The end of the first decade

It's been over 10 years since I began this online journal. Thinking back, I think I was just so happy to be living in an authentic way - expressing overtly what I had held in for so long - that it was pure delight to share the journey with any potential reader.

These days, it's rare that I suddenly am motivated to share my thoughts in this way, but I am still here; still happy to have the journal in an online forum for any like minded soul who happens to come across it.

Over a ten year span none of us is the same person. I am certainly not that giddy person I was at the outset ten years ago. Age tends to mellow most of us and once we get into our 60s there is a tendency for most of us to take the long term view. We know a few things by then. We've started to identify patterns in ourselves, in others, in our long term relationships, in the world at large. If inclined towards the positive, we are happy for each new day. We delight in a bunch of roses, a grand baby's smile, a good night sleep.

Personally, it's been a ten year journey more intense than I had bargained for, yet one that I had no alternative but to pursue. Good times led to confronting times. I started to see things, to feel things, and I had to understand.

I have done the most enormous amount of reading. Until several years ago, I was a keen literature buff, but now I can barely read a novel a month. I simply had to get to the bottom of behaviors and feelings and to work out what had become so confusing for me. I have a small library of psychology and spiritual books now, all very well read.

There were times along the way when I felt I may have no choice but to exit from the lives of a person, or two. I was changing, growing, learning. Their presence in my life, triggering in me intensely difficult feelings, seemed untenable.

But, I am a fighter, not a quitter, not to mention that these same folk, I loved. So, I went on, trying to understand them, what it was they were inducing in me; why the Universe had transpired to put us together; why the Universe had insisted I walk this incredibly painful path.

I would have made a bad Nun, but I am drawn to a contemplative life. There is no doubt about that. It began when I was very young and I got something out of being in a Church; something more than the rest of my life offered me. So it went all my life and yet the material world was what was there before me. Family life kept me busy and it was not until the children were grown up that I had a chance to explore my sense of the spiritual; something deeper.

In these ways, psychology and the spiritual merged for me. I learned about abuse - more emotional abuse than physical - and what that does to a child's mind. I learned how to be whole in myself, how to carve out boundaries, to self-love and to self-soothe. I learned to practice unconditional love at the same time as I held onto some private hopes that I'd see progress in others too. It's not an expectation but rather just a little bit of hope; a little bit of swaying on my part towards good outcomes.

The biggest change of all? The past is not important nor is tomorrow nearly as interesting to me as it once was. It's this moment that fascinates me; the breath, the sensations, the possibility that the thoughts that wander in and out of my mind will be intriguing to me but in no way weigh me down.

I am aware of unwanted thoughts - an angry or resentful thought, a sense of disappointment or frustration - at the same time I am observing having the thought. It passes. I rarely get stuck on the thought. The thought passes and I return to a sense of quiet contemplation.

When life it too busy for my sensibilities, and by that I mean too busy to effectively direct my attention as I like, I suffer. I once thought I'd like to have a writer's life but all those thoughts demanding the attention of going down onto the page would exhaust me.

Instead, I write, sort of, meditative scripts that I can share with others, though so far the best scripts are those that come up quite naturally; a written script perhaps but then put aside. I speak of space, of connectedness, of presence, the present moment, the senses, of letting go of identities and roles; of awareness, an open heart.

When living in the present moment, as I aspire to do, one notices most of the little flaws; the little impatiences and frustrations. One aspires to do and to be better without making it a big time ME project these days. We're not robots. We're not perfect. I don't beat myself up about what I notice but I do note it and hope I do better.

I've explored kinkiness and mental illness. Where an excessive need for control is found - either giving to or taking from - so too is often some level of mental illness. Coming to know that, I needed to explore my own damaged being and to heal.

Well now, completely at peace with my level of mental health - my level of self-love, my boundaries, my functioning and state of mind - kinkiness prevails. It is perfectly possible to have both. I am certain of this.

I love to experience my submissive soul - to be held down, to be spanked, to have to speak certain words of reverence; to be turned on by all of it. I still revel in it, whenever it comes my way.

In this way, I enter into the next ten years of this journal hopeful for a long life. I've got the living of this life, my life, by the throat now. I am happy and content; not without joy, not at all.

Objectification, again

There's a lot of material on this blog about objectification and much of it is positive. It's positive because in so many of my experiences where I am a 'doll' or a 'bimbo' or an 'object' or just 'it', it is so incredibly freeing. I love having my mind vacated and my body responds so enthusiastically to that sort of play.

For quite some time, many times, there was a feeling of being deeply connected to another person, a wonderful feeling of being intertwined in the play, because of the play. Trust is such an integral part of the play where objectification is involved and if the trust is there, that's very connecting, and soul sharing.

If my body wasn't responding to the play, just the mind, though I don't think that's technically possible, it would almost be enough. At its best, the sense of joy that floods the mind is its own reward. The facts are that the play was/is deeply arousing to the body, and much of the 'feel good' sensations come from that too. It's such a mind/body experience that it is hard to separate them into categories.

