitted a hug goodbye most days, and I am touch starved. We spend so much damn time together that in certain ways it can be cruel smelling him, hearing him, being surrounded by him and yet being unable to reach him. There are times when he looks so damn fucking good… and I curse that he still pushes all of my fucking buttons. All of them. He always has, and I have no clue anymore what I push of him, if anything good.

Today, we dueled as always. He brought out his Blue Eyes deck, I my Lightsworn, and he destroyed me like he always does. He topped me through cards, because he could. Any progress I make he lets me do. I’m well aware of this. It’s always been that way with James. Any progress I’ve made, it’s because he’s let me. The banter, the dance, lasted until a friend mentioned that she played.

This friend is not a threat in any way. She doesn’t make me jealous, at all. She is safe, a beautiful soul who still calls James my person and is well aware at just how complicated she is. And the truth is, I love watching James duel. It’s fun sometimes when it’s not me. It wasn’t that they dueled… it’s that they interrupted the ritual that triggered some brain squirrels in my mind.

He doesn’t top me right now, in any way but the cards. That’s all I get. I don’t get swatts at BaGG. He won’t pull my hair, or bring me to my knees. I’ve forgotten, for the most part, what his lips feel like. I don’t get casual kisses or bites. He still won’t even just… poke me in the arm in a friendly way. Touch was so much a part of our love language that it was one of the main things taken away when we ended, and so I cling to the cards. I cling to the ritual of every Wednesday I get my dance with him. He will give me time, top me, and then go off to the others.

Today, that wasn’t the case. He played a few rounds with me, and then moved on to someone else. It was bound to happen. The nature of games is that you play other people. It’s a silly game; it’s fun. But… it’s our fun. It’s our thing, and for an hour I sat and watched while they played. I watched the bit of time I normally get with him tick away, and as it did I felt more and more invisible to him.

Emotions rarely have logic, and unfortunately for me my emotions are almost always written on my face. If anything, I’m sitting and writing this all out to get the kicked puppy expression I know I’m wearing to disappear. I am posessive of the few points of connection that I consider mine with him, logical or not, and I don’t think I realized how posessive until tonight. I felt.. inferior. Our friend is a better duelist than I am, with more experience. She was more of a challenge for him, and he and others commented that despite having months of practice now, she played better than I have. She lasted better.

There was a moment, hearing all of this, that I realized how easily replacable I could be. I wonder what value I still hold to him, this man that never seems to want to know his own heart. Over a silly game of cards that have been our safe-zone.

Maybe it’s the time of year; that Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, and I remain without a primary. Maybe it’s looking around and seeing other people valued by partners, and finding myself at war with my self-imposed loneliness. Maybe it’s that fear that… I’m just another background piece for him now.

None of this is logical. Time is gold to James, and more than anyone else I get his time.

Except, for when I don’t.

When the dance gets interrupted, the partners changed out, and you find yourself doubting if it was a dance at all.

It’s time for BaGG. Perhaps I will be brave and approach him for a different type of dance.

Yours, in routine

-Rene

 

Daydreams and Dulldrums

 

I turn 24 in 10 days.

It doesn’t feel like it, really… Honestly I feel older. Exhausted. I’ve had a knot in my chest for about a week now, a heavy weight that continually reminds me that I need to find a new home ASAP with shit credit and very little in the bank. And a cat. Who is currently trying very hard to sit on the keyboard while I type.

My friends back east have started asking me what I want for my birthday.. What do I want? Honestly?

I want one uninterrupted day with my boyfriend. I want to get my favorite coffee drink at my favorite cafe in the Haight and show him all of my favorite spots, including the Anarchist bookstore where we could actually afford to shop. I want to get a new pair of boots at Wasteland and possibly a pretty dress to wear the following night at BaGG.

I want to talk.. have those conversations that only happen when he and I are on our own, and bask in the glory of having nothing to do other than enjoy each other’s company. I want to snuggle. Kiss. I want to sit in his lap and secretly (not so secretly) revel in the fact that there is a lap at my disposal whenever I desire (and/or am allowed to) snuggle.

I want him to surprise me.. to take me somewhere I’ve never seen before. He always surprises me.

