There's a tempest in the teacup...

Mistress is going through the first part of the rituals around putting little S to sleep. When she's done with reading stories and giving her the bottle, I'll take over and nurse and rock her to sleep in her dark bedroom, before I lay her down in her little bed. I try to have her half-awake when I put her down, so that she'll know what's happening and wont come traipsing out again after five minutes, looking for me. But it's a balance; too awake, and she'll make a game out of it, and it'll take another half hour.

When she's finally gone to sleep, Mistress and I have an hour or so before we go to bed, and that's the best part of the whole day. Usually we don't do much, we cuddle on the couch in front of the tv, and drink some tea before bed. It's our time to talk, our time to re-connect, to hug without being screamed at. Understandably, anything that postpone that time is highly annoying. And yet, any stress or rush will get little S worked up and angry, so somehow, we both have to accept the time it takes, and make the most of it.

That's one of the reason we've split it in two. There has been periods of time where we've taken every other night instead, and other periods when it's been only one of us all nights. Right now this works best. You can only take so much of too tired, difficult 2,5-year old and not lose your temper, so switching it up has it's advantages.

But just now, Mistress came out alone from the nursery, with a deep, irritated sigh. I asked if I could help, and got a grumpy "No!" as answer. She went out in the kitchen and started cutting something, and I figure little S had declared hunger and wanted fruit.

It's not my fault. It's not something I could have prevented, or helped with, or done differently. In my head, I realise Mistress isn't really annoyed with me - she's annoyed with the child, for very good reasons. Not to mention that she prepared the fruit, went back in, and now are back to reading stories.

But my stomach clench up and ache, as do my throat. My neck muscles tense. I can feel my whole body prepare for attack. I hate that tone of voice. I hate hearing her being disgruntled. I hate her anger, her temper, her irritation. It scares me, it fills me with despair and fear, and it makes me want to cry, to fight, to run.

And I hate that I react this way. I haven't yet figure out how not to care.

Now I need to relax and gather myself, so that I'm able to be calm and balanced and full of patience when they call for me from the nursery. And I hate that too - that I can't get a hug, or a reassurance, or something. And also, I have to get over it so that I don't pick a fight the first thing I do when little S has finally gone to sleep, because then it'll ruin the whole evening, and probably tomorrow too, and we can't afford that.

I'm not good at self-soothing. Or reasonable responses to others anger. I'm just not good at it.

The taming of the... horse?

One big thing that confused me and upset me in the beginning was the sex. She didn't want me, I thought. Whenever I tried something to please her and show her I loved her, I was met with empty stares, or her shrugging me off. When I got upset by the rejection, she got defensive and angry. And I didn't get it. I mean, I did everything right. Exactly as he taught me.

Yeah.

It took me a while to figure that one out, which is a bit embarrassing. But I got it, after a long while. The details I got pretty fast, I quickly stopped doing most of the things that annoyed her. But I didn't really got the big picture for maybe a year or so (I said it was embarrassing...)


I thought she destroyed me, spoiled me in the worst meaning of the word. That she taught me how to do things differently, and in the process made me worse, less desirable, less valued. She didn't want the things he had taught me made me loved and valuable, she made me not do them, and all I could see was that she would eventually stop value me and stop love me and get rid of me. So I resisted, as much as I could.

Until I finally got it.

I finally got that what she was teaching me was how to be good for her, how to do things the way she wanted them done. It was harder to get, I think in my own defence, because a lot of what she wanted was for me not to do things. To be still. To be receptive. To listen and follow. To take what she gave, without resistance. To let her set the pace, let her decide, ler her initiate things, and follow her lead. To do that, I had to dare let go and stop doing stuff, and it took some courage, actually.

An analogy that I've come to think of is of me as a horse. A fine, well-trained horse. With my boyfriend, he kept me as a racing horse. Full of force, speed, nerves. Constantly on tip-toe, constantly moving and trying to break free, running in any direction. He liked that, he liked that his job was to point me in a direction and let me run. He, I think, liked the drama. Even if it also meant that the horse in question would rear, and sometimes run into things.

Racehorse

And when Mistress took over, she didn't want the horse to be a racing horse anymore. She wanted it to be a dressage horse. As fine, as well trained, as powerful. But with a quiet grace and calm and all that power well collected and under minute control. But to make a racing horse in to a dressage horse, you first must make it stop running around prancing...

Dressage

I don't know if it's a good analogy, but it works for me. It explains that confused helpless feeling I got when I realised all that stuff I did, things I thought required of me, wasn't wanted and I had to stop doing them. What good is a slow, untrained race horse? It's dog food. It took me a while to realise Mistress wasn't throwing my talent away because she didn't want me - she simply wanted me to excel at other things.

Nowadays, I lay perfectly still when she beats me. Or well, no I don't, but I try, and I know that's what she wants from me. She doesn't want visual or oral evidence of how she's hurting me, she wants me to be still and accept it. So I do. And I very rarely initiate sex, and if I do it's with great care and low expectations, because I know I please her more that way. She don't mind me being horny and wanting her, but she doesn't expect it from me all the time, and she do want me not to push it. So I don't. And so on and so forth.

Fears

When I left my ex and moved in with Mistress, we already had a power exchange in place. We had come to terms with me being submissive, and she had realised she enjoyed dominating me. Still, it was a new thing for us to be alone together, for her to have me all to herself, and to me to not being torn between two conflicting masters. It was a huge relief, but also kind of scary. We fought a lot, horrible, angst-filled conflicts that could last for days, flaring up again and again. They always centerd on the same theme, the same one we fight about to this day to be honest; "Do you really want me?"

For me, it was "do you really want my submission? Do you want me in this fashion, in this way that I'm trying to give myself up to you? Do you want me enough to be careful of me, to keep me and treat me well? Do you? Do you really really? Really?"

For her it was the same, I think, but the other way around: "Do you really want to be controlled? Are you really ok with me doing horrible things to you? Are you going to tell me I'm a horrible person and leave me? You can't really want this, can you?"

And we desperately wanted the other one to soothe our fears, without being very good at listening to the answers...