Abandonment, again

When my youngest son came home from school I suggested we watch Good Will Hunting together. He'd been asked to be Will in a drama scene recently and was really curious about the character and the film. I had bought it years ago and so down we sat to watch this fabulous movie.

In my previous post, Rollymo mentioned abandonment in his comment and it is a theme that I play around with a bit because I know that I'm inclined to feel abandoned at times. Possibly, that's my dramatic nature at work.

Of course, Will suffers from fear of abandonment, He's an orphan and his foster father was a mean, cruel and violent man. Sean Macguire (Robin Williams) who plays his therapist may not be as brilliant as Will but he knows how to get around Will and we learn through him that Will rejects people before they reject him. He fears more abandonment in his life.

"It's not your fault."

"I know."

"It's not your fault."

"I know."

"It's not your fault."

"I know."

"It's not your fault."

"Don't fuck with me Sean, not you."

(as Sean walks, inch by inch, closer and closer to Will)

"It's not your fault."

And, Will, hearing these words and finally registering them, collapses into his arms and sobs.

(I've not lost sight of the fact Rollymo, that when I felt abandoned you said exactly those words to me!)

Sean teaches Will to trust him and he teaches Will to trust himself. He needs to do what is right for him. Chuckie, his best friend,  (Ben Afflick) gives him permission to get on with his life when he tells him to go and live the life he was meant to live, "for me". They'd all give their right arm to have Will's mind and it would be insulting them if he didn't go and do that, he says.

Of course, what Will needs more than anything is love and we're completely satisfied when we learn that he had to go "see about a girl".  We feel certain that Skylar (Minnie Driver) is able to give him the unconditional love he needs to thrive.

At the final session with Sean, Will hugs Sean and says "Thank you" and Sean replies, "Thank you". They have healed one another.  The circle is closed. We, as an audience are deeply satisfied on every level; an absolutely brilliant script there.

The issue of abandonment is not really my issue but our issue. We all, at various stages of life, can feel abandoned. and it can make us closed to potential opportunities. Perhaps it is best, we think, if we walk away first to avoid the pain of being abandoned, or we just don't make the connection in the first place and thus we can be assured of not being rejected or abandoned again.  It's scary, I know this, but we must forge connections. It is what human beings are designed to do.

I'm not entirely sure that we have endless opportunities to connect with other people.  Real connections are relatively rare but when they do occur they must be nurtured; one can afford to take the risk of pushing forward and getting closer because nothing sustains the spirit quite like recognition of human frailty and efforts made to reach out. 

Service

A few weeks back I was making dinner. I think I was waiting for the vegetables to finish roasting, or some such process as that and I decided to turn on the television and see if I could find something interesting for a few minutes. My attention was immediately grabbed by a old nun. I had entered the documentary at the moment they were explaining that this nun was once a famous Hollywood actress. She was a gorgeously feminine and refined young woman and there was footage of her with her beau; a man who was engaged to her and very, very much in love with her, as she was with him. They looked stunning together.

Shortly before their wedding he noticed a change in her demeanor and asked her what was wrong. It was at that point that she revealed that she couldn't let go of the idea in her head to join a group of nuns; that whilst she loved him she felt a burning need to serve God.

He was devastated and for a time they were estranged. However, they returned to one another. To this day, I think some forty years or more later, she is still a nun; in fact, she is the head nun (sorry, I'm sure I am using inaccurate words) and he still visits her regularly. He never married and he never found another woman to love the way he loved her, and so he returns to her on a regular basis to visit.

I happened to have been viewing towards the end of the documentary and I saw them embrace and say goodbye to one another on this particular day. He walked away from her as he must have done endless times before and for a brief moment sadness was registered on her face, but then she seemed to go inward again, cross herself and turn towards the big cross on the table in front of her;  to her service towards God. Her equilibrium was restored. She was serene.

A few minutes before this scene, a young nun came to see her to explain that she was still having moments of struggle. The struggle was apparent in the words she chose and in her evident sense of agitation. The old Nun assured her that all was in order; that she had made so much progress. She was doing well.

It all moved me deeply. These people deeply touched my soul.

Spanked for procrastination

The day started out well. The youngest lad walked off to school happily and I made for the gym and had a good workout. I didn't stop for tea because the plan was to go straight home to read my lecture and do my work. All good, so far.

I got home and made my owner and myself a poached egg on toast; had a little chat about various points of interest and then sat down to do my work. Simple. On track.

This is the danger moment. Perhaps if I were just to check the gmail...Ah yes, a comment. Best reply to that; it's only polite.

