Dame and puppy play with rope, belts, and blood.

(Warning: this post includes talk of period blood.)

I learned all kinds of new things about my switchy, kinky brain the other night. Fiance and I had plans for kink, but the unexpected arrival of my period forced us to change our plans--not because sex during shark week is gross (it's not), but because the cramping and fatigue I get on day 1 fucks with my brain and I was pretty sure I'd have no chance of really getting into the right headspace.

So we opted for a slightly kinky stay-at-home date night with dinner, wine, and rope instead. Fiance put me in a simple chest harness most of the night that still gave me full range of motion and felt absolutely amazing to wear. I took dozens of pictures... here's just one of them:

We didn't stick to our original plans at all. We just resolved to just "see where things go" and how I felt as we snuggled, messed around, watched Firefly and drank.

And this "see where things go" plan ended up being spectacular. It let me just sort of let my brain go where it wanted to, and holy hell, some magical combination of the wine and the rope and maybe even my period pushed me into a very dommy mood pretty quickly. I stepped into a version of Dame that I'd never met before, and with Fiance's consent, I discovered the magic and pleasure of thwacking puppy on the ass with my own belt. The sounds. The reactions. Him letting me know that I can hit him harder, and the thrill of trying to do so.  There was this incredibly intense emotional aspect to it. Each time I brought my belt down, I wanted to immediately kiss and touch the place I'd just hit. There was this play between several high-intensity voices in my head "did I hurt him?" and "I want to do that again." and "oh my god I love this man so much."

I can't touch that belt now without smiling. I wear it nearly every day.

For the first time, I let my head play with the idea of puppy being "mine" in that very dominant sense you see in all the kinky tumblr feeds. And that was kind of thrilling. Surprisingly so. I felt more than a little bit unleashed in a way I'd never felt before. Not beastial, so much as completely unmonitored, completely free to take joy in what we were doing, and how we were fucking.  Dominance as an act of unabashed, unrestrained wanting, consumption, worship, and pleasure. I felt this intense need to cherish him in this violent and all-consuming way. It was otherworldly. I felt like a rockstar, or an artist, or some other kind of burning and bleeding thing.

And there was blood, of course. This wasn't the first time we've fucked on my period, but this was the first time that seemed to add to the intensity of what I was feeling instead of just making me distracted and self-conscious about staining something. For some reason, being in Dame's dommy headspace made it spectacularly hot to see the mess I'd left on him when we were finished. It looked like a painting--thick red oil paint smeared across a messy, fleshy canvas... my puppy entirely spent and exhausted, panting on the bed.

It was incredible. And with his permission, I took pictures. And no, you can't see them. No one but us can see them. But I will treasure them. Cherish them. And maybe someday I'll put a real paintbrush to real canvas and create something inspired by them. Something besides this blog post, and the marks he left on my skin to remember the night by.

Three things that helped me get back on solid ground

(This post is kind of "Part 2" of the previous post. Read that first.)

Things were very rough, but they are better now. Things are not the same as before, which I expected, and feel is normal and right--I've landed on a different shore from the one I was flung from, but I do feel like I'm on solid ground again.

This morning, Fiance observed that this was probably one of the fastest recoveries he's ever seen me go through, which made me feel really good. It made me realize that the years of work on my mental health and happiness weren't all unraveling, and weren't undone. The way my brain is wired really is different now compared to where it was before.  The "default" state of my brain really is higher, and the moments of happiness aren't the temporary things anymore. The crisis moments, the depression moments, those are the things that my brain recognizes will pass.

This makes me happy.

When Fiance said those things to me, I realized that there were three key things that are different in my life right now that I think helped me get back on my feet.  And they showed up in the last few days in three key things that happened. The order I describe them in this blog post is not the order in which they happened though. In my mind they are all part of a kind of simultaneous experience of getting better. Yes, maybe the third in this list made the other two possible...chronology is a real thing... but I would not be as whole as I feel right now if it weren't for all three.

Thing one: did work that I love.

First, I went back to work yesterday, and this particular work that I do makes me feel fulfilled and capable and strong on levels that no other work or job I've ever had does. I walked out of the office that night feeling nearly whole. Feeling like I had expertise and control over something important and that I was helping other people have better lives...

