I am not perfect.

Those four little words, I am most cer­tain, shock no one, includ­ing my Master, includ­ing myself.  I have no desire to be per­fect; how­ever, what I do want is to be more open to fail­ure and even more open to suc­cess. Failing is not some­thing for­eign to me; how­ever, there have been numer­ous occa­sions where I simply did not try out of fear of fail­ing.  Reflecting on those count­less oppor­tun­it­ies I real­ise that part of my appre­hen­sion also came from suc­ceed­ing.   I am just as stunned as any­one with such a rev­el­a­tion; how­ever, suc­cess often instig­ates change and change is one thing I have been bat­tling with for as long as I can remember.

The concept of change fas­cin­ates me if only because it is the one thing that is con­stant in this world. Change will always hap­pen, it is pre­dict­able on that account.  What is not pre­dict­able is how my life, my views, my per­son will be affected when change occurs and that is the para­lyz­ing thought I per­mit my mind to focus on.

Throughout this past month I have forced myself to look deep within, to exam­ine who I am and what I want and how I wish to grow as a per­son. There were many things I dis­covered about myself; how­ever, what sur­prised me most is just how little I have actu­ally developed.   With regards to my career, how I per­ceive myself as an employee, how I value my beliefs, mor­als and work eth­ics, I most cer­tainly believe I have grown.  I believe that when it comes to my pro­fes­sional expect­a­tions and ideas I have burst through my plexi glass box, des­troy­ing the ori­ginal frame only to build a much stronger, more dur­able one, this time with a latch, allow­ing myself to open that box any­time I desire.

When it comes to my sexual box (no pun inten­ded), my emo­tional well being box, I find that I am resid­ing in a rather small, steel cage like con­trap­tion, one com­pletely wel­ded shut, allow­ing barely an arm or leg to poke through.  My internal prison is one I craf­ted all on my own, years of accept­ing fear as my dom­in­ant, years of tak­ing the easy road, years of excus­ing my beha­viours with psy­cho­lo­gical ram­blings, years of telling myself that I was not worth it, that I did not deserve it, that I was okay with who I am.  It is amaz­ing just how high a pile of psy­cho­lo­gical bull shit can get; how­ever, I assure you, the heap is mountainous.

My responses, my pro­tect­ive cas­ing, my means of sur­vival all have an ori­gin and I accept that my exper­i­ences have helped mold me into the per­son I am today.  I have wit­nessed and per­son­ally exper­i­enced intense, scary, life endan­ger­ing moments; incid­ents that would eas­ily make for a rather hor­rific psy­cho­lo­gical thriller.  I am entitled to and I allow myself to feel those exper­i­ences, to embrace them, acknow­ledge them and under­stand that they are a part of my blue prints.  After this month of con­tem­pla­tion and re-evaluation though I have come to real­ise that those exper­i­ences do not dic­tate the per­son I am today, they do not dic­tate how I react, how I move for­ward, how I grow.  No, those brief moments in time do not con­trol me, I con­trol myself. I allow myself to be con­trolled by exper­i­ences and there­fore I have the abil­ity to change my approach to life, to my sexu­al­ity, to my slavery, to my sub­mis­sion,  to my rela­tion­ship with Master, to my inter­ac­tions with pet and in the way I view myself and in the way I wish to expand my hori­zons, to grow as a person.

Growth is not easy, then again why should it have to be?  My grand­mother told me a very long time ago that „if it isn’t hard, it isn’t worth it“. Now I do not neces­sar­ily always agree with her sen­ti­ment; how­ever, more times than not I do.  When I was eleven my fam­ily ren­ted a cabin off of the Shuswap Lake in Salmon Arm, B.C. I had been look­ing for­ward to our sum­mer vaca­tion all year and had been eager to spend my days frol­ick­ing in the water and sun­ning my very pale skin on the beach.  My hopes for those six weeks were to play, meet some boys, have fun with my cous­ins and just have a really good time. Unfortunately, my plans were thwarted for after only two days of float­ing on the water I found myself con­sumed with the most intense aches and pains I had ever exper­i­enced.   At first my mum thought I was exper­i­en­cing period cramps; how­ever, the spasms and con­trac­tions of my thigh muscles and the sides of my hips made my mum recon­sider her first assump­tion and on the fourth day of hol­i­days I was taken to the doc­tor to be examined.