Then, perhaps just a quick look at a pikki or two....Oh, that one's nice...and I could post it for all those deviants who come to my blog to look for smut. No harm in sharing...

So, I've done that now and it really is time that I went about my work, or something like what happened to this girl might happen to me. Wouldn't it be fun if Masters still spanked girls who procrastinate like in the good ole days...

Okay. Okay. I'm going to do my work.

Nearly spanked with a hairbrush

Last night, I had a dream about getting a spanking. This is a very rare event. Unlike Abel who has regular dreams about giving spankings, I don't, alas, dream about getting a spanking except on very rare nights.

I was living with another family. There was a dream before that dream where I was with a boy, a disabled boy who I think belonged to this family. I was very close to him and putting two and two together, somehow or other I was a part of their family. Maybe, they'd adopted me or maybe I was an exchange student. I really don't know.

Anyways, clearly I'd done something naughty and the father was not at all happy with me. I seemed to know that I was going to get a spanking. I was waiting in the living room area of their house and I felt a sense of expectation about it. Maybe, I should have had a sense of foreboding about it but I don't recall that; just a knowledge that at any time he could call me for my punishment. I was completely accepting although I had no idea what a spanking would be like. I am clear on that. I felt curious as much as I felt worried. I was fairly certain it was going to hurt quite a bit. I figured that if someone was going to punish you by putting you over their knee, they were going to make sure it was memorable and motivated a person to never do that thing again. But, I didn't know for sure.

He came into the room and he said to me, "Let's get this over with. Into my study."

I got up immediately and walked into the study. I was ready to do exactly as told but at that moment he remembered that he'd left the hair brush in another part of the house. I was disappointed that we couldn't get on with the discipline. I had this sense that punishment was a good thing because once I got what I deserved I'd be able to be forgiven and to move on with a clean slate. I distinctly remember wanting that spanking so that I could be punished and be done with the sense that I was "in trouble" and in the bad books.  There would be no pleading for leniency from me. I wanted that hiding.

And, then...the dream ended. I never did get my spanking. I never did get a chance for the father to tell me that I had been forgiven and that he expected me from now on to obey his rules and that he felt sure that I was a good girl who simply needed to be reminded that it was my place to do as I was told.

I am still awfully disappointed about it. I can't understand at all why my subconscious would derail me in this way and not allow me the correction I so sorely needed. And, it's not the first time I've been taken up to the moment of a good thrashing in my dreams only to be let off the hook by waking up. It's absolutely not fair!

You're submissive?!

I strongly encourage you to nurture your very old friendships. Knowing someone for decades is a lovely, lovely friendship to have in your life. Every week or perhaps a fortnight, my oldest friend and I go walking the dogs and after that we have a bite of lunch in the open air. All the while, we chat. We've been good friends for over fifty years now and in all those years we've never had a fight.

So we were walking back to our cars this week when I asked her what she was reading at the moment. She mentioned an autobiography she'd finished and then she mentioned that she read, for free, the first 90 pages of 50 Shades of Grey.

What a load of rubbish that was, she said. The writing was dreadful and there was this simple, naive character who was being led up the back lane by this older perverted man...

"Oh really?"

"Yes,  and when a dominatrix turned up well I said to myself, this is definitely not for me."

"A dominatrix?"

I was laughing now.

"Well, for God's sake, what sort of a stupid, young girl is going to get hooked up with a man wanting to do those things to her?"

Now I was laughing very hard.

"But, all jokes aside, Ves, it's not a good role model for young women to be reading this stuff..."

"But, it's not just young woman reading it, it's middle aged women."

"Well, I can't understand it at all. All this submissive bullshit..."

I thought about her on the way home, and again later in the day. She's an earthy girl. She lost her virginity earlier than me. She was more buxom and more comfortable around boys than I was as a girl. As a woman, she's been constant and reliable. She brought up her children with devotion and she's been a very steady wife, empathic towards her husband's moods and needs, if not a tad frustrated. But, who hasn't been frustrated at times?

She's been very willing to play the game; very happy to hang onto her husband's shirt tails and play her role in the marriage but it's very true that she has not been submissive to him. She's insisted at times on them doing things and she's got her way. As she says, she has influence over him and he does listen to her. I've seen him pat her tail. He's quite fond of doing that and she knows not to cross him. They've had a few real rows and the odd one has really upset her. She likes peace and constancy. I think she's had a happy life because she has a positive state of mind. She's short of confidence which keeps her life relatively unchallenged but she's come to enjoy that there are few challenges. She's not frustrated by that as I was for a time.

