i have been in exhile all these years. i stopped writing, speaking often, therapy. i stopped talking, stopped texting, and i had a good look for a long time.

i have found that my own Shadow side is wanting to matter to people more than i do.

As much as i feared there was a hysterical sweaty toothed man man, a woman who would loose my mind under such circumstances, instead it felt more shameful that my shadow side was simply to matter.

What i have learned is i can be The Best Fucking Thing you have ever had, the best drug, the best fuck, the best cook, maid, laundress. i can be the smile on your face every single day. i can be the best cocksucker, the best mix of naughty and serious, the best audience, the best friend.

i am nearly always the only unconditional love you have ever known.

What i have learned is we can both mutually agree i’m the Best Babygirl, slave, woman you know….and you can still not want to be with me. i thought if i was Best at the Things that Mattered Most to each person that it would form some kind of Guarantee, that of course you would do what i need and ask for and promise me forever in the same ways i wanted forever. This is probably one of those things (thanks autisim, fuck you) that everyone else knows. Because here i thought if i became everything you ever wanted it meant i deserved Security.

I have learned people choose lots of things over me, far more destructive drugs, mostly. The 7 Deadly sins. Narcissism. Hoarding. Garden variety drugs.

None of those things had anything to do with me. i’m not powerful enough to change the free will of another person, and anyone is able to change paths at any time. The reason i felt so betrayed was because i wasn’t able to understand how to hold something softly, in my palms. i couldn’t understand the Buddhist principle that a part of love is understanding this truth.

And so i did a lot of soul work…

i have learned to come to terms with never having a child this lifetime. i reached out to my own child i raised for 15 years, and he doesn’t want to talk to be because i am a lesbian. Through my brother i know his memories of me raising him are all good, that he has my sarcastic and grim humor, that he had to compartmentalize.

He is in my face, talking low. Much as i prefer that to the hours of screaming, it is infinitely more dangerous. The only thing holding me back is the lifetime of training.

This crazy place, the lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of silence, lack of privacy, strip searching myself for every word and every phrase has gotten to me. It must have, because i very calmly and rationally point out that these are the very items one would use alongside his constant shows of force, to break someone down in enhanced interrogation techniques. That there are reasons why people don’t get questioned for a week straight. There are reasons you shouldn’t lock someone in and then force them to listen to the screaming.

i am very quiet now. Deadly calm.

The last time i felt this way was at the very end of the kidnapping, the night i decided i wanted her to kill me. She left me no means to manage it myself. She could have at least used logging chain around my throat, instead of my ankle, and we could have enjoyed our time together a whole lot more, a real game of chicken. Instead, she had found a blog three years old somehow, broken into it, and reads dramatic excerpts aloud. She is eyes sparkling dangerous. Good.

i have made her suffer all day, all night.

She has tried everything to make me cry, belt marks and welts cover everything but my face and head. Finally, spent, after more hours of working me over she throws the belt on the floor.

i have never felt more triumphant in my life.

Now, the finale. As she was in my face, talking low, i decide this is the time.

Very calmly, i say, “I would rather be her whore, than your wife.”

A door slam keeps me from seeing anything that happens after that.

i am having this flashback in the shower, in the nursery’s bathroom. It is on the tip of my tongue to bluntly tell my brother the same damn thing. The shower was an effort to recompose myself. Don’t say the thing. Don’t say the thing you stupid bitch. There are bruises coming up all over my thigh, and i managed to shave over carpet burn. i try to absent my mind, my fingers slides over my body making sure everything is silky soft. We all know i would trade my life for the babies all over again, if it was my life at all.

i wash a second time. And then a third. God damn it, why am i constantly dirty?

i try to manage to find words, kind words, true words. What do i really need him to know right now? What do i need to remind him of? With great care, i try and piece the words together. Finished trying to clean myself, i wash the shower walls immediately, wipe out the sink and vanity after i am done with that. i put on make up, panties, and then walk downstairs in the empty house to get my dress out of the dryer. By the time i think i about the cameras, it is far too late for me to do anything about that. i fight myself. i want to shoot him a bird. Unhelpful. The only way to deal with the constant monitoring is to simultaneously forget they are there and also never forget they are there. It is how we managed it lifelong. That is how one can be walking around in lace panties and nothing else without thinking about it. i feel about him jerking off to it the same way i feel about men reading here and jerking off. i am amused somehow, though i never think about it when i’m writing.

Mentally, i return to the kind pep talk i am trying to create for him. Include words like leadership and valor, remind him that he was raised better than to leave people on the battlefield. Remind him as much as he saw wanton disregard and explosive rage constantly, he also saw my constant self restraint. He saw me running a household from the time i was 12. He saw me step up to the plate, time and time again, and he needs to understand that i didn’t make every possible sacrifice for him to destroy his own children. Twice. He is angry he didn’t save me. He should be. i don’t know much anymore, but i absolutely know that i was always worth saving.

Maybe that is what i came here to learn of myself.

When he ends up not letting me get more than two sentences out without screaming, i finally snap. The worst part is the words he is using are sometimes so rational, even kindly. “Do you think you deserve to be feeling my wrath instead of the whores that caused it?” He is screaming so loud there is nowhere to go. He answers his own questions. “No! Not you don’t. Look at you, all beautiful and smelling nice after busting your ass all day!” They come out sounding like an accusation. i suppose they are.