Walking out of work that night reminded me that my future in-laws don't get to decide what's right for me in my life. Even if the judgments I felt like they passed on me through Fiance's second-hand retelling of their conversation was wrong, this experience helps remind me that no one, not even parents or in-laws or strangers on the internet can decide or judge me for the choices I've made in my life to be happy.  They don't know how much my work fulfills me, and fuck them if they think I should be working "more hours" or bringing home more of a paycheck. Fuck them for implying that my choices aren't "fair" or show "selfishness".

So the first thing that's different is I have work that makes me feel a lot of dignity and self-respect, and so I found myself on solid ground emotionally on at least one front more quickly than I thought I would. It helped reinforce to me that my choices were right for me, and I should fight tooth and nail to keep doing this kind of work.

Thing two: voiced my very last secret fear.

The second thing that happened is that during one of our emotional conversations, Fiance and I talked about the very very last hard thing that until now I've left completely unvoiced, and unstated.  I won't get into exactly what that difficult scary thing was, except to say that this scary thing felt like I'd been sitting on a nuke that could go off and destroy everything if I let it out. I felt like it was something I could only confide to a therapist... someone legally required to keep it secret, and who could then help me understand it in a safe environment.

Well, I told Fiance about it. And he listened, and we talked about it, and the end result was not the destruction of our marriage-before-it-started. The end result was a mutual commitment to each other, and a promise to him and from him that even if any part of my now-not-secret-fear were true, we still want to get married. He's still my foundation, and my life partner. His dad and stepmom don't get a say in whether or not we get married.

And suddenly I realized the nuke would never go off. That it hadn't been a nuke at all. Maybe it was just a big brick with the word "nuke" spray painted onto the side. Or maybe in some relationships, it would have been a nuke, but in this one, it's just a dud, and that fact... the fact that THIS context, THIS relationship makes it possible to transmute the most destructive secret I've kept from him into something more benign... it helped me understand how "forever" this relationship is.

There was more to our conversation, but it stemmed from voicing that fear and talking through it. And so this second thing that happened was that I landed back on solid ground in terms of my relationship with my primary partner, my Fiance, and I have no more secret fears. I have nothing else to fear, no more sources of anxiety regarding my relationship with my Fiance. And so I feel like I'm on solid ground again.

Thing three: polyamory.

The third thing that happened is a thing that makes me feel so very strongly that polyamory is a thing that needs to continue being a part of my life, and my marriage. My other romantic partner came over for lunch, and I cried and told him about the roughness and pain and fear and the massive emotionally violent breakdown I'd had after hearing how coming out to my in-laws went.  I cried, and I was vulnerable and broken, and then afterwards he helped put me back together again. There were kisses and snuggles, and I believe that these kisses and snuggles were so profoundly healing precisely because they came from someone who loves me and who is NOT involved in the thing that was hurting me.  He was an outside person who could just listen and be invested in my emotional state, and could love me and touch me when I was ready for that in a way that I simply couldn't have had if polyamory weren't a thing in my life. It was a profound kind of healing moment that I needed badly, and I don't think I could have gotten in any other way. 

I never felt like I was on shaky ground with regards to how I feel about polyamory being right for us, but this experience gave me a concrete example of exactly why it's so very right. So very healthy for my brain, and my health and my relationship with my Fiance. Because of that experience, I could be more open and vulnerable and brave and strong with my Fiance, and it was the very next morning and the very next day when Thing one, and Thing two happened, and so I can't help but credit this poly afternoon as the real turning point for me, even if I can only recognize it as the turning point in retrospect.  

I have the urge to re-tell some of this experience in terms of the allegory from my dream in my last post, but I don't think I could do it without diminishing this. Something about the dusk not being dusk at all, but actually being those moments before dawn. The sun rose. And while the sunlight didn't make the waters my adrift house was floating on less dangerous, it gave me more energy to rally, and keep things together while I figured out how to install a rudder and a sail. Or something. See? It sounds reductive. Diminished told that way... sorry about that.  

