Capture and release

I see now what happened and what happens when a girl isn't properly controlled and contained. Feeling unhinged, unmoored and just a tad unsafe, she struggles. After she struggles, she rebels. Oh sure, she wants what he has to offer but she rebels at first, regardless of whether or not she is now getting what she, in fact, wants.

Owner says that girls have a "punishment" mode. That is to way, if the owner hasn't been living up to expectations the girl sub-consciously makes him pay. (Naturally, I denied it.)

Owner also talked of fisherman. Well, we are in Tasmania, so I guess that's quite appropriate. He says that the deep sea fishermen have a policy of "capture and release". Conversely, if a girl is released (in her mind, that is) she won't necessarily be "captured" again without a struggle. She may want to be captured...can think of nothing more than that she would love to be captured...but the man has to work for it now. She won't come easily...

And, so it goes.

Anyways, I've been captured now. It was slow at the start..a bit of a rebellion and struggle... but ultimately this "fish" surrendered.

And, she's so glad to be back where she belongs: surrendered; satisfied; serene and safe.

(Why is that after lots of lovely orgasms girls are full of heady joy and owners look a bit worn out...?)

P.S. Owners feeling much better. We've been trialing a hunch of his as to a deficiency and its working wonderfully well.)

A Simple Life

Sunday morning. Quiet. Happy.

Listening to the beautiful sounds of Cary Lewincamp play his mesmerizing seven string guitar from his Home (www.cary.com.au) CD, a gift from my owner, purchased yesterday from Cary and his lovely wife at the Salamanca Market; a wonderful craft and fresh food market where we spent several lovely hours yesterday.

Instantly, I felt their love; their connection; their love of home and family; of music and joy.

 A simple life; a very good life here.

Something draws me to this life. Just adore it here.

Back to the dungeon

I'm back in the dungeon down in Tasmania and having a lovely time. It's cold here but I love much about the season of winter and as I sit here on the couch in our living room with the morning sun streaming through the window, I am completely serene.

My husband is asleep. We'd turned on the heat overnight but it turned out to be too toasty for us and dehydration had him up several times in the middle of the night. So, I've had a cup of black coffee and a piece of our sourdough break stick with a little real butter and homemade raspberry jam. We bought it at one of the best bakeries I've ever been to, just down the road.

One of the best things about this apartment is the location. A stone's throw from us is this sensational bakery, a little old-fashioned milk bar for (overpriced) supplies, a fantastic Italian restaurant (where we ate last night) and the Salamanca Market, where we will go on Saturday morning. It's a wonderfully quaint area, an absolute throw-back in time and I just adore it here. In my old age, I think I'll move here and spend the summers in the cooler environment. At least, that's a little dream I have.

One of the lovely things about practicing 'awareness' is that if you slow down enough to enjoy the moments of your life, little moments really do have great significance. I was blissfully aware of the raspberry jam waking up my taste buds, of the pleasure of the morning sun streaming through the window, of the rejuvenating quality of the coffee, and the delightful silence as I sit here noticing my acrylic nails tapping away at the keys.  The slower pace suits me very, very well and there's nothing more I want at this very moment.

I love the fact that I have with me just a few changes of clothes. I love my little wardrobe and how everything I have brought has a purpose. I've brought the gorgeous cashmere black wrap that my husband bought me in Tuscany last year and I have the lovely fine wool cardigan he bought me a few days ago for our anniversary (We had a blast choosing some winter clothing for one another the day before we left for Tasmania and we've bought those items with us). I love living this small, contained (yet refined) little life. I love my little dungeon so much!

Yesterday, we had a nap after we'd settled in and after that, he played with me. One of the big disadvantages of not playing with a girl regularly (especially a girl like me who can feel her oats if she's not reminded of her place for a time) is that she gets out of practice. He was spanking away when I said,

"I'm not really into pain any more..."

"I don't care what you want. You need the pain."

And, he proceeded on. Until this point, I hadn't experienced the turn-on effect. If he'd listened to me and stopped, it would have been an unpleasant outcome. I'd have been miserable. But, the fact that he insisted he do as he chose...that was the turn-on. Now, I didn't tell him that. But, they're the facts. I feel a great deal more comfortable in my life when I know my place; when he asserts himself.

Dinner last night was delicious; Veal Pizzaiola and a bottle of 48 degrees South Pinot Noir, 2008. When we were sharing a piece of cheesecake (I got two bites!) the waitress asked us what we planned to do tomorrow and I told her we were going to MONA. She told me that David Walsh (the philanthropist who set up MONA as his own private art gallery for the public) often comes into the restaurant; that he's a famous gambler; autistic with a strong bent for numbers. Many of his exhibitions are confronting and thought-provoking and I'm looking forward to it immensely.