I want to eat my favorite popcorn tuna roll at Saru sushi and get the yummy salmon tasting plate, and drink sake out of the pretty little glass cups that look way too breakable to be functional. I want to for once not be in a hurry, not be stressed. I want to feel just a little bit special for the day.

And I admit, I want to go star gazing. I want him to be relaxed and happy and just…enjoy the moment. I want one day that is mine.

And yes, I want fantastic birthday sex and snuggles afterward. I want marks and welts and bites and to sob and shake before being fucked into that blissful pleasure/pain state. I want to fly in the way that only submitting allows me to. I want bliss. And then I want birthday spankings at BaGG the next evening and lots of photos and spankings and bruises. I want his hands on me. Marking me, claiming me. I want that half-posessive grab on my leg he does during BaGG that I’m not even sure he notices that he does… the grin on his face that says “You make look, and you may touch, and yes she’s pretty, but this is mine.”

The reality is that my birthday is on a Tuesday… Weekdays are a hard day to get to relax during.. it doesn’t happen. James has been incredibly busy lately, which is a good thing. It means paychecks and photos and him doing what he loves…

It’s just… yeah.

I can’t take a whole Tuesday off… I have to make firsts and lasts for a new place. I have to HUNT for a new place to start with. I have to make double of what I normally do in a single month, factor in renting a truck, moving on my own, loading truck time, boxes, pet deposits..

I saw an apartment two days ago that I want with everything in me.. I’m waiting, holding my breath, hoping they get back to me and say that it’s mine. And if it isn’t? More applications. More searching. More hoping. More praying my bad credit and cat don’t make finding a home impossible.

I know why I am in the mood that I’m in, logically. I understand the melancholy. The desire to just curl up in the safest place I know and just… stay for a while. I know that this too shall pass and that better things are to come.. That I will eventually turn a corner. That there will come a time when both James and I will find that delicate balance between working enough to afford gas and not working so much so that we actually have free time to see each other..  I was just.. hoping I could actually celebrate my birthday.

23 has been hard. It’s been a bitch, quite frankly. It had a good start… I can’t complain about being a Disney princess for a day and being allowed to run rampant around Disneyland… But 23 had a lot of heartache too… a lot of harsh lessons learned and way too much time spent alone. The reality is that I like having a community.. I like knowing people, having friends.. and yes, I like that I am with someone that isn’t afraid of their kinky side… that is as open about it as I am and doesn’t go by some double name (I’m sure there’s a blog post about that sometime in the future).

I am… exhausted. Emotionally wrecked at the moment. But I’m in a state where I can work in the not so artistic way. Get me like this and I can haul ass.. Eye on the prize. I need a new home. And fuck it, I’m going to get it for my birthday. 24 is all new and shiny.. Possibilities are endless. And dammit I’m getting too old to be this lost for much longer. 24 will have grad school in it, this I can assure you.

And maybe, just maybe, I can get some cuddles, kisses, and bruises from James.. As busy as our lives can be he’s proven to be very good at making time when I need it..and knowing when I need it. Before I can fall and break he catches me and sets me back on my feet, then gives me just enough of a shove so that I can start walking again…

Gah. Okay. That sounded like a ball of mush even to me. I’m done spewing, promise.

Off to work now. HAUL ASS TIME!!!!

Yours, feeling old

-Rena

The Almost-Threesome

I haven’t written in too long.. I’ve been going through a lot, but that is something to write about another time, when I am able to.

For now, I will write about something that did happen, what feels like a lifetime ago.

I was living in Boston trudging through the last year of my undergrad. My aunt was sick, but I didn’t know she was terminal yet. I had a credit card I didn’t pay the bill for, big dreams, and an itch to explore.

My sex life was…limited. I was single but not. Jason and I had broken up the previous May; it was October and we hadn’t seen each other since, but we were calling each other and Skyping regularly, in this weird limbo of sometimes we were friends, sometimes we were more. Feelings were still there, as were whispers of a maybe-future.

I’ve mentioned before that Halloween is my favorite holiday, and October my month. Living in Boston I frequented Salem on a regular basis to frolic with witches, and October in Salem was Halloween central. On one of my trips I noticed flyers for a Vampire Ball at the Hawthorne Hotel the last weekend in October. It was my last year there.. I was in.

I dressed in, for the place and time, what was a racy outfit for me. The shirt was see through, I remember, and the jeans were blacked and hugged my ass without giving me pudge. I put on makeup, a set of fake fangs, and was out the door.