My visit to the doc­tor left me stunned for he had informed me and my mum that I was indeed exper­i­en­cing genu­ine pain and that I would most likely exper­i­ence such aches for about a month for I was going through grow­ing pains.   I had been told of such stor­ies of people’s bod­ies grow­ing and it being a pain­ful sen­sa­tion; how­ever, I never really believed it was true, I just assumed it was one of those stor­ies par­ents tell their kids to scare them.  Well, I can assure every­one that they are indeed real and they indeed hurt.  I spent the remainder of my hol­i­days soak­ing in warm baths, doing physio­ther­apy and tak­ing the occa­sional Tylenol to help ease the pain.  At the time I was any­thing but happy nor did I believe what I was going through was worth what I would gain in the end.  Looking back now, I am extremely grate­ful for my growth spurt. Oh sure, when I returned to school that September and I was sud­denly taller than all the boys I was not very happy; how­ever, now that I am 36 years young and am stand­ing at 5’3 and 3’4 I can hon­estly say I am more than pleased for had I not had those two months of agony I would still be a mere 4’11 and hav­ing the hard­est time find­ing trousers that fit without need­ing a seam­stress‘ help.

Growing pains are  nat­ural and I believe a neces­sary part of life.  Sometimes the pain is min­imal, other times it is grand, almost all con­sum­ing and can leave one feel­ing help­less, vul­ner­able and com­pletely out of con­trol.  The type of pain is not so import­ant to me, not any more at least. What is import­ant is what I gain from it all, what I learn, how I grow, where my jour­ney will take me.  And I do want to be taken. I do want to ven­ture for­ward and dis­cover new parts of myself, new aspects to my life and to par­ti­cip­ate in new adven­tures, ones that will allow me to stretch, extend­ing myself entirely out of my box.

Jumping into an entirely new career was some­thing I did with pas­sion, excite­ment and unhar­nessed enthu­si­asm.  I approached a new career the same way a child approaches a new toy: with won­der and end­less pos­sib­il­it­ies.  I am fas­cin­ated that with regards to my pro­fes­sion, with what offers secur­ity, provides  a sense of worth, gives me an oppor­tun­ity to learn as well as fail, I jump in accept­ing that I might at times be in way over my head and never once do I allow any doubts to cloud my determ­in­a­tion.  Unlike my eager interest in try­ing new things with regards to work, when it comes to my per­sonal exper­i­ences I find myself almost timid, res­ist­ant and afraid.

I have spoken of fear a few times and I believe it is some­thing that will often gen­er­ate thought for me.  With regards to my fear of exper­i­ment­ing I have to say that much of that emo­tion is driven through not under­stand­ing or accept­ing who I am, what I want and want I may want. This little epi­phany came to fruition dur­ing the last visit we had with pet.  I can not remem­ber exactly what was hap­pen­ing; how­ever, there was a moment when Master was doing some­thing to pet or pet was doing some­thing to Master and I sim­ul­tan­eously felt bru­tally uncom­fort­able and yet highly aroused.   That incid­ent was not the only time I felt that awk­ward sen­sa­tion, there were at least four other times dur­ing that week­end where I felt a dis­turb­ing arousal; dis­turb­ing because on one hand I was not overly happy with what I was wit­ness­ing and yet my body most cer­tainly was.  I felt betrayed as my mind and body were at war and it was not until I star­ted to reflect these past couple of weeks that I have come to some form of under­stand­ing of what was hap­pen­ing and why I hold myself back.

There are aspects of my per­son­al­ity that I do not openly embrace, that I barely even acknow­ledge and my reas­ons for such beha­viours all stem from that one tiny word: change.  If I should embrace what I desire, what I lust, will I then change, will I become someone I do not know, will I wish to exper­i­ence things I am afraid of, am uncer­tain of?  In those moments when I allow my mind the free­dom it so rarely receives and sub­mit to my desires, will I alter the per­sona I am known as and become someone who exposes more of her­self, offers more of her­self to those around her, to, well the world?

I have lived my life with rules, reg­u­la­tions and expect­a­tions. I have built a found­a­tion for what I believe in, what I have faith in, what provides me with a sense of secur­ity, even though there really is no such thing as com­plete secur­ity. When I think of open­ing my little box of safety I can not help but won­der if everything I know and believe in will no longer exist and that pos­sib­il­ity is unnerv­ing.  Still, as for­eign and risky as it feels to let go of all those expect­a­tions I have placed upon myself in order to ensure I am a „good“ per­son, to ensure I am „safe“, to ensure my val­ues, my ideas have mean­ing, I am at a place in my life where I am will­ing to take a chance, where I want to take a chance.

For many years now I have stated that I do not believe in reli­gion, rather I believe in ideas because ideas can change, can evolve.  Although I find it puzz­ling that I have not approached my self growth in the same man­ner I have now decided to give it a try.  Sincerely what is the worst that could hap­pen?  The only answer I can think of is change and change can hap­pen and does hap­pen and will con­tinue to hap­pen regard­less of how I approach life so why not just try some­thing new?

