Altered states

He called me into his office in which there was a bed where he could do procedures. We talked  only a moment or two. We both knew what was going to happen, in general terms, and there was no need for elaboration. I never want to know the details. I certainly don't want to look. Perhaps he asked me if I had any questions. If he did, I must have said no.

He asked me to lie down on the bed. I relaxed as best I could. Thankfully, I was soon able to attune my senses to the jazz music that was now gently twinkling out from an unseen speaker. Clever man to distract me from my own mind! I had had this procedure done once some years ago by a woman with an indelicate sensibility and it had left scars on my mind such that I was very afraid. I had focused on my breathing all the way across town in the Christmas traffic, which helped, but didn't stop my nerves from being on edge.

Lying there on my back he put a blanket across my middle. It wasn't to keep me warm and nor was it to cover me. I was wearing a summer dress just to the knee in preparation of providing access to the area that required treatment. No, I think it was to hold me in a sense, the way when I have my legs up the wall at the end of a yoga class the teacher will put a folded blanket on my heels. Weight settles a person, holds them in place.

He was in control now. He adeptly took some sort of strap and tied it around my left thigh, tight. He then put one around the right thigh in exactly the same way. On reflection, it is perhaps remarkable that this steadied me. Heavens knows what I would feel, or say, or do in the hands of someone who I felt was incompetent but I happily handed over control to him, felt comfortable and in reliable hands.

This is what I think it must feel like to be controlled by a Dominant or Top who knows, or gives the impression that he knows, exactly what he is doing. It is a perfectly normal thing for me to do and to feel, to give that control of my body over to someone who emits confidence, that they know what they are doing.

At first, I barely felt the injections, not stingy at all. I felt them penetrate my skin definitely, but he was so gentle about it that I managed to relax, to the point of a false sense of security. As the needles filled with the solution went deeper I found that I had to either focus on the music such that I isolated an instrument, the trumpet usually, and focus specifically on each note played, or else I just followed my breath, noticing the deep inhalation and then the slow exhalation .

Only once did I emit a sort of grunt, just a tiny bit of noise, the smallest of complaints. Perhaps I was letting him know that I was close to the edge.

'Let me know if it stings,' he said.

I have a tendency, perhaps everyone has a tendency to try to predict the end of discomfort and there reached a point where I thought it might be over. Yet I noticed, even in the moment, that I wasn't invested in that ending. I wasn't preempting anything and I was correct not to do so. He had located somewhere else he wanted to inject and I was quietly pleased in fact that he wanted to be thorough. I knew he would decide when it was over and this was a settling thought.

When he had finished with an injected site he would pull a little on my skin, in the gentlest of ways, perhaps just as a Dominant or Top might apply pain, and then pleasure. I remember thinking that, or something like that. It wasn't a time for logical thought, just feelings.

When he was finished he undid the straps and then he wrapped my legs in bandages. Later that evening just before bed when I undid the bandages I found cotton balls with specks of blood attached with light tape, perhaps a dozen of them. I wondered when that had happened, when he smoothed over my skin after each injection or whether he had done it all at once at the end.

Silly, isn't it, that I was wide awake and yet I have no knowledge of that part of the procedure. But in times when someone has control over us, we go into another space. If there is a procedure being performed, or magic, a sadomasochistic experience, our chances of remembering everything are very low. We are in an altered state.

It's a quiet space, that space inside our heads when thoughts settle and sensations come to the fore; when we notice the beating of our hearts, the breeze on our skin, the delight of a string of notes of a musical instrument, or the sound of a voice steadying us.

For me, it will remain an eternally unanswered question; why on earth would somebody not want the experience of letting go.

Self-belief

I am becoming more comfortable now with this need to write. I'm understanding more about the need to wrestle with the themes and preoccupations of my life and to shape them into a story.

For many years, there  was no time to write. Four busy children and a fully occupied husband absorbed my time. As well, in those child rearing years I didn't have the strong desire to write that I do now. There was adequate succor for me bringing up the children. There was also plenty of worry. It can deplete desire to be creative in another medium.

It is true that my husband would say from time to time that I should sit down and write, but the impetus was not coming from within. I give full credit for my entry into a writing life to my psychologist, who I saw for about ten sessions a few years ago now.

'What would you really like to do?'
'Well, I'm not sure that I have any talent, but I'd like to do a writing course.'
'I don't doubt that you have talent. What is really stopping you?'

I don't remember what I said. I've been sitting here for a few minutes trying to reconstruct that conversation. I probably said that the children still took up a lot of time and I wasn't sure which course to pick. I no doubt gave her any excuse that I could come up with in the moment.

What I didn't say was that I had zero confidence; that the thought of actually doing what I really wanted to do filled me with fear and anxiety, because somewhere in the doing of the course it would be proven categorically that I had no talent.

I do remember her telling me to research writing courses and that next time we met I should let her know which course I had decided on and my reasons for choosing that particular course. She was tough under that sweet surface of hers!