This has been going on for hours. There is absolutely nothing i can say or do to make it stop.

i’m sure the chorus would sing, “But why did you stay?” Are. You. Guys. Crazy?

i see red and i snap and i am absolutely ruthless. i am cold and defiant. i tell him the goddamn reason i am willing to make myself lay down across a bed and take what scares me and hurts me and won’t let me hide is just so i don’t EVER have to listen to a motherfucker scream at me again. That is how much i hate the screaming. That is how far i will go to escape it.

i tell him he has no leadership, and no goddamn self control. If he wanted to know what power really felt like, he would develop the stance that no one and nothing was going to make him scream and rage and pound walls. i tell him that he will never have the control he wants because he is lazy and selfish and an enormous Dick. He says he is unsure about that. Sounds like i married the same qualities and she got ten good years.

i’m not sure i have ever wanted to punch someone in the face more. He’s going to pay for that.

i tell him how often i want to punch walls, how much i have wanted to punch people in the last months. i tell him that before the word Release was said to me, i raised my voice at her once in ten years. And then immediately paid for it, as what right. Just. Her turning around and screaming at me for hours, let alone months would have been uncouth.

i told him he doesn’t control himself long enough to even get what he wants, let alone get her to share his bed for ten years. i tell him he saw me work from 6am until 2am for years on end. As a child, a teen, an adult. i didn’t hoist the work and effort onto everyone else, blame them for my lack. i’m not sorry that i learned when to shut up, that i had to tightly control myself in ways he can never even imagine for all my life. i would rather be this than have become him. If anything is my shadow side, my biggest fear, it is to have become him. The opposite and equal to me.

No longer able to care that my words sting, that i know i will hurt him, i let myself have the occasion. i am going to speak the truth, in return for all the times he has called me my mother’s name in spite, in cruelty. Unlike his, my own cruelty is always true.

“I am twice the man you will ever be.”

The next thing i remember is waking up in the nursery, on top of the still made futon, with a quilt wrapped around me like a cocoon. i am wearing different clothes, not something i have ever put together as an outfit. i don’t want to remember anything anymore.

i know i’m going to have to get…reset. i don’t know how, who, but i know why. i also know what i attract in this state, what i have attracted for always. It is the very rare occurring event when i am attracted to anyone, and i am disinterested with anyone who cannot simply Take. i have no reason to believe that i need anything more than a few rounds with the darkness. i’m not sure how it will manifest but i can feel it coming at me, building up, just out of my sight. i feel like i could die before anyone would understand anything, do anything, be anything for me.

My brother had asked why i had not been treated like diamonds. He meant, of course, to make a statement about my worth and the pronouncement of value over it. But i have been treated like a diamond-constantly put under enormous pressure and then taken. Raided. Ohhh ed over. Promised. Discarded for something that needs less constant force to become, even when it is less satisfying, even when it is the charade of what you hope to be over the who you have becomes. You can always buy something cheaper than diamonds. Everyone knows that. It was me who didn’t demand to be treated like a luxury, like something special, even if you wear it every day. i will absolutely never make that mistake again.

Day 2:

We have not slept since i arrived. His house is the total choas i expected, with a garbage hoard i did not. He pours us both a scotch. i said a quiet prayer of thanks for the Masters, in that i have learned how to have a few scotches and never loose my pleasant demeanor. The energy changes as he pours us both a drink. We have never had a drink before together, save once, but i know the drink is not something i can refuse.

No matter. i’ve been awake for the last 28 hours. He doesn’t want our first day to end ever.

i manage to confidently accept my drink. My brother spares no expense on his little luxuries everywhere, lost in the piles and mounds and boxes. We stay up until he goes to work, and i spend the next six solid hours cleaning his kitchen. There was not a single dish unused. Everything had been sitting for months, had to be scrubbed, then loaded into the dishwasher. Ten full loads. Then i found a box of dishes that he apparently was going to take to work to wash them in the industrial thing and never did. Four more.

i go right back to counting everything, in case he asks. There are all the normal details of a house being thrown at me at once, again, when i don’t have my feet underneath me. Again. No matter. He insists the doors with double deadbolts stay locked at all times. There are 3 doors, two have the same key. If the key gets moved, i am walking around like a crazy person trying to get out and remembering the last time i lived in exactly this. The third door exits to the garage, which is large enough that there would be no way to open it and make a run for it before he could make the door stop. When he gives me a tour of the house he points out these details, can do everything from his phone. i think he is preening, a proud peacock. He has not one but two roombas. He can turn on lights and monitor everything. Later, i realize he is still every bit as hyper focused on me, and how that tends to work out not awesome for me with men.

Day 3:

i wake up to him asleep at his desk, feet up on the table, in his expensive office chair. In his hands are his keys, with the only key to the exit doors clipped to his other keys in his fist.

Day 5:

i have slept two hours at a time for nearly a week now. Crashing sounds and glass breaking wake me this time. He picks me up in the air suddenly from the futon in the nursery, and i realize that i’m about to accidentally get him in the balls because he swooped me up off the futon like a doll, and when i moved my legs he laughs and lays me down. He is covered in sweat. His eyes have changed to a color i do not know, and that is all i can notice other than i respond to phrases still, can’t remember what still. That alone is chilling. My mind betrays me just like it always does when someone mine is hurting and all i can do is absorb the stress. He chants at me the times i was too slow to obey him, and reminds me of why i got a key to the eye.

He has told me where to go to relax, a beautiful back porch with a long deck and view of nothing but trees. His girl shows up and i am pleased to show her i have even made it outside to clean everything in her smoking spot. She shows me the little camera in the window, which has been watching me for days, unaware. It is pointed directly at my face. She tries to mouth words, but we have blind problems, and it takes me a moment to understand what she is saying. There are cameras everywhere. He is watching me from his phone at work. He can hear everything inside and outside. We chain smoke and exchange “get me the fuck out of here” expressions. Only one of us can go. i know why he has brought her here, and i don’t know where to go but to stay there on the porch. i’m not going to go sit in the nursery, two steps from his room. He cannot get it up for her. She is excused. i am not.

When he says in a low tone, “get the fuck in this house,” i am in the house before the sentence is done. i’m not stupid enough to piss him off but everything i do that is natural to us has become a source of rage that she refuses him the same care and thought. i’m supposed to be cleaning the place up which was an act of love i’d do again. i’m supposed to be modeling how to manage him, like a king and giant baby simultaneously. Impossible to do when he keeps exploding into rage that no one else would have brought him a gatorade when he was hot. Why couldn’t she just do that? Why isn’t she there finding and knowing and caring about everything that makes my humans happy like i do? Why are all women cunts?

i don’t have answers.