Things were very rough; they are better now.

Someone ripped my house up by the foundation and set it adrift in the ocean

I haven't blogged in ages. Not because I haven't wanted to... more because things were going very well... so well in fact that writing about them here, in this pseudo anonymous space would have felt a little shallow. A little reductive.  Poly things took off. I've somehow found myself living in a world where I can have a Fiance and another romantic partner at the same time.  Many joy. Very magic. Wow.

I came out to my mother about us opening our relationship, and how much of a spectacularly positive thing that has been for me and the Fiance. My mother said all the right things. Gave all the right kinds of support. She sent us a book about love. She said she'd let me know when she was ready to get pictures or talk to the Fiance or hear more so my news could be "really real" for her. Many joy. Very magic. Wow.

Then Fiance came out to his dad and stepmom. And they did not say all the right things. Did not give all the right support. They raised issues and complaints and concerns about me, about the very nature of our relationship, and none of that was expected. It's ripped a crack in something very foundational in me, and I'm sort of set adrift now. For a little while after hearing about their conversation, I felt like my life, all of it, was over. I felt like my marriage was over before it'd even started.  It's been a shattering few days. I'm barely holding it together. But I'm working on it. I came back from a breakdown that had me collapsed on the floor making terrifying animal noises in record time, and I'm researching therapists, and I am working hard not to close up and lock everything down in my brain again. Keep the protective walls at maybe waist high instead of going up to the sky. Some minutes I'm fine. Some minutes I'm strong, and I have my feet under me. But then some minutes I'm just crumpled in a corner crying.

Like now.

Last night I dreamed.  And the symbols in the dream were so obvious... so transparent... that I couldn't have made them more plain if I were a bitter, disenfranchised high school student with a creative writing assignment.

In my dream, someone ripped my entire house out by its foundation and used a couple boards like a lever to shove it into the ocean before anyone could react, setting it adrift at sea with me still inside. I was angry and I was scared and I was bitter. It was some kind of twilight. Like just after sunset. Visibility was bad. Waves were relatively calm though. There was no wind, but the white foam when waves broke on the beach were like reminders of past and future storms.  The house floated upright, and I had some amount of confidence that it would hold, but not for long. Only for as long as my anger held and I kept my wits.

I looked over the edge of my roof, or perhaps out a window, and I could see sharp and jagged rocks just under the surface of the water, but I was smart enough to know how to time the movement of the house so that a swell could carry it over the top of them. Get us to a place where we wouldn't be in immediate danger. I felt clever. But it felt like triage. I'd saved us for this moment, but at a cost.

Now we were out in deeper waters, with those sharp rocks between us and safety.  There's no way to get back to the same solid ground we came from. So I started scanning the coastline, found we were in some kind of bay. There's a peninsula made of... paper I think, to our right. It's hard to see it in the dusk. And I have no way to steer the house there. And if we made it, the new coastline might actually be made of paper anyway and sink the second we tried to land.  I knew we needed to find a new place to be. But I didn't know how. We needed help.

Someone (a version of me?) wanted to jump overboard with a vague rationale of paddling or pushing the house by hand back to shore or swimming back to land by herself and running away.  I don't know if I told her no (I wanted to). I don't know if she jumped. But I remember thinking it was a stupid idea and would get her killed.

Sometimes dreams are nonsense. And sometimes they are just straight-up re-tellings of your emotional state.  Which I guess can be cathartic. I guess this can be therapeutic. Writing about it now feels good.  Makes me feel a little better.

I feel like this dream is a way all the different versions of me in my head (and I've got a lot of them) are trying to affirm to me that they know how I feel. They understand what I'm going through. And they are doing their part to process things, use the machinery of my brain and all the symbols at its disposal to just "be with me" and empathize. 

Or something. I don't really know how to end this blog post... there's no wrap-up. No moment where I land on something hopeful right now. Except to reassure you (and myself) that I am okay. I'm going back to work today after the long holiday break. And I've gotten replies and referrals from several kink and poly friendly therapists. That's not nothing. But I know that I will not be able to see my Fiance's dad or stepmom again for a long time.