You, Darkness, That I Come From

You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.
But the darkness pulls in everything-
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! -
powers and people-
and it is possible a great
presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

~Rainier Maria Rilke

* * *

This post is written by bitch - a persona/archetype I play with (see previous posts for context). There are two parts - before and after. Two nights ago i wrote the first, not knowing how long it would be until Daddy and i would play again. Last night Daddy unexpectedly commanded my presence.

* * *

Before

I can feel bitch pacing inside of me, desperate for some kind of expression. I hope this satisfies her for a bit...

i think about Him far more than i want to admit to. i think about Him every day.

Something serious happened in Daddy's life and He's been unable to play since our the last encounter i shared here, nearly a month ago. We have a stronger friendship now and that is wonderful. But i really miss Him.

i feel lost without Him.
Locked away, aching to prowl free but having nowhere to go.

bitch doesn't have a reason to exist without Daddy. It's not the same to fantasize, to imagine His voice in my ear and the electric jolt it sends down between my legs. It's not the same to read online discussions about the kind of play we do, even though i appreciate learning more about what really turns me on...emotional edge play, humiliation, fear play.

Daddy recently called what happens between us explosions. Such a perfect description of the magic that crackles in the air when Daddy has me on my knees in every way begging for the honor to worship Him.

i miss being slutty for Daddy. Some days He would call me on my lunch break and get me riled up before i went back to work. Sometimes He would command me to do slutty things at work, like fuck myself in the bathroom and cum by a certain time. It's such a rush to carry a command from Daddy through my day, to feel the charge in my body when i hear His voice or see His words on my phone.

i want to be on my knees crawling for Daddy so badly that sometimes my body quivers with the ache and the restraint required to keep from reaching out to Him when it's inappropriate to do so. Being devoted to Him means accepting when He needs or wants to put His attention elsewhere for awhile and not asking anything of Him. Sometimes the best service i can give is being invisible.

i knew for years that i had a deep desire to serve, please and obey. i had a feeling about the sort of devotion i could feel for someone who inspired my service and surrender. i tried to offer it to previous Dominants. But Daddy is the first one to bring me to life and show me my dreams could be real.

i long for Him.

After

i was surprised and amazed when Daddy drew me out while we were having coffee as friends yesterday afternoon. As soon as His tone changed, my whole body came alive with "Yes, please, whatever You desire."

He finally gave me some positive feedback, told me that bitch is incredibly hot. And He likes my letters. i like to write Him vulnerable letters. If this is how openly i share in public, you can imagine the kinds of letters i write Him. i tell Him everything. And He uses it against me.

Who knew that in my mission for vulnerability this year, i would explore it as a profound sexual expression? So strange and beautiful.

i wrote Daddy a sort of love letter and told Him my devotion has deepened, because of the emotional intimacy that's developed between us recently, and i am pretty sure He's using that against me. He's upping the ante, asking some things of me that will involve humiliation in the presence of my friends, that i may not actually be able to achieve (He knows i hate failing), and/or that may provoke (dare i say trigger?) the Invisible Girl.

i don't know if i can or want to bring her into this. That's the most dangerous territory there is in my dark places. i'm scared.

Which also makes it the most powerful opportunity for overcoming my fear, for my healing and evolution. If my biggest kink is being a masochist for God, it makes sense that i would be drawn to facing my deepest fears like this. i think the questions i need to answer are whether i believe that i need to do this for my self and whether this would provoke real healing or just heartache. i'm not interested in being an emotional masochist for entertainment. This would have to shift something significant inside of me to be worth it.

Oh, and there would have to be consideration of some kind appropriate aftercare if needed. i don't think i could navigate an Invisible Girl trigger experience without plenty of positive validation afterward to counteract the stories she tells me.

It isn't just that Daddy wants me to surrender to His will, He wants to condition me to become aroused by His fantasies, most especially if they are ones i am resistant to. He wants to change me, to make me better for His pleasure. i don't know if a scenario that invokes the Invisible Girl could ever be eroticized. i don't know if i can give Him this vulnerability.

But i want to please Him so very much. i talked to two friends about the situation today and both of them said they would challenge Him. While a part of me can get riled up and fantasize about resisting Him, my truth is that i really, really want to make Him happy. i want to be able to do anything He commands of me and like it. i want to be the best bitch i can be.

And there's this important piece - i notice something i intuitively wrote in part one two nights ago - Sometimes the best service i can give is being invisible. Just as i'm finding my erotic power in my exploration of bitch, i could find power in invisibility as an act of service.

i am walking the edge with Daddy, taking huge emotional risks by opening my heart in devotion to Him and exposing the places where He could hurt me deepest if He were to cut me with one of His knives.