And there are many things I want to try and many things I know Master would like to try and who bet­ter to explore with than him.  I think part of my hes­it­a­tion in explor­ing, in grow­ing sexu­ally was my fear of how I would feel after the fact.  I do not enjoy being emo­tional or exper­i­en­cing neg­at­ive sen­sa­tions and often when I would say no to some­thing Master would sug­gest it was because I genu­inely did not know how I would feel, how I would react and I was scared that my reac­tion would cre­ate some­thing unpleas­ant between me and Master, that poten­tially my response would be hurt­ful and would be some­thing neither of us could quickly move for­ward from.

The real­ity is there may be moments when I am upset or when Master might even be upset and we might not push for­ward quickly, eas­ily; how­ever, that is simply a part of life, a part of growth and if there ever was some­thing so sig­ni­fic­ant that it took a little time to recu­per­ate from, than so be it. Everything is a les­son, everything we do and say and feel are part of the human exper­i­ence and try­ing to shel­ter one­self from any of it is an injustice to anyone’s growth; mine included.  Master’s included.

I have come to under­stand that my lack of par­ti­cip­a­tion, my lack of will­ing­ness has most cer­tainly affected the rela­tion­ship I share with Master.  By con­stantly say­ing no, by express­ing my fear that I will be emo­tion­ally harmed has cre­ated numer­ous cracks in our found­a­tion and I am not pleased with my beha­viour.  Nothing is one sided, there are two people in this rela­tion­ship and we each have flaws, each of us has con­trib­uted to bumps within our  rela­tion­ship; how­ever, this is not about Master, this is about me, about my actions, about my choices, about my account­ab­il­ity.  And I have a plenty to be account­able for.  I know that I have repressed my sexu­al­ity and in doing so I have repressed Master’s. I know that my unwill­ing­ness to just try some­thing has cre­ated an envir­on­ment not invit­ing for Master to make sug­ges­tions, to pose pos­sib­il­it­ies.  This is an envir­on­ment I no longer wish for us, no longer wish for me.

I want to be able to explore and if I am not happy about it, if I feel sad about it, I want to be able to express my feel­ings and move for­ward know­ing the rela­tion­ship I share with Master is still stable, is still mov­ing for­ward.  I want to believe that I can have emo­tions without com­ing across as fra­gile or unstable and in enga­ging new exper­i­ences with this new found approach I hope to demon­strate to both Master as well as myself that I am not fra­gile, that I am not unstable, that I simply have emo­tions from time to time.

Change can and does hap­pen over night and just by acknow­ledging my feel­ings and thoughts I have already star­ted to change and this leaves me with a rather pos­it­ive feel­ing one that provides me with self assur­ance and con­fid­ence, two traits which only help me on this jour­ney.  I know that I am still hes­it­ant to a degree, still nervous and uncer­tain; how­ever, I believe that this com­ing week­end with pet will allow me to fur­ther explore, to fur­ther grow and as long as I know Master sup­ports me expand­ing my hori­zons, as long as I know Master will be there for me should I exper­i­ence some­thing that dis­com­bob­u­lates me or sets me off kil­ter, I believe I will have little, if any dif­fi­culty step­ping out of that heav­ily wel­ded box.

~His

(Photograph: cour­tesy of www.mlmblog.com.)

The concept of priv­ileges was a topic of con­ver­sa­tion Master embarked on very early in our rela­tion­ship.  If I were to guess the mean­ing for such an early intro­duc­tion to what Master con­siders a priv­ilege versus what he con­siders to be a right, it would be that Master wanted me to com­pletely under­stand he was ser­i­ous and that he would not change his views and more import­antly so that I was enter­ing a rela­tion­ship know­ing everything up front.

Just over a year ago Master had me reflect on what I con­sider are priv­ileges in my life.  I was to provide 100 priv­ileges as a les­son for me, as a reminder of my place, that as Master’s slave everything I do and say and receive is given to me because Master per­mits it, not because it is my right.

When it comes to rights, it would be absurd to even think that I do not have any.  Yes, I am Master’s slave; how­ever, slavery is some­thing that is not legal in Canada and hope­fully every­where in the world (although I would not be so naïve as to think that there are not some places where slavery exists and is legal). The rela­tion­ship I share with Master is not one that is against my will, it is not one where I was a com­mod­ity, where I was sold and have no rights to leave.  My rela­tion­ship with Master is one I entered on my own voli­tion and one that I appre­ci­ate and thrive on and I would not want any other exchange with Master.

There is some­thing reas­sur­ing, com­fort­ing even, know­ing I have few rights and per­haps it is because the rights I do have enable me to feel safe with the exchange I have with Master all while allow­ing me to embrace my sub­missive nature.