We are sitting alone, finally smoking. He has been very controlling with it, and i don’t appreciate that at all, because that was a situation where i had to rely on him for pain relief while pulling off 15 hour days until everything was finally clean except for his own room and bathroom. When he felt around for a lighter i just offered him one and he snapped because she would never think to do that. She didn’t sit up to hug him and be there at the door like i do, no matter what time he gets in. Everything i do makes him feel like heaven and hell at the same time. guess which one feels most like home?

Day something:

There’s no sleep and not enough calmness to eat. There is work and cleaning and absorbing screaming and rants and cleaning up turned over furniture and broken dreams. There is his delighted sneer to show me that has been watching me on his phone from multiple security cameras, and its in little files. i’m in different clothes and different days. He has been watching and listening to everything inside and out. He zooms in, i’m washing walls. Loading the washer. Fantastic. i can’t sleep when he is at work because there is too much to do and if i cannot get things under control fast enough someone can snap. The next day, he talks to me over the camera when i’m going to the phone to answer it. He just wanted to see if i was going to answer it after the last screaming call. When i get sullen, he knows what to say, he won’t let me go away in my head. It’s against the rules, like feeling fear.

He is furious one night. He wants to know how the hell i have never been treated like diamonds? i laugh. Say that i’m nothing special. He takes out a knife and i break the rule and am over us on the ceiling, while my pleasant demeanor smiles away. He demands answers. i ask him, evenly, what the fuck he expects when all was ever taught to do was figure out every single way to please someone and do it, take beltings whenever someone is stressed, and was trained to not feel fear at all. That means by the time i know there is a goddamn problem, i should be feeling terror. Like now. But i don’t feel anything because that doesn’t matter. My feelings or thoughts on most things are entirely unknown, because they are not necessary. What is necessary is what keeps me from functioning at my best, and after ten years i don’t have any desire to keep not receiving the basics that i asked for. It tells me that i am not seen as human, less worthy than everyone else who asks and receives. He asks me how someone so brilliant can be so stupid at the same time? He has called me stupid or stupid bitch 15 times so far that day. i still look up to you stupid bitch likes it is my name. The last time was because i used an ashtray as an ashtray.

i tell him if he got what he wanted, he’d just end up hating her, just like Sir Raven hates me while she loves me.

For the first time, i resent his decades of drugs and parties and random fucks and adventure sports. i might as well have done all that too, instead of staying home and washing the dishes. i was good and we got the same ending. i try and not meditate on this theme. He begs for love and attention every day. We both do, in opposite ways. i try to please you and get the hell out of the way if i’m not working. He wants me with him, near him. He has tons of massage tools and i use them all on him, happy to work out sore muscles from him working so hard all night. He goes to sleep blissed out, wakes up in a rage because she wouldn’t do that for him. There is screaming for hours. i cannot handle screaming. He knows that.

Day Something else:

i wake up and make french press for us. This is the first morning i am unable to run up the steep flight of stairs ten times, bringing coffee and water, then goody powder, then ten other things. i call him and tell him his coffee is ready, but i cannot do stairs again right now. i pour my own coffee and head outside for a smoke in peace. i have gotten myself cleaned up, made up, dressed, made the bed, fed and watered the dog, and wiped down the kitchen after unloading the dishwasher. i’m on facetime with niki, trying to get her to come over with the children when he is standing over me enraged.

Now:

i went from cleaning myself five times a day to laying in a sweaty ball with his girl on facetime for for two days. This room is total chaos. i have no idea if i have even made the bed i sleep in once since i have been back. Nothing is unpacked. It is a total mess. i am doing better than my brother, who has moved into my bed permanently, it seems. He ripped his own heart out to see if it beats. i don’t know how to help bring someone back from that.

He is living off donuts and alcohol.

i have been in one extended panic attack since October. i never realized anything could last this long, even if i could make it low key, it has taken every goddamn skill i have to just do that.

My mind gets stuck in an endless loop of needing use. No doubt in large part from guilt, as i have just done the most reckless thing i have ever pulled off in my life. There didn’t seem to be any collateral damages for anyone else, no one has been that close to me in a long time, and the people who have been were long distance and sometimes distance is the opposite of what one needs. i didn’t tell anyone what i was doing in advance. i am a person who takes enormous risks but they are 99.8 percent extremely calculated risks. Often, it was simply a matter of what situation was most survivable. This was a solo mission into hell, where i alerted no one exactly what i was doing, and i didn’t have anywhere near enough money to solve all the problems he created at the same time. i don’t have any idea how someone would atone for that, or atone for not being willing to do that for a chance that the generations to come will not continue to suffer.

They seem to be equal sins, with only one offering any chance of hope for them. Besides, i already suffered the fate as if i had done it all, so i had no sense of anything beyond being betrayed in a life i had worked my ass off for and lost for no reason other than i was the only person participating in the relationship most of the time. So i had no reason to not fall for his sweaty pleas, his promises that he would do anything to get his family back. i had never had any boundaries with him, and i definitely had no way to establish them under the dire circumstances i had found him in. i held on and waited so many months, trying to not break and run to him. Drunk one night before i came, he questioned which one of us would break first. It was him.

i want to punch walls. i am exhausted. i cannot focus.

i found what is extremely scary for New yorkers. Being trapped in a totally empty airport overnight. we are nearly never alone, at any hour, and when we are we pay close attention. Being alone walking all through an airport without a single person most of the night was surreal. i was totally helpless because he reset my phone to factory settings and disabled and changed my password. That locked me out of my bank account, venmo, everything. All i could do was receive calls, and i finally calmed down enough to see if i could get my email to work and email SR. She absolutely swooped in and saved the day, sent me money i could get to, told me to call a cab and get my ass out of the empty airport immediately. Except i was in a shithole in the south, with three cab companies, and two of them were not open by the time i could do anything at 2 or 3am. i sat outside from 3 to 5, and at one point someone came riding at top speed, hit the curb up the sidewalk directly infront of where i was sitting. i wondered if i was so delirious that i was hallucinating, but i heard a woman yell. She turned out to have just arrived and saw it, was a cab driver, and took me to the cheapest place i could find which looked like the kind of place you go to prostitute or get high. But whatever. i wasn’t trying to take a 169 dollar nap at every other place around. Ended up they canceled my reservation, the guy was on his first night, all the rooms were booked.