Anyways, I'm being good; being kept in my place and life is sweet.

I want to be the doll

This morning I awoke and put on my exercise clothes. It had been a rough weekend with exam and assignment writing tension pervading the household. (There are five students in this house right now!) I needed to go exercise and get some tension released. I had worked it out that if I took one son to his exam I could go to Pilates class and be back to pick him up for more exam preparation at home. The thought made me happy.

I got to my desk to find a note from another son. "Mum, could you please wake me up at 8.30 am for my exam." Oh, poo! No exercise class for me, because the note meant that I'd also be driving him to the examination place.

As we prepared for the day ahead, the three of us, my husband wandered into the kitchen looking for pain killers and it was clear he was in pain. I swear that this is some form of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but then I don't get a vote.

I decided that after I dropped them both off, I would write quickly first here and then race the dogs to the park. I'd make them run behind me and that way I'd still get my exercise. Where there is a will, there is a way!

I was parking the car in the garage after the second run to examinations when I thought to myself,

"I want to go back. I want to go back to being a doll."

I came upstairs and searched in this journal and I read this entry about the doll.

I want that! I remember that insanely gorgous, divinely wonderful harmonious and peaceful, stress-free state of mind, AND I WANT THAT.

Captivity

I can't trace exactly where I began a keen interest in living life in a contained way. My family ran a business and we lived on the property. This meant that 'home life' wasn't like the family life that most children experience. I suspect the roots of my interest lie somewhere in there.

When I met my husband I met Uncle Jack and that's where I learned about his time in Changi. I remember paying great interest to any information I could gather about his imprisonment through the war. Technically, he should have been killed because he was a bit outspoken back then and on at least one occasion a fellow prisoner had to save him from imminent death because he was on the cusp of  speaking back to a Japanese official.

What I was most impressed about was that he had the mental strength to endure the ordeal. Two years ago, we went to visit his wife (Jack was in a nursing home by then but his wife was still visiting him every second day and bringing him home - a Herculean feat for her too) and she gave my youngest son a copy of the speech that Jack had given, detailing his capture. Finally, we had the details because Jack wasn't one to sit us around and tell us things about his war experience. He'd rather play host to us and fill us with his well stocked liquor cabinet while his darling wife filled us with roast lamb and rice pudding for dessert.

I do recall a story about him being held in a very small space; a coffin, of sorts. And, I remember seeing this sort of captivity in a Western movie as well. I just couldn't imagine this sort of extreme experience. I didn't understand how someone could survive it.

Not so long after my last son was born, I was experiencing lots of pain in my lower back. One day it got so painful that I simply walked into the chiropractic office that I often passed in the car and asked if they could help me. Apparently, there was some arthritis sitting there at the base of my spine and they recommended Pilates to stretch me out and strengthen my core muscles to keep the lower back strong.

A friend saw me having a coffee up at the shops one day near to the Club we belong to and she asked me to sign a petition to have Pilates classes there. I happily signed, the classes began and I have been going there ever since, at least once a week in term time.

I was very interested to learn that Pilates was begun, it seems, by a person who was confined; imprisoned was the story I heard. He devised exercises he could do in a very small space to keep himself fit. There is something about exercising on a mat that really speaks to me. In the smallest possible space, I can work my whole body. Then, when the class is over, I can lie on the mat and listen to the soothing music that is played to us and let my mind drift away to nothingness. I just adore that time.

This is a time when it is not at all uncommon for me to imagine that 'doll' state. I imagine that all the 'holes' are plugged and that my mind is quite empty. It is a rather sexually oriented experience for me because it takes me to a sense of having my body used at the same time as I have a feeling of being at great peace. I blend the two experiences/thoughts into one. Sex = peace.

This is my mindset. In my earlier life, I'm not sure that I equated sex with peace. I do know that an intense sexual experience made me exuberantly happy with an ecstatic feeling of being alive. It is only in recent years that I have equated sex with a deep peace.

I know my husband would dearly love for me to take more responsibility for initiating sex. God knows I have tried but my very natural disposition is to be taken; to be captured. When I am taken and plundered, I process that as a deep peace. I sink down; bunker down. Maybe that relates to my thoughts all my life about containment. Maybe, my mentor hypnotized me over the chat box to believe these things. It is more likely, I suspect, that he brought out thoughts that were already there and that's why I took them like a duck to water.

My body looks to be used. My mind is always considering ways to live a small but wondrous life. Containment is my preoccupation.