I was a good girl. I called a cab ahead of time to pick me up when it said the ball was set to end, at 1 a.m. (Boston’s mass transit stops around midnight) and psyched myself up for a good time, and whatever awaited me. What I ended up finding was somewhat… disappointing. I was hoping for some spice, for people to give me the occasional double-take. For someone to desire me somewhere.

As the night wore on I managed to make a couple of friends. The place was full of couples, and those I was talking to were amused that I had come on my own. One couple I found to be rather striking entertained me for the majority of the evening.

They were polar opposites. Her head was shaved and completely tattooed. She wore an over bust corset with gaps in the lacing that was one size too small, so that when she was dancing occasionally her nipples would pop out, and you could see the glittery spider web design she had attached to them. Her breasts were quite obviously fake, but they balanced out her otherwise curvy figure. She was covered in tattoos from head to toe. Her arms were completely sleeved. Even her fingers were covered. As she drank copious amounts of wine she pulled me onto the dance floor multiple times, grinding with me and one or two other females that dared to join us.

Her partner was completely silent and dressed sharply in a suit with a blood red tie and white undershirt. I remember being puzzled by him; he was quiet, barely said a word to me all evening, and yet filled up the room more than any other person there. He was older than her by at least ten years, with a military style buzz cut of salt and pepper hair and laugh lines around his eyes. Not a tattoo in sight. Comparing him to his flamboyant partner and attempting to see their compatibility boggled my mind for the rest of the evening.

From time to time the man would beckon his partner over and whisper in her ear, a hand on her hip as he spoke. She then would run off to one person or another and speak with them.

Eventually, she came to me around 11. “We’re going to go outside for one last smoke break and then head upstairs to our room, want to join us?” (they were not locals, and because of this rented one of the three hundred dollar rooms for the evening). I nodded, curious, and also a casual smoker at the time (I blame art school). I had my camera with me, a new Nikon D3200 that I was slowly learning to master. I took several portraits of them under the Hawthorne Hotel’s back entrance light, puffing on my bummed cigarette the whole while. I still have the portraits, backed up on various hard drives.

When we got to the room the couple motioned for me to get comfortable. She was slurring her speech at this point, and I myself was giddy on a few glasses of wine. They were from out of town, the man explained, from the midwest. He traveled a lot for work and brought her with him when he could. They had two sons. It had been so ling since they last played with others.

That last bit was where they lost me..and where I apparently lost my top. I remembering laying on the bed with the woman on top of me transfixed by the man as he shed his layers. When his suit came off I saw what it covered.. He had a body suit of tattoos under his suit, all traditional Japanese style. When he wore long sleeves and slacks you had no close. He crawled onto the bed next to me and showed me where, in all the ink, his wife’s name was hidden.

As if on cue she proudly stripped and showed me where her man’s name was on her, right above her lady bits. “He owns me.” she told me. “I’m branded by him over my most intimate area. I am his property, to do with as I wish.”

…That’s about where vanilla me’s head exploded.

The man ordered the woman up to mix drinks for all of us..not that I can remember what I drank. I liked how he smelled, the musk of his scent, and didn’t resist when he pulled off my bra and underwear. They asked what my limits were..

Here I was, extremely attracted to these two people and extremely confused all at once, and I started rambling on about Jason, about how I loved him about the weirdness between us..

Somehow this led to me making out with the man as he fondled my top and the woman fingering me. I remember her murmuring “You’re so fucking beautiful” over and over, the man agreeing, saying I would make such a nice little pet.

“Look how responsive she is.. It’s like a living squeaky toy..”

Part of me wishes I had been much more sober for this experience than I was..and part of me wish I had recognized them for what they were back then so that I could write this all down sooner, before the details got blurry.

I vaguely remember them having a conversation about me; saying they would like to see me again when I was free of hang ups, that they wish they were closer, that they wished I could fully play. At the time I had only been with three men, so penetration was a very much no-no. It was taboo. You didn’t have sex with strangers! Whores did that.

…I wanted to have sex with him.. really badly. I liked her too..but I wanted to fuck him. Quiet, brooding, and calling the shots.