To be clear, for me it's about the Top wanting me to have that connecting and pleasurable experience as much as he wants to feel the sexual turn on and the connection himself. I operated on this understanding of the play for some time, in an intuitive sense, without spelling it out, even for myself.

I used to wonder a long time ago if I had a 'slave' soul. But, I don't. I don't have a slave soul, not at all. I've noticed for some time now, though I didn't have the words I have today to express the awareness, that if I am in fact treated like an object or a fuck toy, and it becomes very clear to me that my feelings and my pleasure have nothing to do with the event, I am thrown into a pit of despair that I don't crawl out of for some time.

Oh, I can camouflage those feelings of emptiness and disconnection. I can go about my life such that you won't notice much, or any, difference in my words, my tone, my behavior or my pleasure in life. I've become so able to live in the moment, to categorize the confusion and upset in a particular place where the day is hardly effected and the relationship is not affected in a veneer sense. Even if the sex wasn't right for me, harmful to me, I can find a sense of gratitude in many other moments in my life.

However, I become skittish, you see, about wanting to interact in a sexual way any time soon. It's such a dark place I go internally when I feel that I have been used as an object purely for the other's gratification, or pleasure or sense of power, or whatever the heck it is that motivates this behavior, that I will just about walk over broken glass to avoid any such similar interaction. It absolutely does not work for me if I don't feel a sense of generosity.

It is said that those with narcissistic behaviors aren't so good at thinking about the 'we' in sex; that they can view their partners as objects that satisfy their needs. In fact, rather than more sex bringing the two partners together in the case of sex with a narcissistic bent, it can cause further separation. When I read this research finding, it made complete sense to me.

What I think is important if the kink tends towards objectification play is that both people understand what lies behind the motivation for such play. Kink is kink and person specific, but in kinky play the motivation should be for greater connection for both players. If it isn't achieving that outcome, then it's just not working as it should. No kinky play is probably a much better outcome than doing it in a way where one partner causes emotional harm and disconnection. Whether that makes sense to a person who does not see sex in the 'we' sense, is the debatable question.

I want to add that I am not just talking about kinky play here. Any lover who is inclined to take his pleasure rather often without concern for the partner's feelings and body state will cause disconnection in the partnership. Those who are divorced may well be able to speak to this.

Coming to conscious awareness

As time goes by, and if you are even mildly reflective, patterns emerge in your life. Questions rise up. You can find yourself requiring answers.

It can take decades potentially for consciousness of a pattern to occur. I think little niggles and doubts and concerns can be present but we are ingenious in the way we repeatedly squash them down.

One day, we find that it is all starting to make some sense. We have enough pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to start to see a picture. It's at this time that we might furiously look around for the last missing pieces. That's what I did.

Once one piece emerged and then another I became indefatigable in my attempts for a complete picture. My insistence paid off. I have a full picture and I'm in the healing and moving on process.

This is not to say that I don't make errors still because when you are around certain personality types they have a way of being triggered such they can act their most wounded selves at a moment's notice. There is no telling what might set them off, how they might hear and interpret your (innocent) words.

Someone said to me recently that they admired the fact that I had a irrepressible sense of humor about the circumstances of my life.

I don't ever think I've lost that sense that even the most damaged and difficult of people are multi-dimensional people. Nobody wants to be seen as a condition, or a victim, and those I have known and loved, as flawed as their behavior might be, are all good people at their core. Nobody asks for parents who are incapable of parenting in a good-enough fashion, or for childhood experiences which cut across the sense of self.

It might be excruciatingly difficult for them to overcome what has happened to them, the changes in the brain, probably impossible, but they have all had good and kind qualities. I never forget this. Never.

So long as I can be insulated from the toxicity through methods of self-love, not relying on  or expecting reciprocity, then I can hold onto feelings of unconditional love for them. I can't have the sort of relationship I'd ideally love to have with them, but I don't stop thinking of them with great affection.

When children comes into the world they expect, demand, that their primary caregivers unconditionally love them. That's their right as human defenseless babies with hard wired personalities.

Alas, optimal parenting isn't necessarily available to some people and the child is unable to construct an integrated self.  The parent(s) liked some qualities - abilities in the classroom or on the sporting field perhaps - but they despised  the vulnerabilities and certain expressed feelings; aspects of the children's personality that didn't serve their parents well.

Vulnerable feelings that were expressed by such children, but unwanted by parents who insisted that the child esteem them, created a false self. It's this false self that is protected with every fiber of some people's being throughout their lives. It's this false sense that demands that anyone that comes close to breaking into this false self must be torn apart and chewed up.

It seems to be the case that I was born with a remarkable degree of maternal love. It's not just children but adults too. I see into the damaged soul of some adults and I see a child that needs love. I seek to heal. It's this 'weakness' of mine that can, and has, caused me so much grief.

Now that I know exactly what I am dealing with I am less and less hurt every day by any arrows thrown in my direction. I've an acute sense of what is indeed going on, and I side step rather than duck these days. I do what I can where I can.

However, I no longer believe in miracles, or that I have love enough to offer such that I can save every situation. I'm no saint, can't walk on water; can't change what happened way back when. I do my best.  I'm satisfied with that now.