That is when i discovered the guided crosswalks were out, and i was looking at a six lane highway with traffic coming from four directions. That is when i broke and called him at 5 am crying, begging him to just help me. He very calmly told me, in his most reasonable captor voice, that i wasn’t being very calm or good now and maybe i would be a good girl again later and hung up. My suitcase and my favorite shoes were broken and i had to run for it across a highway where i had absolutely no way to know what was coming at me while dragging 75 pounds of shit around with me like i had the last 15 hours. At that point, i was so exhausted and delirious and broken, i agreed with him. i had just screamed into the phone i was having a panic attack, just be my goddamn big brother for once and help me. Do good girls do that? no. So bad girls dodge cars and drag bags and cry on the side of the street and go from booked hotel to booked hotel. The suitcase won’t roll for anything this whole time, and i’m considering leaving half of my worldly goods on the side of the road because i have been dragging it for so many hours. i find a hotel, manage to get checked in, say a prayer of thanks to Sir Raven for the money, and fall into a dreamless sleep where i can still see him and know his smell and cannot get his man scent out of my mind.

We play cat and mouse while i figure out getting the fuck out of town. He wants to know where i am. He wants me in his car, in his house, back in the nursery. Now. The day before he had locked me outside for hours, taken my phone to read my messages and block me out of everything including my own money and ability to get help. He spent those hours screaming at his girl so loud i could hear him outside. i am not nervous until it suddenly gets quiet and he comes out to where i am sitting on the side of the road where he put me with a gas can. Our mother has been telling him and his girl i’m a witch. He whispers the question, “are you a witch?” The men next door have been sitting outside and they interrupt him deliberately to ask about some very random tool and have him walk over to see what they have been working on for days. i shoot the man a look of thanks, having already told him i lost my phone and had him call me a cab which is taken hours to get. My brother calmly opens the garage from his phone and then takes out his lawn mower, his trance broken. For a moment, i think Shango will set this whole thing on fire. For a moment, i think i think the fire will start with me.

He has poured gas on a dog when he was 5. i try to not think about that. My face has no expression and i feel no fear. If i had, i would have had to be put down like that dog after he was done. i know the rules.

In the end, i have to go back to the airport in his car. Despite everything. Despite the random rage ride we took at some point, where i knew he was thinking about running us both into the next possible building or mountain or telephone pole. His arms were both locked on the wheel, he is looking straight ahead, he won’t speak to me. i make myself reach over and touch his arm, just hold it a moment, and it is enough that he softens and the car slows down.

in the end, no cabs and no ubers were available, even though i tried to reserve one 20 hours in advance of needing it. If i was going to get to the airport, i was going to have to take a ride from him. He carries weed and gets high as we head into the airport and sit parked. i pushed my door open immediately. He grabs me where there are already finger marks on finger marks. He insists i smoke, which i absolutely do not want to do on federal property. i remind him we are not white, annoyed. i do what he says, get paranoid, and he says he will hold my suitcase for me while i check inside and make sure i have walkers to help me at each transfer point. He says he wants to have her come with the babies, so i can see them one more time. By the time i leave, i have spent more hours alone in the airport over two days than i have with the babies. i know they won’t come back, but he keeps my suitcase in his car and i encourage him to go spend time with them. i don’t want him to be alone when my plane goes wheels up. When he comes back, he is angry there is no food and no vending machines and not even a water fountain that works. Funny since that was my condition overnight and all day, but whatever. He tells me to come home and shower and i will feel better. He will take me back later. He offers to take me to eat. To see the children. i won’t get back in his car. There is no force on earth that could get me to. i cannot risk my mind snapping. The last time my ears got hot, and they got hot in the particular way that tells me i am in mortal danger and need to react rightfuckingnow.

When he cannot get me to go in, we finally sit in the again empty airport. i show him my spot where i waited out the night. We laugh. He is hungry and i have a bag of goldfish as a snack in case i saw Henry again. i give it to him and he says these bags are so difficult. He takes a knife off his jogger pants and smiles. “Are you allowed to have these in an airport?” and he laughs, head back, enjoying himself. i point out that i’m am quite positive that no, you are not supposed to pull out a knife in an airport. He opens the goldfish with it, laughing.

He returns my suitcase right before boarding time. i am weak with relief when i get on the plane and everything has the surreal buzz of a verbose nightmare. i open the window, touch the cool glass. They make me fold up my white cane and store it in the bin and i hate that, even though i agree its necessary. As the plane gets ready to take off, i am thinking of this theory of violence and aggression where we find that only a very small percentage of people need to become aggressive in any crowd before it tips over into a full crescendo of rage. i wonder how many people on a plane need to be be suicidal simultaneously to accidentally bring the plane down, as i’m looking politely in the general direction of the flight attendant telling us how to use the seat cushion as a flotation device. i think the same thing the first time i am flying into this very storm, because all i can think is abandon all hope, all ye who enter here.

Long was the way home, tho what i feel is homeless in every possible way. My identity is shattered carelessly since October. i thought returning to an older identity might make me feel something but no. i thought i had to try to help and couldn’t just do nothing, when my own life had ceased to have all meaning and purpose and joy. When i was supposed to be The Key for him to have is purpose back, his meaning, his joy. i didn’t think. i didn’t think that his purpose might be to destroy, his joy to savor his control.