My cab called me right on time to say he was outside of the hotel. I quickly dressed, despite the protests of the couple, and went outside to go back to my boring college life, trying to process what had just happened and what I got myself into. I had willingly gone to a stranger’s hotel room to fool around with a couple. They saw me naked. She talked about being owned by her husband and seemed giddy when he asked her to make us all drinks.

…So imagine my “DOH!” reaction when I dove into the world of BDSM and remember all I could of this event.. He owned her. She was a submissive to his Dominance, and from all appearance they had a 24/7 arrangement. Throughout the night she had mentioned rewards for things, like her breast implants and tattoos being gifted to her for this, this and this.

Very few people know this happened. I never shared the experience for fear of judgment, only telling that I was propositioned, not that I went upstairs with the swinging couple.

You think that would have gotten me to figure out what I was sooner.  Whoopsie?

Yours,

~Rena

The Sleeping Man

I wanted to write this before I forget.

-On a side note, I would love to know when I reached that age where you start forgetting things. I’m twenty-three and I feel like a damn old lady sometimes..but that is a rant for another day.

My daddy and I are extremely close. As close as we are, we rarely talk on the phone for more than a few minutes. That’s just not how we are. One of the main reasons I need to come see my parents every few months is because that’s when my dad and I have our Talks. The big, monumental, this just mentally kicked you on your ass and then slapped your mama Talks. This last trip home was no exception to this.

We were driving into the City (New York) for a Rena-Daddy day (what we’ve called it since I was little.. basically a day where it was just the two of us either going to the movies, or the mall, or for pizza, etc) when he first explained the Sleeping Man to me. My dad and I both have a form of depression, as does my older cousin, her mother, and my grandmother. It’s never been officially diagnosed, but there’s been reference to a “family disease” on more than one occasion and I know enough about psychiatry to know what I have. It’s not a constant depressive state, it spikes when things get rough and we get stuck.

My dad finally gave our stuck-ness a name. “It’s like we have a sort of form of schizophrenia” he said to me as we drove over the GW Bridge. “There is who we think of as ourselves, the person who has all these ideas and all these things we want to do, all this ambition, and then there’s what we become when the Sleeping Man takes over. He’s who makes it all stop. He’s the voice telling you ‘Oh, I’ll do it after this TV show’ or ‘Maybe I should finish that next season’. The Sleeping Man makes us into toxic people. He puts us almost into a stasis so that we can’t move forward with our lives. Our lives become a constant battle against the Sleeping Man to accomplish what we want. We constantly fight that urge to get stuck, to stop, to fall into a status where nothing can touch us, but things that don’t adapt and change are eventually destroyed.”

There was more, but you get the gist of it.

From our Sleeping Man discussion we walked to one of my favorite places on Earth, the Museum of Modern Art. Inside those walls are the oldest of my old friends, from Starry Night to The Dance to Red Studio to the giant water lily canvases that first convinced me to love art. We hadn’t planned to go…we just kind of ended up there on a whim. By chance the weekend before a new timed show had opened on the upper floor. Timed shows mean more for the price of admission, so we moaned and groaned and said we would only see it if it was absolutely spectacular or one of our old friends.

Well, it was both. I have worshipped Henri Matisse as an artist and a man for many years. I love him because even as his body failed him he continued to work. He adapted, changing from medium to medium instead of giving up and settling into what old age would mean for his arthritic body. When the man could not hold a brush he held scissors and cut paper shapes out, then used a pointer to direct where the shapes would go on his piece.

What was held within the MoMA’s walls was not A Matisse show, it was THE Matisse show. All of his cut paper pieces under one roof; things I had seen in art history and in books suddenly in front of my eyes. I could go on about this show for hours…but this is normally a BDSM based blog and I worry about boring you with my vanilla life away from my Dom.

I will mention that all four of the Blue Nudes were there. Under one roof. On one wall. I may have cried.

Afterward, my daddy and I stumbled out of the show speechless. I immediately texted my Dom to see if I could purchase the book from the show, something I almost never do, and hugged it like a precious treasure once it was in my possession. My dad and I are both artists. We both have the sleeping man and we were both at low points before my visit. Seeing that show, seeing the art that we both new and loved in front of us, was like taking a baseball bat to the Sleeping Man. I remembered why I made art.