Our natures were set from very early ages. She challenged the authority of school mistresses and masters. I eventually pulled her aside and told her she needed to play the game, graduate and move on. She took that advice and she credits me for it often. She was a rough and tumble gal as a child, whilst I was the ballerina and pianist and book worm. We could not have been more different. Whilst she was out playing hockey I was alone with my thoughts, perverted even way back then, my constant fear being that my mind could be read.

If she knew me as I am she'd be pretty devastated, I think. How could Ves, that quiet but confident, studious and innocent girl want to be submissive?! She had the brains to be what she wanted to be, so why want to be submissive; to be told what to do; to be contained and controlled?!

I wouldn't know where to begin to explain my thinking, quite honestly, after 50 years... I imagine that all I could really say to her would be that in my moments of submission I've had some of the best experiences of my life. She would not understand that at all. I can only hope that it would not derail the longest and most enduring friendship of my life.

Cumpelled

The very good and kind folk at my university had no issue whatsoever with my idea to research and write a chapter of a novel regarding a couple in a power exchange relationship. I've loved doing that but at the same time it meant so much to me to get the characters and the essence of their relationship right that I have really labored over the tone. I really, really wanted to have my vanilla reader (and I am pretty confident she is that) be convinced that this was a loving relationship between two people with particular needs. Most importantly I wanted her to read them as two whole people who functioned best together. That is to say, they weren't two halves to make a whole. Granted, they had issues but we all have  issues. They were two people who functioned. They just functioned more beautifully, dynamically and passionately once they found one another. I'd submit it right now but I can't quite let my baby go...later today is soon enough.

I wrote in my explanation of my research that "I felt cumpelled..." and the computer immediately picked up my error. Oh yes! It is c o m p e l l e d, isn't it?! But, you see, I was deep within myself as I was writing, feeling closely connected to the deepest and darkest part of my soul; the most beautiful I think as well, and when I am there, correct spelling is the least of my concerns. Lucky, I guess, that I have a computer that insists that I spell like a gurl.

Spiritual sexuality

I'm at the tail end of a subject that is particularly scholarly and philosophical and I've had a wonderful time. I know it all sounds so dry - Marxism, Feminism, Existentialism, Post-colonial theory and so on - but I've thoroughly enjoyed it really. We studied Haiku poetry the week before last. I took my downloaded lecture with me to the soccer field on the Saturday afternoon so that I could watch my youngest son play soccer while I browsed at the notes and there were glorious moments of all being right with my world - a brisk winter afternoon with a good dose of sun, the delight of the young men battling it out for a win, the ideas presented in one of the reading materials of "spiritual moments". I even went so far as to write my own Haiku poem, not especially brilliant but it expressed a strong sense of belonging to the city that I don't feel on a day by day basis. It was me having one of my blessed days when I feel extraordinarily happy within myself.

When I got to write up my response to the unit I think my spirituality did shine through the post. I had been moved and I didn't shy away from writing about that. Late in the discussion I heard from a man who said he had been very inspired by my post and he wanted to discuss with me "the meaning of life". Oh my goodness, you could hardly hold my fingers back from the keys! In fact, you could not hold my fingers back from the keys and I wrote him back a reply that I hope sustained him.

It's this spirituality that really inspires me to write here on my best days. It must sound hocus pocus  to those coming here always hopeful to find something salacious and meaty but for me it's often not about that. It's an impossible mission to try to explain how my true nature, when revealed and given free rein opens doors for me to a very spiritual place where I feel like...a young girl running free through the summer fields with no shoes on...like a spirit that has no body to hold it back...like the essence of me is making contact with that being that created me for a specific purpose.

The feeling floods my mind with something, perhaps endorphins. I am not au fait with the technicalities. All I can say is that it is like a release of some sort of chemical and I feel whole when before I felt empty.

I have known all this for some time now but of course life can rob someone of the opportunity to experience it day by day. This consciousness isn't available to me every day. I suppose it is the difference between knowing something on a conscious level and feeling something on a spiritual level. It goes some way to explaining why I love churches,certain pieces of classical music, choirs and meditation. I am always hopeful for one of those cathartic experiences when I feel completely at home with myself; completely natural and fulfilled.

I write this down because these moments can be fleeting. Perhaps tomorrow I couldn't remember or explain what I can write down today. I feel sure that there is more than what we see; the real world. I know it. My sexuality is a door to the other side; to a feeling of great contentment and sustenance. It is why, no matter how old I grow, my sexuality will remain my strongest ally.

(P.S. I wrote this yesterday and I was right. I don't think I could have written it this morning. It's the reason why if you want to be a writer you must take a notebook wherever you go!)