He calls fifteen times at 3 am and i turn the phone off. He calls in the morning. He calls whenever he wants. He is angry even when i agree with him. He rants and then hangs up on me. His girl is right. He is absolutely draining. One call and i want to sleep forever. i need to slow my mind down. i need to not think. i can go out and clean the kitchen and clean the bathroom and come back to this mess. i cannot think in a mess. i hate messes. i also cannot do anything about it because it is literally too hard to do. i haven’t made a list in over a week. i don’t even know what day we are in. Irrelevant. Been out of meds for days and cannot manage to handle that. Whatever. i’m going back to sleep. Maybe i will wake up and be good. i only know one way out of this. My mind only knows how to process these things, knowingly and aware, through use. My rage sits cold, frozen knife blade, still, waiting. i very deliberately form relationships that are close with men simply so that they are not hyper focused on me when i become this. i try to make sure i don’t set off the predator response to this iron bar slammed through my heart, because i could use a few rounds with someone it would be impossible to hurt. It doesn’t matter that i will lose. i am afraid of what i attract in this state, which is another exhausting experience to just leave the house. It just reinforces the flip back to older training, bed training, blanket training.

Sleep calls.

The alternative title for this post is Trigger Warning, but i went with Mayday. i have also decided that i am no longer participating in the month of May. May 2019 was the trip home to my dying father. May 2020 Covid in full splendor. May 2021 i went into the belly of the beast.

i can only do this a little bit at a time, in small snapshots. There is no way to find words, to form words, to see behind the door slammed shut in my mind. i have been with the one person who knows the phrases to use that blocks me, creates a disassociated state. i have been with the one person who knows how to make me want to loose myself.

i would have never planned to arrive on her birthday. Our mother hates me so much i can imagine her wishing the plane from the sky had she known. i get delayed five times in Washington, D.C, the hail and lightning evident. i had been pleaded with to come since the first aching call at the end of November. That is how long i hung on, against every base instinct i have to not leave another soldier on the battlefield of life. That is how long i saw his babies, just one and two years old. When he tells me that maybe God took everything else away from me, everything everything, it was to force me back to him i cannot provide any contrary evidence. It wouldn’t be the first time something drove me, nearly outside of my own senses. There was no protect the property clause now, and no one to be much bothered when i don’t make it back alive.

And so i flew into the belly of the beast, two planes and one shuttle, some nineteen hours all together from the time i left my home. He met me in the shuttle lot, a man says to me that my husband is glowing and chuckles. He engulfs me.

He traces his thumb over familiar scars. His thumb caresses a cigarette burn, decades old. “Mine,” he says. We laugh. He always hated me smoking, and for the first time in his life has just gone out to buy cigarettes for me, though i have smoked since i was 15. His hands remember every scar that were his, and which were hers. That is how we rekindled, fingers tracing scars.

He did not let me sleep longer than two hours for nearly two weeks. i was bolted in, with keys, without keys. i scrubbed and cleaned and worked non stop because if i could make him see enough progress, make him feel enough love, the monster would calm inside.

It didn’t work.

He drank me in, like a man starved. He ate and touched and enjoyed long massages for his aching arms and exhausting schedule. And then his rage took over with all he could see was how effortless it was for me to give what he needs before he needs it when he could not get anything from Her. Either her. Any her.

i woke up to shattered glass everywhere. i woke up to him in full blackouts. i woke up to him standing over me, touching my throat. i woke up to him raw and needing and unashamed and unstopable. i quickly relearned how to not sleep, not eat, not respond to his vulgar with my own rage. It takes me six hours to clean his tiny galley kitchen. i wash and fold 15 loads of laundry in his fancy machines. i spend 60 hours cleaning his house, pulling it back from the hoard it has become, working the same hours he works plus i have to stay awake with him cleaning up after him to not have the whole day ruined in a stream of stuff placed everywhere. i am happy for the work, the progress, thinking it might make a difference. He couldn’t have the babies in the house as it was when i arrived for sure.

it takes me five days to be able to even see his children, on the most loaded day of all, mother’s day. i buy her flowers and cake and have gifts and everything goes to hell immediately.

Weeks later, his thumb prints and finger marks are still coming up on my body and i cannot stop washing myself. It will feel strange when they are gone, as if this was all just a nightmare of epic proportions. HIs eyes were so different, so changed. He told me that i beat the shit out of everyone with the truth of the pain in my eyes every day. i’m sure that there is truth to that. You’d think maybe people would just stop hurting me. Just stop doing the very things that are far more dehumanizing than just being called a worthless whore for hours on end. People often show me the worst and i am soul tired. So, thats it. i tried. i failed. Again.

i feel like the word shattered, like pulverized glass.

i haven’t been able to come here and write for a long time. In part, my rage over being lied to and about was too immense to try and manage balancing that with not publicly humiliating someone who claimed to by my friend. In the last few months, i was lied to and on several times where i was staying. Every single day after the first two weeks featured 30 minute bitch sessions about items like taking out the garbage too fast. In the end, it was clear that no one was going to respect me. i was trying to manage being an unowned slave, and was quite suddenly thrown into a situation that was entirely too similar to early training methods to manage enforcing my own meager boundaries. i was given some 20 odd protocols to follow, but was supposed to find independence when i couldn’t even decide to place an extra roll of tissue in the bathroom i used without it being remarked upon and removed. The final straw for me came when i was asked to do something entirely against my own personal values, i said so, and was told to do it anyhow. That was it for me. The cherry on top was having 520 dollars stolen for no reason whatsoever. The money would not piss me off so much, except for the fact that i’m disabled, so i can’t fix it. It means i went without. And someone else who was supposed to care for me kept the money knowing it.