I did do the research and I chose a course that would give me a smattering of choices for a possible writing life; subjects concerning journalism, writing critiques, writing film scripts, adapting one form of writing to another, starting a novel, and so on. I was hedging my bets; that if I was useless in one form of writing I might be better in another. Truthfully, I really wanted to go to the same institution that my youngest son attends now, but it is highly selective and I simply didn't think that I could ever be chosen. So, I downplayed my interest in it.

She was happy with my selection and explanation of my choice, though she did question me about the generalist, academic nature of my selection.  I think she would have been happier with a course that focused specifically on creative writing. It probably would have been a wiser choice, in retrospect, although the course I did expanded my mind and that's a good thing. She was happy enough until I said that I wouldn't enrol in the upcoming study period but rather wait until the new year which was in several months.

'Oh no you don't,' she said more forcefully than any other statement she had ever made, or would make to me. 'You're enrolling right now!' So, I did. I felt I had no choice and that was probably also a good thing.

I remember beginning the very first subject and there were twelve in all. I remember thinking, 'Well, I haven't a clue how to do this so I have nothing to lose.' I remember it being a huge accomplishment in my mind when I could find all the material and sites and discussion boards; you name it. Technologically, I was a dinosaur being drawn into a new era.

I remember having to choose another writing student as a writing buddy and I quickly formed the impression that one young man would be ideal for me. His style of writing and interests were entirely different to mine, but he was smart, witty, open and friendly. We got on very well given all the differences. I remember him having to formally critique a piece of writing of mine for the first time. I had made so many fundamental mistakes but he saw something fresh and honest in the writing and he's always been encouraging to me. I remember getting a Distinction for that subject and that gave me some slight optimism in my own ability to survive the course.

I remember taking on two subjects the next semester and at one point half way through the semester my nerve cracked. I wrote to the tutor of my 'Writing History' subject and said that I had taken on too much and perhaps should withdraw from her subject. She wrote back to say that was unnecessary since I was well on my way to a very high score. There it was again, a fundamental refusal to believe in myself, and to be genuinely shocked at the positive comments she made.

I remember getting back the result of one story I had submitted and the tutor noting in her comments   that she was sure that I would be published very soon.  I thought she was 'bullshitting'. I wanted to believe it. I just did not.

I remember writing to another writing student and sharing with her that I had no faith in my own ability at all. She wrote back and said, 'Sweetie, if you have no confidence in your own ability then we are all doomed. Everybody on that discussion board can see you have ability.' More bullshitting. It was kind, but it didn't mean anything to me.

Conversely, I took constructive criticism very personally. I didn't disagree with it. It just went straight to my soul as a wound. High Distinctions did little to deter me from my fundamental belief that I was winging it somehow; tricking them.

Towards the end of the course another writing student asked for stories for her online literary magazine. I sent her a story that I wrote immediately the course was over. It was a story for myself; relief from the academic rigours of the MA; kinky. She liked it and published it. But, guess what? I showed it to no-one and only mentioned it in passing to the family. She asked for more. I have yet to provide them.

Then, something shifted. I had read Elizabeth Strout's The Burgess Boys and loved it. I listened to her being interviewed on a podcast and something about her comments about her writing life resonated with me. Then, I starting reading Colm Toibin - his collection of short stories The Empty Family, and two of his novels, Brooklyn and Nora Webster. I listened to everything I could find where he was being interviewed. Then, I returned to Strout and did the same thing.

Ever so gradually it began to sink into my psyche; the sort of writer that I was, what it was possible to do, and how it was possible to do it; that I'd make many mistakes before I could produce something I was happy with; that I wasn't a normal person at all but a writer who must write; that the events and preoccupations of my life were enough to create many stories.

I am what is known as a spare writer, and a writer who needs to create characters with rich internal worlds, and that was acceptable. But, I needed to work on creating muscular sentences. I needed to sit down every day and write so that the writing would improve. I wasn't talentless, but nor could I be lazy. This is what I learned from those podcasts and Utube videos. God bless the Internet.

In the past few weeks my internal world has changed. The possibilities seem endless. I am beginning to talk to my family in a new way. My writing is my work I told them; not housework or cooking or arranging things. I'll do my share, I said, the lion's share, of course. But, I wanted them to pull in too. I want time to sit and hone my craft.

On Tuesday, I noticed myself slip. I'd exercised in the morning and the plan was to get to my Meditation group at noon. However, the state of the house overwhelmed me. In the end I wasn't going to be able to meditate in a group knowing that I had endless things to do at home. I stayed home and sorted so that I could write later in a clear and tidy space. In my defence I am not the sort of person that needs to clean the entire house in order to write, but nor can I alter my mind such that I can write surrounded by mess. It's not even an excuse. It's just the environment I need to be able to enter my sub-conscious and draw out what I need for the scenes.

I remembered this morning a lovely man who was a correspondent of mine for some time. He wasn't shy in sharing his opinions with me and he said that it was funny that I longed to travel and yet I loved to be at home. I finally figured this out. I do desperately want to write. It's a huge need. I look to the outside world for inspiration and energy, but I look to my internal world and my home as the place where creativity lives. This makes home very important to me.

I have a very long way to go, but there is a modicum of belief in myself right now. I have my fingers crossed that I can build on this small start.