The concept of service

I started a thread in a FetLife-group about service, and feel like I should write something in it, but every time I try it turns out way to long in my head. And if it's to long in my head, it will most probably be very much to long as a post in a discussion. It will have to be a blog post instead. Maybe I can distil some of it into something coherent later.

The thing is, I don't like service. I don't like the word, but it's not on a phonetic level, much like with responsibility I'm perfectly aware of what it means, and just plain don't like it. Actually, responsibility and service touch upon much of the same issues for me.

One of the posts in the discussion mentioned service as being "available for action" and that struck a chord. I can't do that. I can't be "available" for an unclear period of time. I can't wait on anyone, in either sense of the word. I can barely keep my focus in a conversation, and if my fellow conversationalist take to long a breathing pause between sentences, I'm likely to wander off and do something else in the meantime. I have a very short working memory and attention span, and honestly, waiting exhausts me.

So I can't sit by Mistress' feet and wait for a hand gesture or the right time to do something. I can't keep track of the water level in her drinking glass - I mean, I can barely keep track of my own head, and that's screwed on tight. I can't take responsibility for her comfort level, period. She'll have to do that herself. Not because I don't want to, but because I'm extremely bad at it, and get sick from stress and exhaustion when I try. And also, before I get sick, I get really really irritable and snarky.

What I can do is sit by her feet and rest. Not on stand by, not waiting, just sitting. I can be turned off and not do anything. That works perfectly fine. But I can't do that and also remember a steak in the oven, hanging the laundry when the cycle is done, or checking whether Mistress would like a refill on her coffee. If I'm off I'm off, and want get started again without some kind of cue.

That cue might very well be an order, there's no problems there, but it has to be a distinct order, something that is loud enough to get my attention, and a discreet hand signal or an empty coffee mug isn't enough. The cue might be an egg timer telling me to check the steak or the silence when the washing machine stops (actually, we have a community laundromat, and no machine of our own, but if we did have one) or something as internal as me needing to pee or getting a leg cramp. But there has to be something, something tangible and clear. Then I get going again, and do all those things I need to do, for a while, until I rest again. There's no middle ground. There's no waiting. There's no "being available".

Of course, this has to do with ADHD. I don't think this is true for everybody with the diagnosis, it can manifest in a thousand ways, but I do think that for me the deficit in working memory and attention span, as well as the tendency to only have two energy levels, full speed or full stop, makes "service" a difficult concept. It seems to require a kind of constant, low grade attention directed at the Owner and that persons needs and possible future needs, and I can't give anything that kind of attention. Not that I don't want to, but it takes a ridiculous amount of effort when I try, and I still do it badly.

I do better at obedience. Some people in the discussion implied that all kinds of obedience was a form of service, but for me it's easier to see it as two different things. I can be obedient. I might have trouble remembering rules, and sometimes my lack of inhibition and impulse control (ADHD again) gets the better of me, but I never intend to disobey. And a clear order face to face I always obey.

It's the forethought I can't do. Foreseeing needs and trying to fulfil them.Or doing something extra good, or whatever. I always do everything as good as I can - trying to increase that in the name of service makes me cry from performance anxiety.

I need to learn not to over-achieve, not to take responsibility for others needs, not to think my worth lies solely in performance. The concept of "service" seems to do nothing for me in that regard, it's more a hindrance than a help. Obedience and control, however, makes me peaceful and content and happy, and thus a much better slut and property and person to be around.

The funny thing though is that I love fetching stuff for Mistress. I love doing things that makes her happy, or more comfortable, or makes something she wants to achieve easier. I love helping her and I love it when she's happy with me. But it's better for both of us if I can do that when the opportunities presents themselves to me, or when she orders me to it, and not having me walking around with constant anxiety over whether or not I provide a high enough level of service. Because that's just draining.

I think it might matter that I'm naturally inclined to always do my best even if it kills me, to always take responsibility for everything including things I have no way of controlling, and to immediately be acutely aware of anyone else's discomfort and feel driven to make everything better. That fire really doesn't need any more fuel on it, such as me thinking I need to deliver "service". That fire needs some water and a good stomping, nothing else.

So I think I'll keep on feeling controlled and knowing I obey, and trust that Mistress will guide me where she wants me to go, without me going out of my way in making things more complicated then they already are. She wont get a service-slut this year either. Maybe some other year, if I can pick one up for her on any local fetish party. But it wont me.

Being punished?

Late at evening yesterday while Mistress brushed her teeth, I crawled in to the bed, and only halfway remembered that I hadn't asked permission to do so. When she stepped in to the room I was sitting up, legs covered by the duvet, naked. "May I go to bed, Mistress?" I asked, the right wording, but totally wrong position.