I also came to the realization as we left the museum that while I loved drawing and painting it wasn’t enough to help me shake my moods. I needed wet clay on my hands. I needed the wheel, my tools, glazes. I needed the heat of the kiln and the feel of bisqued clay as I tried to cover it in the perfect glazes, concocting like a mad scientist. I need long nights lost in the studio, dancing to music blasted through headphones as I thrust clay through slap rollers and make characters appear from a block of while goo. I needed my world back in order to get the release I associate with producing artwork. I needed the studio to produce again.

I don’t know how Kane does what he does…how he knows me so well. That evening after returning home from the city I received a text from him informing me that my schedule would be changing; that even though I was not working full time I would be having eight hour work days. I would spend time doing Lyft or nannying, or whatever I had that day, and the remainder of the eight hours would be spent in the studio. It would be treated as a job. I was to go to the studio every day and create. He had me make up a list of supplies to get started again, and informed me that this would be put into place very soon. I wanted to cry.

The Sleeping Man can be conquered. I’m determined to prove that.

And now I need to pack. This is my last evening at my parent’s home. I fly back on a 7:30 a.m. flight, it’s 1 a.m. now and I have nothing packed.

Nothing like cutting it close 😛

Yours feeling much better

~Rena

Bits and Pieces

“She has been running for so long.
She does not remember when she began. She has always been running, running, hurtling forward, headlong, passion in her heart and limbs, not thinking of the goal, only running. She is hot and wet. She is wet with heat.
Her breath comes in deep gasps. Her searing heart expands.
Everything blurs.
Everything.
Running.
And then.
She stops in her tracks. She stares. A strong woman, panting, stares back at her. Eyes blazing with force and heat. A mirror? A mirage? A perfect twin? Hair tangled with sweat. Her? Another? Who?
And then.
Running, everything blurring.
Searing heart. Breath in deep gasps.
Hot and wet. Wet with heat.
Running, hurtling headlong forward, passion in heart and limbs, no go, only running, running. Running.
Running. ”

This is a poem called Mabon I stumbled across last night while going through books I had stashed away…and oh did it resonate.

I should backtrack.

The day of my last blog post I decided it was time to be brave. Over the summer when I went back to New Jersey in June my childhood home because a bit of a disaster soon. My baby sister accidentally flooded the basement which still contained a rather large chunk of my college life in Boston, including a portfolio case that contained all the precious little momentos that once hung on my walls.

I brought the portfolio case with me on my cross country trip, knowing that eventually I would have to look inside at the carnage the flood caused, and that it would not be pretty. I was terrified.. I’m not one of those that keeps precious things in a box. I like being able to see cards and notes, drawings and tokens of affection… I had little things that I had saved; a note from a friend who brought me pieces fresh out of the kiln, a Valentine from one of my best friends the year we met, a card from a very close friend that kept me sane after my aunt died and I still had one semester left…

One thing extra precious in the menagerie of precious was a photograph. It was taken when I was thirteen, and is one of few where I can tell you exactly where it was taken and what I was doing. My aunt and I were in a Starbucks (she was a coffee junky, although she preferred it from 7/11 with half and half, no sugar…funny the shit you remember), it was one of the first I had ever been in. She got me a muffin and we were waiting on her coffee. It was a pit stop on way to a Wynonna Judd concert in New England, and my uncle took a photo of us through the glass window. We’re hugging each other, laughing, and are just so..us.

Since my freshman year of college my aunt and I corresponded regularly over e mail.. I still have most of them. The only ones I deleted were when she yelled at me for spending too much money. I knew she was sick when the e mails stopped… I found out she was terminal when I came home from college for Christmas. I knew she was dying, really dying, when I came back to school at the end of January. I had that picture hanging in my dorm. When I couldn’t e mail anymore I talked to the photo daily, telling her what I was up to and how I was okay, and wished she was as well.. She died a week into my last semester of college, college she paid for me to go to and wanted me to finish so badly..and to get through I continued to talk to the photo. I finished my degree for her as well as myself.

After I graduated, I ignored the photo. I didn’t want to think about her being gone. It hurt enough to be home without her..and so I ran to California. And then the flood happened…and without looking inside I brought the whole portfolio case to California.

I moved into my apartment in June. For months it has been in a shambles…because I seem to have this built in urge to run from one thing to the next. Being away from Kane is hard…and for the first time in my life I think about living with someone on a regular basis. We talk about it often, and I know that if nothing else around February that will become a reality..but until then I was all but resenting the little apartment I spent maybe a week out of a month in.