Directly on the heels of that, i finally came back to SR to get everything out. i had everything packed to leave, two large suitcases and a couple of bins contained my life. A car load of garbage bags ready to donate sat in angry lumps by the door. i felt like i was erasing myself, like what everyone really wanted was for me to disappear entirely, and i oblige. i was in acceptance, that everything i worked for was destroyed, and no one wanted to fix anything with or for me. My demons were doing jumping jacks and i had to learn how to make myself perfectly still inside again. When i did i reflected on something my mother inadvertently taught us, that lots of different types of people and family arrangements can be equally pleasurable, albeit in different ways. i always knew that it was possible to love and be in love with multiple people at once. It is therefore not a radical shift to end this chapter and be looking forward to another to me. In this case, the desire has been there some 20 years, and this is the one person who really wants nothing more than to hold me and love me. After the years of dehumanization, the years of refusal for any warmth, just being around someone who wants me within arms reach constantly sounds like my heaven.

i was ready.

S was coming to my beloved city, in her van, to make sure i could take my paintings and was comfortable. We were only waiting for a repair to be made. She had what she thought was the worst migraine of her life, bad enough she went to the emergency room. They missed a brain bleed and sent her home to have a series of strokes unbeknownst to anyone until she was found in the tub unresponsive. She was airlifted for treatment, where her barely adult children and i tried to manage the medical horrors of researching every time we got medical notes. For hellish weeks, she was in a coma and on a ventilator. The only thing i could hold on to was her saying she needed me to trust her completely, and that was the only thread that kept me sane. i knew she would fight tooth and nail to get back to her children. All medical evidence said she wasn’t coming back, but i never lost faith. i’ve keep ongoing contact with her kiddo, sent birthday gifts and treats, sent research and talked through the all of the surgeries going on. i’ve done my very best. Two weeks ago, she was moved to a rehab hospital and she can breathe by herself and finally got to see her kids. It might have been the first time i exhaled in months. She is definitely intact but its going to be a long road for recovery and i don’t know if she will still want me there now. i won’t know until someone brings her cellphone and sees if she can text now, because speaking is not easy.

SR and i managed to have one deep conversation and she finally conveyed she understood the damage goes soul deep. It is a conversation which should have taken place in November. Just having some sense that she understands she has profoundly damaged us both was very helpful. Most people don’t experience unconditional love, actual loyalty and adoration. You’d think people would handle that preciousness with care. We were supposed to be the one thing she would never give up on, would never quit. It is a complete and total mind fuck to have done absolutely everything i know how to do constantly, deliberately, for all of these years and have it amount to nothing to anyone. i try to believe that she ever loved me, but i have moments where i think i was just convenient. An experienced slave who needed little direction, looks for ways to demonstrate love and obedience and requires little in return. That was the whole problem: i wasn’t worth the small amount of effort. If i had been, she would have made the effort and handled her responsibilities to the relationship and made amends for all of the years she refused.

i cannot believe that i have to explain this to adults, but here it goes. A person can be a perfectly awesome friend, a great employee, terrific at lots of things and still be a monster sometimes behind closed doors. A person can simultaneously be a great and empathic friend and be cruel to me. A person can have moments of intense closeness and intense isolation constantly. A person can love you and be cruel. People are not All Good or All Bad. Grow up. Just because i constantly look for things to be thankful for doesn’t mean there wasn’t downright cruel things being said and done often.

i cannot believe that grown adults tell me things like “they don’t want to take sides,” which tells me you see things in a way i do not. i cannot believe that grown adults cannot manage hearing information without having some bizarre reaction that they cannot believe these things AND be a friend to her. The only thing i require of my friends in honesty and loyalty, in that i fully expect them to be honest about who they are and loyal to their own code of right and wrong. In that vein, i have more than once or twice, had chosen family and close friends confess to the most serious crime one can imagine and it didn’t damage our relationship in any manner because it was entirely consistent with who i knew them to be. So the notion that knowing someone did something bad is something you have to cover your ears up to sing la la la because you just cannot bear to hear the truth you asked for is senseless to me. i don’t have any interest in SR or anyone walking this world alone, friendless. It is just that this has shown me that the people who i believed were her friends are not. Friends don’t stand around while you torch your life. For these reasons alone i have no chosen leather family now, because each of the Masters have indeed lied to me and went against their own moral code.

Lies are dangerous things in my world. It signals danger. There is never a reason to lie to people in your circle, because they already know you. If you are not inside the circle of people who meet the criteria for sociopathy, you are in danger. It means they have no family moral code for you. It means you are open season. Hence, my closing down any communication in any format for so much time.

There was just no way to find words, to use words. The only thing that has held my focus is understanding the shunt, ventilator machine, trachea, the needs of her kids, and desperately trying to reach my brother and get to know his children via facetime. i had to have a crash course in understanding the nuances of multiple brain bleeds, traumatic brain injury, and am in over my head often. My brothers baby mama often wants hours and hours a day, and i never know if missing a call from her or him will end up being the thing that ignites the house of cards, already stacked against us. i go from nightmare to nightmare to nightmare scenerio. Calls often become a high stakes war game of psychological warfare, where the wrong answer at the wrong time could make another worst nightmare come true.

Having someone i love in a coma with brain damage for the second time in my life was hella traumatic and all i want to do is see her. Be there.