"No, you may not" she answered, and I got my self up a little grudgingly and went over to her so that she could put the dog collar around my neck. "Bend over" she said and had me standing by the end of the bed with my hands on the mattress, and my butt sticking up. I stood with my feet firmly together and looked down on my toes. She pulled my panties upwards, and started to whip my ass cheeks with a belt she'd found hanging over the wardrobe door.

And I guess this was a punishment. There's some discussions going on on FetLife on punishments and what type of punishment people use and what differentiate punishment from "funishment" and some people say things like "I can't be punished with pain because I'm a masochist" or "I'm a masochist but the punishments are way more than I like" or, the all time favorite "I don't get punished because I'm not a child"... Love that one.

Anyway, nothing of that fits when it comes to us. I'm a masochist and a painslut and pain and corporeal punishment works just fine as a deterrent for me. But that doesn't mean I get overly harsh corrections. The things Mistress does to show me my place is typically less severe than what we do in a more playful mood.

Yesterday she whipped me hard, but not extremely in any way, I might gotten slightly reddish but nothing more than that. It hurt, a lot, but I liked it. It was dominant. It was sexy. It made me feel owned and cared for and appreciated. I made me feel sexy. It reminded me of her power, and of our respective places in our relationships. And it reminded me not to get in to the bed without asking permission first.

That's the thing. I might very well actually in some ways enjoy the things she does to remind me and correct me, even while she's doing them. I might appreciate the dominance and the sexiness and the safety that gives me. That, however, doesn't take away from the fact that it also serves to remind me of a rule and ensure that I keep following it. The same action might have several functions, that do not diminish each other.

Afterwards she told me to get up and did give me permission to go to bed, and I thanked her, first immediately while I curtsied and respectfully said "thank you, Mistress" but also later, in bed, while we were spooning and about to go to sleep. I thank her for taking care of me, for caring about me, for caring about us and, maybe, simply for being who she is and doing what she wants to do. I love that she can beat me whenever she want to, and when she thinks I deserve it and when she doesn't care if I've deserved it or not, simply because she likes it. I love belonging to her. Maybe that's the part I like about punishment, even if I at the same time try to avoid it as best as I can. 

Distractions...

I got into this discussion on FetLife about responsibility. I claim I have none, and was met with a chorus of voices calling me anything from "lazy" to "sock puppet" to accusing me of having an "inflated sense of entitlement". I went to bed, a lot of people across the globe wrote things, now I'm awake and should be studying, but have instead answered in the thread, and find myself checking it every five minutes to see if I've gotten any responses.

No. I'm going to take my non-responsible head and focus on the task at hand. I might not feel as if I'm responsible for handing in this written assignment, but I will most certainly suffer if it's not done. Therefore - back to the paper on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy after Bariathric Surgery that I'm supposed to be reading.

Not so normal, after all...

I've been hanging out on the "Owner&Property"-thread at Fetlife for a few days. The conversation there is interesting, and centers around things I can relate to. And then I saw a reference from one of the regulars to the fact that the rest of Fet refers to them as extreme and somewhat crazy.

So okey. When I've finally found some people I can relate to, who seems to live ordinary lives that in important aspect is similar to my own, they are the crazy people?? That can't be right, because I'm like them, and I'm not in any way extreme...

Yeah. Well. Or something.

Not that it matter what anonymous "other people" on Fetlife thinks, but what I realised is how much it is that I take for granted, how I belittle this thing that me and my Mistress do, how in lack of references I've been quietly assuming that we are on the vanilla side of the kinky spectrum. Especially since the baby made it harder to play rough, and made us much more mindful of how we spend our resources - it's not really practical to put me in a deep subspace that lasts for half a day, if that means I can't function as a mom (and to me, it does mean that). So, our play has lessened, our sex life is sporadic, and our power exchange is nowadays most of the time a comfortable and ingrained way of relating to each other. It is so so easy for me to take it for granted.

But. I don't have limits (although there's lot of limitations). There's no area or subject that isn't hers to control. I don't do anything new or outside the schedule without asking her permission. I rapport regularly every day what I do and where I am. I don't buy things without asking permission. I can't eat what I want. If I don't comply, she can and do punish me, as she sees fit. She controls me sexually in every detail, I can't touch myself alone, and I can't orgasm without permission, even during sex. She owns me, completely.

This has been true all along. It's just that I'm so used with it by now, I don't reflect about it being odd in any way. Doesn't all couple live like this? And I realise they don't, and remembered a time when we didn't either, and that there actually were limits in the beginning, there were areas that she couldn't control. And then they fell away, one by one, and now that's such a long time ago that I had almost forgot it. I'm not trying to say that it is extreme in any way, but that it's not as vanilla and as common as I sometimes think.

I'm glad I remembered. I makes me appreciate what we have now even more. I'm so happy and thankfull that she wants me, that she wants to own me, and that there's nothing in my life she doesn't want.