Why? Why did I resent it when I should have pride in it? Why did I unpack nothing in preparation for what is next instead of enjoying what I had? I thought back to college, to my junior year when Jason and I were hot and heavy. One of the many reasons our relationship failed (besides our youth, his life being impractical, and all in all us growing into different people, etc) was that we burned out. He asked me out in August, and by October was talking about proposing. Mind you, I was twenty and he was twenty four. We were young, stupid, in a long distance relationship and hopelessly in love. Because we would go a month or more without seeing each other in person our trips would be super intense. There’s only so much you can share over cam and phone, and we would pour everything into those in person visits.. Because they were limited we drifted from the present to the future often…eventually drifting too far into the future. I was obsessed with it, and he couldn’t see it anymore…

Kaboom

Back to the present, where I sat thinking about all of this. I looked over at the portfolio case that has been untouched since June…and I dug in. I unpacked it and went through the carnage, rediscovering treasures like the last birthday card my grandfather gave me and a Catwoman marker drawing my dad made me, in tact. I went through the whole case, unable to find the photograph, and was folding up the portfolio case when I felt something in the front pocket.

The frame was trashed. Disgusting. It was covered in black mold and no longer resembled a frame. I pulled the gross object out, prepared to look at the carnage and toss the whole thing out…and found the picture. In tact. Okay. The edges that were locked inside the frame were blurred from water damage, but the center, the photo of my aunt and I, was perfect. Just as I remember. I immediately put it up next to my bed, tossing the frame, and I cried.

I don’t know why..maybe with relief, maybe with remembering…but this flood gate was a necessary kick in the ass. I started ripping through the apartment, decorating, cleaning, unpacking, reorganizing… I found books I forgot about. Precious bits and pieces that made up who I was. As I unpacked..I felt more and more proud about my little in law apartment. It was mine. MINE. I paid for it. It was my space to enjoy for a few months, that I earned with my money.

I still look forward to moving in with Kane and our life together…how can I not? I’m madly in love with the man.. but I was once again trying to rush things. I was running over broken bits of myself, rushing to my future without acknowledging the present. I could enjoy weekends together as a special treat, and nights together as a blessing and not a give in. I could take pride in my little space and remember who I was.

Thus the flipping through the pagan books again, where I found the Mabon poem that struck a chord. Running, rushing life, solves nothing. People my age talk about when they were children wishing to be adults, and how they would give anything to go back. I’m guilty of this as well, ten was a damn good year for me… People my age don’t seem to learn easily. Here we are in our twenties and so many of us are rushing into our thirties. We wish to be teenagers when we’re children. As teenagers we want to be in our twenties. When we are in our twenties and have the freedom we longed for in our teens we yearn for the stability of our thirties. In our thirties we yearn for the sureness of who we are that comes with our forties, and in our forties we long for the wisdom that comes in our fifties. In our fifties we want the peace that comes with our sixties, and so on and so fourth..you get it.

My name is Rena. I am twenty three years old, and still in the maiden stage of my life. I want to be a mother someday within the next three to five years. I want to be a wife. I want to be a partner. But I am a girlfriend and a submissive. I’m an artist with a vagabond’s soul that loves to explore new places, on my own and with the man I love.

I will learn from my past, relish my present, and look forward to my future without longing for it. Because while the present is not easy, it’s still pretty damn good.

Yours with an ALMOST unpacked apartment.

~Rena

Surprising New Tools

Okay, I admit, I found this photo a while ago and I have been waiting for an opportunity to post it…but it’s for irony’s sake, not because I believe it.. Because in my relationship the opposite is true.

Sir and I got into a conversation about the mechanics of our relationship yesterday, as we tend to do from time to time…because I am a noob and often need things broken down a bit further to really process things. I care about him a great deal, as a person as well as a Dom, and told him I was struggling with how much to ask when I knew something was wrong with him. It’s hard just to..not care, not notice when you see someone’s personality change and you have no clue why.

He told me, “Here is the thought for you to think on today, little one: the advice that you hear from people, that it is truly the submissive that has all the power in the D/s relationship… that’s just plain wrong.  The only power you have is the safeword and the ability to walk away.  You give everything else up.  Everything else.  You have ultimate power, but only power to end things.  You give everything else away, or the dynamic is wrong and it can’t last.”