Abeyance

I have always had the desire with this web journal to be entirely honest. If I want to write fiction I can write myself a story. Here, what I write is what I feel, experience and live. This code of mine is not always a popular choice, I suspect, because when things aren't in 'tip top' shape in my life that may not make for great reading for the people that choose to read here. However, this is not a popularity contest and the reason why I write here is most often to express myself in a way that I can't do anywhere else.

Yet, I feel a need to apologize on occasion for the content of the journal. I'm aware it has a readership and that my woes aren't really what you come here to read. On the other hand, Rollymo made the comment not so long ago that he feels that the attraction for him was that I suffer, somewhat. Anyways, you can't please them all all the time, as they say, and I don't even pretend to try.

It has reached a point where I feel obliged to apologize somewhat for the change of direction in the writing. I extended the subject matter some time ago to include not just D/s and power exchange matters but also living well and with peace and calm. I did that because it evolved that the full power exchange arrangement I was attempting to live went that way.

It was and is, in my mind, very much about satisfying and deeply connecting sex. However, through the course of my online mentoring, issues related to finding peace and living calmly and with purpose came up as part and parcel of living more like a 'doll'. I embraced those notions and extended them to include practices that I find very comforting and sustaining on a daily basis.

Pilates, yoga, meditation, mindfulness, breathing through anxiety, finding my own peace, being still and silent are all practices and remedies I use routinely to help me function well. I still take a good deal of care about my appearance and I still very much prefer to wear a dress or a skirt. I still tend to my acrylic nails every two weeks. I try hard to mind my words and my manners. All of this is in place and fulfills and comforts me.

Life with my husband is, regrettably, at this juncture, not all that I would wish it to be. I've not shied away from writing that I asked him to spank me and later, to enter into a full D/s relationship. It wasn't his idea and he would never have brought this to the table.

Sure, he has always wanted to do things his way. He's quite conservative and even old-fashioned, born in an era when women did the inside work and men did the outside work; when men looked after the finances and women looked after the children. More than that, he has some personality characteristics that make it important for him to have things done in his own inimitable style and according to his own personally defined sense of things being done properly and perfectly.

However, dominating a woman physically wasn't something that he sought, desired or thought proper. This was my desire, my need, my desperate life time longing.

My husband needs to live his life in a way that works for him. He works for himself because that suits him best. He works both day and night because he has a strong tendency to define his life through his work. He is nocturnal. This means that although he put in a full day's work he also works through the night. Lately, this has intensified. He's working in overseas markets and he needs to be up at odd times.

Also, he has not been really well for quite some time and this ill health has intensified lately. His body has been in pain and wondering if it might be the lack of sleep that is making matters so much worse, I have quietly got up each morning and left him to sleep as long as he can. This means that we rarely are awake in the bed at the same time.

It is a woman's job to comfort her sick man. I know this intellectually and my heart tells me this is the right thing to do. However, a woman is intuitively restless when her man is unwell. Her 'provider' and 'protector' is not functioning and this makes her unsettled. This is a primal instinct. There isn't a great deal we can do about it. We can make the soup and say comforting things but inside we just aren't at all happy.

For me, it's one thing to not have those heady moments of feeling I have submitted to all sorts of dastardly deeds, it's quite another to not have intimacy, sex, in my life. Sex once a week has seemed lean to me. Sex once a month feels like a mini-death and I can't really get my head around celibacy at all. I'm just not cut out for this sort of life.

I'm not suggesting that I am in the position of some permanent demise. I anticipate there is a remedy to this ill-health, although I am not at all sure from where or when it will come. I'm surprised and saddened at the minimal efforts that have been made to provide some sustenance for me in any form. He could tie my wrists, or put a gag in my mouth at night; he could do little things requiring little effort or strain. Yet, he rarely has done so. He's almost completely withdrawn to his life of work. He's clearly in a lot of physical pain and emotional turmoil.

I asked him recently if he ever read my journal and he said that he wasn't aware that I was still writing here. That said it all, in my mind. His mind is so clearly filled with worry and distress and his body so full of pain that he hasn't got the ability to address our relationship at this time. Oh, we still have a cuddle on the couch. He still sometimes rubs my back in the wee hours of the night when he comes to bed. He had me wear an anal plug when we went to the Market a few days ago which was lovely. We are still the best of friends. We still talk and interact. We both hang in there. But, it isn't the same. It is a fraction of the relationship it was a few years ago.

I read about his condition. I have tried to get him to take a lack of sleep seriously. I have identified that he may be responding to tea and in the past few days he has had a lot less pain. I think we may be onto something here.

I am trying to stay positive. I get on my with life. I still have a household of people to care for. There's still a lot of cooking and caring going on. I meditate. I assure myself  that I have strength in reserve; that I have the tools I need to get through this period of my life. I do my academic study. I am mindful of dark thoughts and I know to challenge them and to move on. But, I am lonely. This is not something I can share with anyone but with myself (and you) in this journal.

