I appre­ci­ate read­ing ran­dom online journ­als, peek­ing my head into other people’s exper­i­ences. Unfortunately I have noticed that numer­ous people have dis­closed some level of abuse, whether that be phys­ical or psy­cho­lo­gical.  The act of abuse itself often raises a level of aggres­sion for­eign to me; how­ever, what infuri­ates me even more is the con­stant idea of being silent; of not speak­ing up and end­ing that cycle of thought.

Abuse is every­where, regard­less of eco­nomic status, regard­less of eth­ni­city, regard­less of rela­tion­ship style.  Abuse abso­lutely does occur within the kink com­munity even though many people find it rather chal­len­ging to define what abuse is and what it is not.  Recently my Master wrote a rather extens­ive and detailed entry regard­ing defin­i­tions and laws all con­cern­ing abuse and I encour­age every­one to take the time to read through all he shared for it is inter­est­ing and informative.

The laws are often dif­fi­cult to under­stand though and after read­ing Master’s art­icle I too felt a little puzzled and uncer­tain.  With that said though, what I walked away from after review­ing all Master shared and from reflect­ing on what I have seen and exper­i­enced myself, is that abuse is never accept­able and that under no cir­cum­stances does any­one have the right to touch me, to invade my per­son, to inflict any­thing upon me without my con­sent and if he or she does than it is abuse.  And if any­one should cause such abuse to my phys­ical and or emo­tional self, I will not remain silent.

I. Will. Not. Remain. Silent!

My heightened emo­tion regard­ing silence bubbled this morn­ing when my very best friend tele­phoned me, shar­ing with me that last night her boy­friend hit her.  My imme­di­ate reac­tion was that of pro­tec­tion, love and anger. I was angry that someone invaded my friends per­sonal space, that the man she loves, the man she trusts, the man who she has called a friend, a com­pan­ion, a lover for over three years caused harm to her body. And if the phys­ical insult was not enough, he also cre­ated an imme­di­ate loss of trust as well as a feel­ing of worth­less­ness and insec­ur­ity and to com­plete the cycle of abuse he also intim­id­ated her cre­at­ing a sense of fear — fear of speak­ing up, of defend­ing her­self with words by shar­ing what happened with the right people.

I am very proud of my friend for not allow­ing that fear to para­lyze her for she did call the R.C.M.P. and charges were laid.  I am extremely proud of my friend for call­ing me and shar­ing her story, for allow­ing the exper­i­ence to have a voice.  What makes me sad though is that now, many hours after the fact, she is ques­tion­ing her actions, won­der­ing if call­ing the police was the right decision, that maybe she should have remained silent, allow­ing him back into her life, dis­miss­ing this incid­ent as an error in judg­ment, that it was simply an accident.

My friend is not alone in her thoughts.  After read­ing numer­ous journ­als, after coun­sel­ing numer­ous people who have exper­i­enced abuse, after exper­i­en­cing it myself, I can not help but won­der if we are, in some way, con­di­tioned to keep the unpleas­ant­ries of our per­sonal life private.  I won­der if maybe we are con­di­tioned to give people another chance and if we are how destruct­ive might that be to our well being?

Five years ago I had what I can only describe as a light bulb moment.  I had been work­ing in a group home, coun­sel­ing adoles­cents who exhib­ited viol­ent beha­viours and dur­ing one of my shifts a young man phys­ic­ally assaul­ted me.  We had been engaged in a ther­apy ses­sion and I had asked him a ques­tion regard­ing his child­hood.  My ques­tion appeared to trig­ger some­thing neg­at­ive and instead of verbally com­mu­nic­at­ing his feel­ings he rose from his chair, reached out grabbing my hair and using all his force yanked me to the ground, strad­dling me with his legs all while punch­ing my face, throat and chest.  The assault las­ted approx­im­ately 1 – 2 minutes at which point the young man was pulled from my body and escor­ted out of my office.

Immediately after the assault the police arrived and asked me if I would like to press charges.  My ini­tial response was yes. Yes I wanted to press charges; yes I wanted the young man to be held account­able for his actions; yes I wanted the other chil­dren as well as my col­leagues to under­stand that the abuse I just exper­i­enced was not accept­able and that I had every right to be safe. I had every right to pro­tect my per­son.  I wanted to be brave, to use my voice, inter­est­ingly though, I did not.  Instead of say­ing yes, instead of stand­ing up to the young man’s bul­ly­ing tac­tics I said no.  I did not press charges that day. I did not speak up against abuse; instead I was silent.

A few days later, a fel­low col­league approached me, curi­ous as to why I did not press charges.  Shamefully I admit­ted that I was scared, that I felt as though it was my fault that he hit me. What is even more per­verse is that I genu­inely felt as though what he did was not that bad and that if he had really hurt me such as break a limb, than I would charge him because that would really be abuse.  I was stunned with my words and as they slipped past my lips I felt an imme­di­ate sense of nausea.  My fel­low co-worker sensed my unease and yet she did not hug me, instead she guided me to a mir­ror, ask­ing me to look at myself.  My right eye was swollen, my lip cut and bruised and a clear out­line of the young man’s fist was left just below my left col­lar bone.  I was in awe at just how dam­aged my body was; how­ever, I was fur­ther stunned when I real­ised just how dam­aged my psyche was for as I stood there, allow­ing my fin­ger­tips to trace the out­line of each welt, I heard and acknow­ledged what I had known the minute I refused to lay charges: I had demon­strated an abused per­sons beha­viour; I had per­petu­ated the cycle of abuse by not stop­ping it, by not stand­ing up to it.

A few months later that same young man held me host­age in my office, spend­ing two hours beat­ing me as well as threat­en­ing to kill me.  When the police even­tu­ally con­vinced him to release me I did not hes­it­ate to press charges even though many of my peers as well as my super­visor told me not to, that I should excuse his beha­viour because he has exper­i­enced a chal­len­ging life, that it was not his fault.  This time I did not allow to abuse myself with silence and I have never silenced myself since.

Silence can be debil­it­at­ing.  We are often taught to be quiet, to dis­miss beha­viours.  I do not dis­miss abuse. I do not believe any­one should.  This does not mean people do not make mis­takes. We all do. Some mis­takes though are not excus­able. Some have life alter­ing con­sequences and if any­one should abuse me, abuse any­one, the con­sequences are sig­ni­fic­ant and so should be.

No one has the right to harm another human being. No on has the right to put his or her hands or any other body part onto another without con­sent. No one!  And if someone does invade your space, if someone invades my space I will not be silent. Whether you are owned or not, whether you have a Master or a hus­band, whether you have agreed to light spank­ings or hard spank­ings, whether you have agreed to face slap­ping or being hit with a paddle, if any­thing hap­pens to your per­son that you have not given con­sent to, that is abuse and that is some­thing you do not have to accept; have to keep to yourself.

Use your voice. Words are powerful.

~His

(Photograph: cour­tesy of Selkie)

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.)