Yesterday they had a birthday party for my niece and nephew and i wasn’t there. It is her first birthday party and i bought her fancy outift and shoes and sent expensive gifts, because in my mind the credit goes to my brother. He let me know last night he needs me, and an hour later never wants to speak to me again. Easter is when his first set of children were taken from me. The next Easter i was getting beat and trying to not scream because i could hear children delightedly gathering eggs outside, and the belt beating sounds together crashed around while i bit down and screamed into a pillow. Dawn thought i had made eye contact with someone earlier. This Easter my brother tells me i do not have a brother anymore and that means he won’t want me having contact with his children either, despite countless hours getting to know them and buying gifts and trying my hardest for everyone. Feels like nothing i do or give matters, even though it is always everything i have.

i hope my faith pays off and that i have a home again, somehow.

i really and truly was in no shape to handle any of this shit thrown at me in the last year. i feel like i am hanging on by a thread sometimes. My therapist moved to a different hospital and went from us having 3 more sessions to her asking what was going on while i was still at the friends house and then-bam-the next session she was letting me know this was our last session. She did try and get me set up with another person but i just stared numbly at the phone and cannot possibly bring anyone up to speed with just the last several months of my life, let alone enough history to understand i am literally living my worst nightmares simultaneously. Every time i think i can gasp for air i find i cannot, and am plunged back into total darkness. i stay in the bedroom alone, feeling all of the effects of the last years of isolation compounded. It is not by my choice like everything else. It is just one more literally thoughtless thing to do to me, without ever even asking what it means to me.

Clearly it is just fucking impossible to love me. It just is. i realize that should hurt, but i feel like i felt in my last failed runaway attempt during the kidnapping, where i went so deep inside myself that i didn’t want anything. Not to speak or eat or think. The only thing i want is to be held and there is not one person in my life anymore that i could trust for that, except for the person who can’t sit up alone and might not want me anymore. i don’t know if this even makes sense as i haven’t slept in 26 hours because i was busy getting screamed at all night by the one person i expected to not make today even worse. i am constantly homesick.

Medical mayhem, that’s what. Apparently, i get a new illness or issue to get to deal with every month now. This time, it was a sty on my eye the size of a pea or larger, infected. i went to urgent care, who told me is was “very, very gnarly” and that i should be freaking out in pain because the eyelid is so tender.

That came on and we finally got a president who is at least an adult sworn in. i cleaned the livingroom and we all watched it together, hoping for a sight of the Obamas and excited to see a first Madam Vice President. Not that i wish anyone ill or anything, but we are one heartbeat away from having a woman president at last. Still, this was a beautiful historic moment, after so much daily trauma inflicted on all of us for all of these years of Trump plus the year leading up to his disgusting grab for power.

i was supposed to be going back to the doctors for an IUD inserted because presumably that will stop the random bleeding half to death. i just couldn’t go. i am doctored out and need a break. i have been seeing them nonstop, in some form or another. MK was bound and determined to make me go do this, and i said no. Maybe she remembered all the other appointment, some of which she made me go to. Maybe she realized it was a tad Big Brother to force something into my body that i am in place emotionally to do right now. i don’t know. It doesn’t matter. She finally told me this was on me, that i was making my body deteriorate, as if i somehow have caused myself to bleed out and don’t want to fix it.

Otherwise, things are mostly quiet. The anger is gone. i can pray for SR to have a healthy, happy life every day. Whatever that means for her, clearly i don’t know, as i couldn’t provide her with a happy life. What would have been our anniversary was yesterday. She never made a big deal over it, but i would always gift her with something. i don’t even know if she remembered, not that it matters. We didn’t make it to eleven years.

Her birthday is soon, and it fills me with sadness that i won’t be there for fuss over her all day. We text occasionally, sadly mostly about money. Sometimes i wish we could have a normal conversation, that i could just ask how her day went. It is strange to suddenly have someone become a stranger, their day to day life entirely unknown to you. She is lucky in that her life didn’t revolve around me or us, she isn’t thinking fifty times in a store, “oh she loves these. Let me pick some up. oh yes, she doesn’t want me anymore.” There is some sadness, mostly from the way things ended. Maybe that was the only way it could have ended. Who knows? Answers would be nice, and are still not forthcoming.

That has to be okay enough.

The bottom line is that i wasn’t wanted anymore and am free to find my place in the world and i am. i believe in love, in hard work, and in people who make commitments and keep them. Those are the things i want more of. Those are what i work on in myself. i understand that i am not going to ever function in the free world now as a free person. It just will never happen. Too much conditioning, far too little will or capacity. No interest.

i am aching for a home where i have never been.

Everything got taken away from me.

So i am going to give myself everything.

So often, i come here and stare at the blank page. Who knows what to say anymore?

My personal tragedy is set against the backdrop of the crazy times of Covid, the fears of more coup to come before a change of office can take place, the more of the same that is covid life punctuated by the bizarre situation that is America.

It is utterly creepy to see white men getting in to terrify everyone with machine guns, and to know for sure the brutality and hate that happens every day for everyone who is just Black. Or Brown. Or poor. We non white people don’t actually have to do a damn thing to get killed, just be breathing, just exist. As much as everyone already knows this, the visuals of it are still disturbing, the white male sense of entitlement so extreme that it knows no decency.

Before that, it was just a very difficult holiday season and time of personal upheaval. The most i have been able to manage to do is stop my feeling of constantly freefalling and just have faith that everything will work out how it should. It was just too much for me to do more than commit to renting the room i stay in month to month. i was not in any place to make any major decisions right away. i started working hard on getting some extra weight off, on keeping my therapy appointments, on trying to figure out what is happening medically, trying to figure out a very complex benefits system, and trying to find a new rhythm to my entire life.

It became un necessary to clean constantly here, and it wasn’t needed for me to constantly be listening out and checking on people. Actually, everyone here helps out in loads of different ways so no one is overly burdened and everyone has time to do their own activities and also to relax. It is entirely different from how i have ever lived in my life. There are expectations that i do things, but often those things are simply about control/respect/safety or else doing sometimes that benefits me directly. It is very different to not have anyone expect me to be doing all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, everything, always. The biggest shift is to try and not have my own self expectation and critic rise up on days where i am just doing less, or focused on business calls or things for my life. It is a radical shift.

Christmas eve was really pretty damn awful. i finally plucked up the energy to do something for myself, because i quit doing my nails and pedicures around a year and a half ago to save money. The ONLY place that takes credit cards happens to be close to SR. i get there and find out that they do not take credit cards anymore, had just started bleeding AGAIN, and realized i needed a bathroom immediately. So i texted SR to say i was coming upstairs to her place.