Ecstasy or despair, it's all God.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Each Other

"I have experienced tremendous tragedies in my life, ninety percent of which never happened." ~ Mark Twain

I am thinking a lot about the stories we tell ourselves about each other - the assumptions we make about the other person's words, actions and behaviors - whether our lover, our friend, or the stranger in the grocery store.

More often than not, it seems like we tell ourselves the worst possible fear stories, rather than look for the best possible love stories.

For instance, we might tell ourselves Susie is quiet because she's snobby and judgmental, when really she's just shy and has trouble with small talk (a story people have told themselves about me). Or maybe our boyfriend knows we have a trigger around him talking to that one woman, so he must be hurting us on purpose by talking to her (and she's trying to steal him), when really he's helping her out with a genuine problem. If someone's not answering a text, email or phone call, they must be ignoring us or have a problem with us, when really they're just very busy and maybe haven't even seen what we've sent yet.

We especially tell stories about the misunderstandings and conflicts we have with each other. That's where misunderstandings come from, we tell ourselves a different story than what the other person intended instead of getting clarity from them. When someone lashes out to hurt us, we tell ourselves they are intentionally hurtful, when actually they are acting out of their own pain.

We make these fear-full assumptions about each other all the time, and then we make an emotional investment in the stories we tell, creating our own suffering in the process.

This is important to me because my last broken relationship fell victim to this all too human tendency in irreparable ways. I was heartbroken because someone told themselves the worst possible stories about things I said or did - even accused me of intentional cruelty - and invested so much energy in those stories that the truth couldn't discharge the negative emotion and bring understanding. I will own that I also told myself stories about them that kept intimacy from deepening. When misunderstandings or conflicts arise, everyone involved starts telling themselves blaming and shaming stories about each other, most or all of which are untrue.

This is also important to me because I'm noticing how I'm doing it in some of my new relationships, although I'm mostly catching myself in the process and shifting the story, rather than taking my false stories and suffering to the other person. Sometimes this takes minutes, sometimes it takes hours. But I strive to come back to the love story unfolding between me and the other, rather than let the fear stories take hold and trigger emotional reactions.

The craziest thing about this kind of story-telling is that we do it the most with the people who love us most deeply -- the very people we should be trusting are always acting with the best intention towards us, even when they make a mistake that hurts us. Over the last couple months I've caught myself telling fearful stories about my business partners, now that I've stepped down as hostess and am trying to figure out my role as a founder-but-no-longer-hostess. I even had a nightmare about it. I've feared that they will think I'm acting entitled in an inappropriate way when I tell them how I still desire to be involved. The truth is that they are as confused as I am about my place and they are certainly open to exploring what's comfortable for all of us regarding my new roles. I also tell myself fearful stories about my friends, assuming that if someone doesn't ask me for time that they don't want to connect with me, when really they've got incredibly busy lives but would make time if I asked for it, or maybe even have their own stories that hold them back from reaching out to me.

I also notice that while we know that we are here for each other in any possible way, we still don't always ask for support, a listening ear, a hug or touch, or whatever we might need that would make our struggles a little easier to bear. We call each other family and yet we don't fully trust each other's deep, deep desire to connect. We all desire to experience love as much as we possibly can. And yet we hold ourselves back all the time. And tell ourselves stories to justify keeping our distance.

I am striving to notice my fear stories and stop them before they gain emotional momentum. I am also focusing on the love stories unfolding in my life with deeper awareness than ever before.

I am sure this will be an on-going work for me. What about you? What fear stories can you change into love stories?

The Victim

This is stream of consciousness, as I’ve just had a really important insight into an emotional challenge I’ve been trying to sort out for several weeks. I am writing my way through it.

I am having a difficult time with seeing Knight in relationship to others when we interact socially. There are multiple reasons for this that don't all come from being the ex-girlfriend, but there is much that does come from that.

I was contemplating this issue tonight because it came up with a friend who is throwing a party. I didn’t like how I felt when she brought up her desire to have him there. I was also looking for an art project to work on tomorrow night, as I had just been invited to a crafty night at a friend’s. I wandered around, looking at different art supplies, feeling out the appropriate creative expression for right now. Then I grabbed one of Shiloh McCloud’s coloring book journals, drawn to the title She Moves To Her Own Rhythm.

I started turning the pages and was immediately drawn to a paragraph that starts, “Gratitude is a remedy for self-pity.” Suddenly I realized that I have been feeling significant self pity, feeling sorry for myself because my relationship with Knight didn’t work out, partly because he rejected me as a partner due to my actions, partly because of his desire to spend more time and energy on other lovers than on me, partly because he was careless with me when trying to manage multiple relationships (and many other reasons, too), and now I have to watch him be with those other women...and more...if I desire to continue participating in tribe and Imps activities. The paragraph continues on to talk about being a victim...