Which means the teeth don’t hold any damn power in that blow job, and you had better know when and when not to use them, per your Dom’s preferences.

It’s that last bit, that giving EVERYTHING UP, that last bit of control, that I find myself fighting on an instinctual level. Which bothers me, because I want to submit. I need to. You don’t choose to take on being a 24/7 Sub and desiring a TPE relationship if you don’t feel in your core it’s who you are… otherwise you would probably be miserable during it. The more my training actually begins and Sir begins to show me the actual fundamentals of being a slave and serving him, the more content and at peace with myself I become.

That contentment lasts for a couple days after seeing Sir, and then I find myself fighting to keep it. It’s a combination of things that tends to pull me out of the submissive headspace. One being every day life, another being distance from Sir, if he or I get busy and can’t really speak, a third just being basic survival instincts when I’m on my own. I am small, and I’ve had issues with being mugged and jumped among other things before… the barriers go up when I’m out in the city by myself, that vibe of “please don’t come near me” that has far from a submissive vibe to it.

All these things bother me. I wish I could keep the contentment that I have when I’m around Sir, that peaceful feeling of knowing exactly who I am and what I should be doing…

Today I went to a bit of an…experiment. There was a munch at a local kink cafe involving erotic hypnotism. Now, I’ve always been a skeptic when it comes to hypnotism, but my undergraduate degree is in psychology. The workings of the mind absolutely fascinate me, and I decided to go to the munch 1: Because I had nothing else to do and love the cafe in general and 2: Because I was simply curious. I wanted to see how this ‘hypnotism’ worked, and how many people would fake it just to fake it..

Like I said, skeptic.

I found myself pleasantly surprised. What they called hypnotism I always thought of as guided meditation. I struggle with silent meditation, always have, but guided mediation is old hack for me. I’ve been doing them since I was about twelve, and have always found visualizing to be incredibly easy for me (YAY creative mind!). The hypnotism was guided meditation with a bit of an “oomph”, adding emphasis and tone to the voice in order to pull the person meditation further into a trance-state.

We went around our little table at one point and talked about what we wished to gain from ‘hypnotism’, if anything (I’m still going with guided meditation..but it’s a tomato, tomato, potato, potato kinda thing for me), what scenes we thought could be enhanced by it, etc. I haven’t really done much thought when it comes to “scenes”, as much as I fantasize from time to times.. but I did have my little issue of just not being able to let go, and so I explained my relationship, knowing the group would understand it, and told them how I was struggling. After the initial O.O OH WOW that comes with saying you want a 24/7 TPE relationship the person leading the group immediately started mentioning meditations I could try, and actually led me through one that helped… a lot.

I honestly don’t remember all of it… I remember him having us go into trance state, to the point where we were most content and at peace with our submission, where we felt the most safe. For me, that’s easy. I am tiny as hell, and Sir is no small man. When we lay next to each other it is very easy for Sir to completely engulf me when he embraces me.

THAT is the best feeling in the world, when we’re both on our sides and his body is literally wrapped around mine. Nothing can touch me, and I am right where I belong. There I can talk about anything, painful or otherwise. I can hear anything from him and be just fine. Add him playing with my hair while in that position and it’s euphoria for me.

And so, mentally, I went there, content as can be. There was more to the meditation than that.. I vaguely remember hearing affirmations of this being good, and safe, and that I was with a very special person who cared for me. That this was how and where I was supposed to be. That I was doing a good job, and was a good submissive. That my Dom was so proud of me.

It lasted for maybe…five, ten minutes, max. When he pulled us out of it I was smiling from ear to ear. I have a roommate who knows when I’ve seen Sir because I have the “doofy Dom” smile on my face when I walk back in the house…and I’m sure that was there. I was giggly..happy, at peace, and felt like I had seen him hours ago instead of a week ago.

YAY new tool. It’s easy enough for me to get back into trance-state and back to that moment again. I may not be able to remember the whole ‘hypnosis’, but I grasped enough to be able to get that feeling back when I need it. It’s progress, definitely 🙂 And it’s nice not to feel as tightly wound as I normally do.

Yours pleasantly surprised,

-Rena