My rights are basic:

• To live.
• To breathe.
• To receive healthy nourishment.
• To drink water.
• To sleep.
• To have no inten­tional harm placed upon my per­son, (emo­tional and physical).
• To have my feelings.
• To con­tinue to grow as a per­son, men­tally, phys­ic­ally, emo­tion­ally, educationally.
• To choose to stay with Master, to have the choice to be in this relationship.

After review­ing my rights the one that stands out most is the fact that it is my right to choose to be with Master.  Master does not force me to be in a rela­tion­ship with him, it is my choice.  I did not choose to fall in love with him, that came nat­ur­ally; how­ever, I have chosen to stay in this rela­tion­ship, to be his slave, to be his prop­erty.  I real­ise that many people might think my right to live super­sedes my right to choose; how­ever, I truly only included the first five rights to ensure that any­one read­ing my journal under­stood that my Master believes it is a right for me to be healthy and that under no cir­cum­stances do either Master or myself believe liv­ing is a priv­ilege, it is some­thing I have the right to, just as every­one does.  In fact the first five rights, for me and Master, fall under com­mon sense more than any­thing, still I wanted to include them to avoid any mis­un­der­stand­ing or unne­ces­sary con­cern. When I think of my rights I can not help but return to one’s basic needs and for me as long as I have my basic needs, everything else can and should be a priv­ilege when it comes to my life with Master.

And truth be told, I enjoy that so much of all I embrace, of all I take part in, are priv­ileges.  This does not mean there are not moments of frus­tra­tion or con­fu­sion for hav­ing to ask for, well everything can be tax­ing for both me as well as Master. And there are days when I do not ask, when I take for gran­ted an act that I was once per­mit­ted but not neces­sar­ily always gran­ted the right to do.  This of course is where com­mu­nic­a­tion comes into play, where com­mu­nic­a­tion becomes a key instru­ment in keep­ing the rela­tion­ship between me and Master bal­anced.  After four years of being together we are still learn­ing about each other, espe­cially now that we live under the same roof.  There are moments when I do or say some­thing that I should not have and I rely on Master to cor­rect me; how­ever, there are times when I slip and I have learned that I need to cor­rect my own beha­viour and or share my thoughts with Master, to com­mu­nic­ate with Master my confusion.

Defining and accept­ing what are my rights versus what are my priv­ileges was a very easy and con­cise exchange.  Consistently fol­low­ing through, observing and obey­ing said priv­ileges is where I some­times fal­ter.  Thank good­ness I am determ­ined and thank good­ness Master has patience for my learn­ing espe­cially since I feel as though the whole priv­ileges vs. rights topic has been at the fore­front of our most recent discussions.

Lately I have felt slightly detached, not from Master him­self, but from the form­al­ity of our exchange.  When the topic of priv­ileges was ori­gin­ally dis­cussed I felt an intense sen­sa­tion of own­er­ship and with that a sense of rules and rules def­in­itely are some­thing I thrive from.  As time has passed and we are now liv­ing under the same roof, I feel as though the rules have relaxed, slightly,  and this in turn has shif­ted some priv­ileges to a whole new column of „not sure“.

My „not sure“ column comes to life most often when Master answers one of my requests with a „sure, do what you want slave“ answer.  My inter­pret­a­tion of said sen­tence means I do not have to ask to do said activ­ity.  This of course is com­pletely wrong and it was not until last night that I real­ised  just how incor­rect my thoughts were.  The real­ity is our rela­tion­ship is no longer new and Master and I are at a place in our rela­tion­ship where it is expec­ted of me to know what are priv­ileges and what are rights and whether Master answers a request with, „Yes slave you may“ or „sure, do what you want slave“ the priv­ilege remains just that, a priv­ilege.  The train­ing regard­ing what is a priv­ilege and what is a right took place four years ago and Master inves­ted a tre­mend­ous amount of time ensur­ing I under­stood my place, that I under­stood all expect­a­tions.  The leg work has been com­plete and although every now and then one or two new priv­ileges might sur­face, leav­ing room for dis­cus­sion and under­stand­ing, for the most part I know bet­ter, I know what I am allowed and what I need to ask per­mis­sion for and it is time I take account­ab­il­ity for my actions and step up to the plate of being owned, of being prop­erty, of respect­ing my place in the rela­tion­ship I share with Master.

I think it is easy to fall into the „it’s not me, it’s you“ debate; how­ever, if there is any­thing I have prided myself on it is tak­ing respons­ib­il­ity for my actions, for my lack of actions and I believe this is the per­fect time and place to remind myself of the found­a­tion of me and Master and remind myself that I wanted few rights and many priv­ileges and that I want to be with Master, that I want to explore, grow and love both myself and Master through­out our journey.

~His