“Gratitude inspires humility. Gratitude guards against self-pity. I cannot express how important it is not to be a victim. Being a victim, along with holding guilt and shame, paralyzes us and keeps us from growing. Those emotions and responses are a disease, once you let them in, they spread and mutate until you cannot even tell where they are and what havoc they are wreaking. Cast those demons out. Tell them you have no more use for them. We can become invested in our sad story and use it to control others and keep ourselves from being well. Overcoming the victim does not negate that you had to endure injustices. Overcoming acknowledges your pain and allows you to transform.”

I work with archetypes as one of my tools for self and human exploration. Caroline Myss, a teacher I highly respect and that I’ve mentioned before, says that there are four archetypes that all of us contain: the Child, the Saboteur, the Prostitute and the Victim. Even though three of these have negative connotations in our current cultural understanding, all of these archetypes have both a light and a shadow expression.

In the light the Victim is the Guardian of Self Esteem.

My victim has been at play regarding my reactions to having to confront Knight and his other relationships at social events, most especially the Imps parties. Being confronted with your ex-partner seducing, playing and having sex with other women shortly after your break up is not an easy thing to do. While there are many reasons our relationship didn’t work out, I seem to have fixated on the sense of rejection that I feel. Hence the self-pity.

The self-pity, and shame from feeling that I was rejected specifically because of my shadow around emotional control, have been feeding a monster of emotional brutality in my heart towards Knight. It is so easy to demonize him. But it hurts me to do so.

I have been digging at this, feeling the negative reactions and trying to chase down the sources. I don’t like the way it feels at all. I don’t like that I left the staff party a couple weeks ago because I couldn’t bear watching him seduce another woman and feeling it as rejection. I don’t like that I’m afraid to attend the social this weekend because I will feel that way again, even though I have my own lovers to connect with. I don’t like that I want to shut him out and convince myself that he isn’t worthy of relationship with me by focusing on his shadows.

It’s like I’m trying to take my power back by wielding the power of disconnection – which is actually the most potent weapon I can use against him. He thrives on connection and intimacy. Shutting him out is a powerful way to hurt him.

And disconnection has seemed like the only way to protect myself from more heartache. Essentially that's what it's all about, trying to protect my heart. But defenses never lead anywhere good.

The lesson is that my victim needs to develop personal boundaries and a sense of personal power, but I’m not doing it in a healthy way. I need to figure out how to turn this story around to one of self empowerment.

Of course none of this has been entirely conscious. I’ve had the fucked up thoughts and feelings about him the last few weeks, but didn’t see what was really going on under the surface until now. I’ve just been conscious enough to know that I am in shadow and have taken the positive step of keeping it to myself as much as possible. I haven’t spoken to him since the staff party because I don’t want to communicate with him from a negative place. I have learned from previous mistakes of communicating from shadow.

Is it not time that our loving free us from ourselves, and that we, though trembling, endure. Rilke

And of course all of this brings me back to vulnerability and open-heartedness. The vulnerable thing is to face how I feel, to see myself fully and allow others to see me fully, to bring my shadow into the light and love it. The open-hearted thing to do is cultivate love toward Knight and compersion toward his relationships.

Another aspect of my evolution right now is learning to hold space for my own shadow rather than judging and shaming myself when I act from fear. This here, right now, is an opportunity to do that. Rather than be ashamed of my victim and her attempt to protect me these last few weeks, I am going to thank her for trying and ask her to work with me in a more empowering way. I am not powerless and do not need to seek power through attempting to diminish another. I am not unlovable because I am imperfect and act from fear at times.

Shiloh says that gratitude is the remedy for self-pity. I realize that I have stopped experiencing gratitude for Knight’s presence and impact on my life. I have stopped seeing the Divine Spark in him and the beauty of the relationship we shared. Our fear based choices don’t negate or diminish all of the love that we shared. I’ve blinded myself from his light, and the light of our relationship, with shadow. He is a bright light, he has tremendous love to share, there are so many things to be grateful for about that man. And it does not diminish me to say so, no matter the circumstances of our relationship’s end.

From Sacred Contracts by Myss: "The primary objective of the Victim archetype is to develop self-esteem and personal power...You have Contracts with people who are directly connected to the Victim archetype. Their primary role is to help you develop your self-esteem through acts of honesty, integrity, courage, endurance and self-respect."

Even now, Knight is a gift in my life, as I learn to develop a healthy relationship with my Victim archetype and find a deeper sense of my own empowerment and self esteem. While facing this truth in myself is not easy, I am incredibly grateful to have made a breakthrough and sense that I now have a direction to go in cultivating the response I desire to have to Knight and his lovers...which is pure love.