I haven't much to report in the way of wonderful D/s experiences right now. There really isn't much reason to come here at all and I apologize about that. There have been much better days but this too shall pass.

Controlling the control

We all want some control. That really is the truth. We all want to feel in control of our lives. Sure, some people get a lovely sense of peace and fulfillment when they cede control to another person but the desire for some control is within us all.

"I feel out of control," we say. Or, "things are getting out of control." Or, someone may say to us, "Get control of yourself."

We are always trying to control someone; ourselves; our worry; the outcome; the future; our responses; the words that come out of our mouths. So much control!

For the past year, it is the need for control that my youngest son has been trying to control. The advances this year have been huge. Without any therapy at all this year for his OCD, he has managed this first half of the year incredibly well. There have been no panic attacks; no sense of fear about the school year. He signed up for the usual bevy of extra-curricula activities and whilst it put pressure on his time, he didn't complain and just got on with living his extraordinarily busy life.

Things got a little out of control yesterday. The plan was to study for the first two exams today but his perfectionism took over in terms of his art folio and he put a heap of time into that. At dinner time, he mentioned that he hadn't gathered quotes for the literature question and that's when his mother went into overdrive bringing herself up to speed on a book she had never read. By bed time, I felt I had some understanding of the novel and by morning I was ready to discuss and select key quotes to use.

We had a good conversation and it was clear he knew the story well and was empathic with the main character and his rather thwarted coming of age. Still thinking and acting rather like an adolescent at the age of 36 it was time for Rob to grow up and by the end of the story we do see some major progress. He's stopped blaming everyone else for his own behavior. He's aware that fear has driven him to make the choices he's made and the choices he hasn't made. He feels less lonely, now aware that it is not only he that has insecurities. He understands that he has to make choices; that it is time to make a commitment; to express his love; to choose a career. He really has come a long way! He's no longer the egocentric character we met early in the book; a man who thinks of everyone else as a bit player his own life. Always likable, he is now also responsible. He's been launched; finally!

But, as we got towards the time to leave for the exam, it was clear my son's feelings of being out of control had set in. He went to the bathroom, as out of control people do. When he returned, I asked if he felt tense. Yes, he did, he said.

"Listen to your body. Where do you feel tense?' (I took a guess) In your chest?"

He nodded.

So, let's get control of your breathing. Breathe through your nose and take a big, deep breath. And, when you body is ready, let it go. Keep doing that."

A minute later...

"Feel better?"

He nodded.

"You are in control of those feelings of distress. You can always settle yourself just by stopping to settle your breathing and slow it down. Now, let's take care of your shoulders and neck. Do some circles and just let the tension go."

Then...

"Why don't you lie down on the floor and I'll rub your back. Feel this lower part of the spine. That's where the tension builds. I'm rubbing that and releasing the tension. Feel better?

He nodded.

We gathered things: dictionary, pens, tissues, water, the letter giving him permission to sit up front in the huge hall; his watch. I told him I'd be down at the car...

He came down and I was waiting just outside the car.

"Would you like a hug?"

"I'd love a hug."

We hugged. As we hugged, I said softly, "You are in control. You know this work and you are a good writer. There is nothing to fear."

I drove and he was quiet. When we got to our destination, I gave him another hug and told him, "Just remember, you are in control. You can settle yourself any time you want. Enjoy the experience. Settle into it; just let it flow out of you."

"Thanks for helping me, Mum."

"My pleasure."

He's an incredibly empathic soul and it is easy to show empathy towards him; a very evolved and deeply loving young man.

And so, the person who wishes nothing more than to give up as much control as she possibly can tries to teach her son that he is always in control because to achieve we do need to be in control of our thoughts, our feelings and our reactions to stress. A perfectionist will always be a perfectionist. I see my son's nature and inclinations in the way he takes on a character in a play or the way he wants to impart his vision of the world in a photograph. Near enough is not good enough for him and that sort of thinking does lead to some stress. I think you have to make the stress and the perfectionism work for you. You can't ask a perfectionist to stop being a perfectionist but you can show him or her how to control the stress itself; how not to fear; how to accept that everyone doesn't think like you; how to deal with failures.

It's not an easy road to walk - being a perfectionist; wanting to feel in control; trying to cede control and let what happens, happens. I tend to think that if I go the extra mile, it will make a difference. Maybe this won't make sense, but I try to control outcomes but in a very controlled way. That is, I try not to become emotionally invested in that but rather act pragmatically; aware that I can help but the outcome is the outcome. I can't control everything.

P.S. I wrote this to try to control my nervousness...