Joy and pain.
Life is both of these things in varying amounts, every day until we die.
Bob Ross, bless his happy little tree heart, said that the dark times in life make you appreciate the good times. I am paraphrasing, but still.
Wolf worries about hurting me.
“Life is pain highness, anyone who tells you differently is selling you something.” Princess Bride.
It’s true. The world is a really awful place. You don’t have to look far to find things that maim and hurt our psyches. Entire kingdoms are built conquering and ranked by how many weapons they have. And if that isn’t enough. Try posting something about love on a Facebook page. Those who say “nay” swarm like murder hornets. Men are garbage, women are crazy, love is a lie.
Also, there’s murder hornets.
I have known love, looks a lot more like acceptance than traditional fairy tale love.
Takes some work, but it’s worth it.
I read once that ‘everyone has baggage, you just have to find the people willing to help you unpack yours.’
That’s astute. I don’t think I wrote it. Probably quoted it a few times.
20 years ago a very smart man sat me down and told me that most of the baggage I carry around doesn’t even belong to me.
I have never forgotten this, but sometimes it gets really hard to tell the difference.
So I need help.
I do not make a secret of the fact that I am in therapy. Again.
Been going on and off since childhood. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
The one I’m with now is working, but it is because I am working at it.
She was with me before, 8 years ago when I left my husband.
Hilarious story, he forced me to go to therapy during the sisterwife debacle and had no idea what was going to happen, that I would have a safe, sane person I trusted telling me gently that what was going on in that house was not right at all. I had been in it so long, I couldn’t see.
She was so busy digging me out of there we never got to the reasons I ended up there in the first place.
Cut to 8 years later, cue a global pandemic amid a major upheaval I was going through anyway, and I decided to do some work on myself. I mentioned yesterday I am always learning, changing and evolving. I took a couple years off and backslid almost into oblivion on that island, but Wolf found me, and I left, and I have some work to do.
There’s a lovely song by The Bleachers. I Wanna Get Better.
I didn’t know I was broken until I wanted to change.
I knew I was broken. I like being broken, in the right situations.
Now back up.
Waaaaaay up.
I said Wolf was afraid of hurting me.
I have made no secret about the nature of my relationship with him. He is my Dom, I am his submissive. Hurting me is kinda a thing he does. For our mutual pleasure of course. And he is the King of pushing all the right buttons, reading my reactions and knowing what I need before I know it, and with him I have finally attained subspace. We both like it when I am his broken princess.
He is also the King of aftercare. It is a paramount aspect to any rough play relationship, and he is ahhhhmazing at all of it.
So, when he brought up hurting me, I knew what he meant but I giggled anyways. I am a brat.
I could ramble on about the management of expectations and giving your happiness to someone else to hold onto and why that is a really bad idea. How hurt people hurt people and detailed explanations as to why someone else’s opinion of you is none of your business and living in the present is the only way to be happy etc etc yada fucking yada. In fact I have done that, at great length, for approximately 6 years and 600+ blog posts.
But what it boils down to is this.
We are going to get hurt. And no matter how hard you try not to hurt someone else, its gonna happen.
I have said some seriously offside shit to this man that I absolutely adore.
Did I mean to? No.
Certain turns of phrase and behaviors are triggering for him. I have mine too. He has said shit to me that cut me really deeply and scared the shit out of me. Because I have baggage from when someone else said/did that to me.
Example.
We both have different views on the term ‘friends’.
Seems like not a big deal, right?
It triggers me from past experiences when men I wanted to be in a relationship with decided they still wanted me around without the imaginary effort or label of a relationship. To me it feels like I am being dismissed.
Wolf has spent the vast majority of his life either too busy or too misunderstood to have good solid friendships.
So when I balked at his statement that we would always be friends, my reaction to being triggered, triggered him.
We got through it.
Here is the thing I realized. I am in therapy both professional and with him.
Both of these things hurt sometimes. I am trying to undo past traumas and triggers and unpack some really ugly baggage.
The thing I get with him is the same thing I get after rough sex. Aftercare.
We have decided to be blatantly honest with each other. This is not always going to be the prettiness of little lies, but it is so much better.
He is teaching me that tears are a good thing and subspace is bliss.
We have painful moments and we soothe each other when they are over.
No one is every going to be perfectly healed. You can live in a bubble and never be triggered, sure.
But that is no kind of life now is it.
I am blessed with a loving partner who wants to understand why I do the things I do, and if those things I do are self-destructive or painful he wants to help me deal with them. And I will tell you right now, healing is messy painful work. So is a BDSM session. But both are cathartic and fucking phenomenal with the right person.
And he has this maddening kinda mean thing he does where he coos at me in this deep sexy voice when I am being ridiculous, I love it. I love him.