It is a very strange thing to feel like a stranger in her house. To feel alienated. Unwanted. Unknowing. We sit across from each other for half an hour, and for a change, it is mostly me speaking. She asked me to say what i needed to say and leave. Her tone wasn’t unkind, really, but i complied. i expressed my sadness, the confusion i had felt the first month was made worse by her lack of explanation or planning. She still hasn’t explained herself in any way, except to tell me what she intended to do was change our relationship rather than end it. Amazingly, she expected me to live without knowing the answer to what in the world do you want me there as? closely followed by how can i ever trust you now?

i’ve made my peace as best i can. i feel disposable at times. Disappointed. Angry at the personal costs to me as she continues to have her same career, same income, same home, same life except for me. It is extremely strange, as if i just disappeared one day and she just carried on. Except for that she made me disappear. Or, really, she made herself disappear.

From the very moment she said Release, she stopped being a Master, because she had absolutely no cause for this. Whatever else exists, she is not that. Not anymore. She failed this with someone that really can make anyone look amazing. i am not ashamed. The shame of a decade is hers alone. i say this without contempt, just as plain fact. i am doing whatever i can to not cost her anything, not asking her anything. She made it clear she doesn’t want anything from me. i was going to go over there and bake in peace while she was at work and have her favorite cookies ready for her one day, just because i wanted to do something kind for her at Christmas time. She didn’t want anything from me. i did want something. Scotch. Lots of it. Which is what i did on Christmas Eve when i made my way, bleeding and crying on the bus, back to MK’s. i made a rule for myself as a child to never drink upset. This is the second time i have ever broken it, but i was also in a safe place with people who knew i was hurting and why.

Christmas itself was actually very pleasant. i got up early, lit candles in my room, meditated for a few hours and played Enya’s Winter album. It was the last music i ever played for my boys, and its become a tradition of mine to play their favorites on Christmas. We exchanged gifts in the afternoon in front of a tree so carefully decorated it looked like it belonged in a magazine. i shared my Enya album with my brother and with my Knower, even though we were both otherwise silent for the holiday season. i wondered how it was for SR, and i wondered if she felt lonely or sad, if she was thinking about our years together. She generally tried to make Christmas nice for me, because she knows that i truly struggle in December. It is a crude reminder of losing a family in a season you just cannot get the fuck away from. For all i know, she was just happy to not spend money on a tree for me or have her Godfather insist on the largest fullest tree in the Bronx. i did not let those thoughts linger too long. The truth is she woke up one day and did not want me with her anymore, except as a guest who shared her bed and would leave whenever i found somewhere else to live. That is the level of importance placed on our time together, that nothing permanent was ever done or made, that nothing binds us together.

i’m glad the shock has calmed, the rage only felt if provoked now. i’m not in a bad place at all, am comfortable and have more than enough, have managed to stop my mind from trying to secure a future based on her or her choices for me. On a practical level, that meant accepting that my education is finished, at least for several years. It means accepting leaving New York and the areas i know and feel most comfortable in. In truth, much of my sense of independence i gained here is just gone, because of covid. Our state has elected to roll out vaccines slower than most, and it will likely be March or later here when it might start to become widely available. i moved to this beautiful city for SR, and maybe my love affair with the city has run its course and become a treasured time of life. i will always identify as a New Yorker. i will always return here to form new memories.

Right now, though, i need new sights and heartfelt love. i need to feel contained, be able to touch and hold and be held. i need life to regain any sense of normalcy. i need to be able to take walks and get fresh air, cuddle, snuggle furry loves, relax, let my mind totally relax, and relearn how to be in my most childlike states of wonder and joy without experiencing the state of being small as scary. i have come to these realizations in steps. First, i felt like i had to express her known wishes, like i was her representative here and that no one could have a way of doing anything without her ways being expressed. As if i couldn’t carry out the action, and instead had to say how she liked it. Until i could finally let the obsessive need to give her thoughts, ways, desires, whims, comfort and weight in the world just go.

Like a child, i am excited to not have to worry about not being loved anymore. i am excited to go stick my feet into grass, go to parks, make smores, play games, enjoy being around people who want me there. That is very different from people who want to help me, don’t like how i was treated, and are being very generous. It isn’t the same thing as a forever family, who wants you there forever. And that is all i have ever wanted.

So that is what i’m up to. Making hard choices, but good ones. Learning how to make myself still in the midst of what feels like complete chaos. Trying to rewire my own brain to not constantly be on, always looking for another way to please my Master. Trying to make my own values a priority. Being willing to say that, yes, someone should be willing to work to have me and keep me. It looks different from my work, but it should be there and be dependable. There should be a constant awareness that i am human property. What i want most is to really live my life as if love and the people inside the circle is the only damn thing that matters. Because in the end, that is who you have.

And should you find out that your foxhole buddies are just an army against you, go find your loved ones where ever they may be and hold tight to them. i believe they exist for everyone. Really.

The truth of slavery is this: i would never want to stay in Sir Raven’s home unwanted. The truth is: i will do anything to please the people i love. Anything. i don’t really have much respect for people who do not understand this simple thing about me. i would turn myself inside out, would rip and tear out any offensive thought, change anything, adjust anything, save one.

Looking back, i violated my own values. i found myself quite unwilling and unable to point out the lacking, except for here. i’m very thankful for this place, and for my readers, some of whom have become very close friends even if we just share energy hugs. i’m thankful for the record i have made here, because i have achieved my goal here, which was always to faithfully as possible document a total power exchange.

Much love in this frightening time in our collective history. Hold your loved ones tight. ❤

When people show you who they are the first time, believe them.

What i have people continuously do to me is very frequently interrupt me, speak to me in ways they would have a goddamn nervous breakdown if i did the same thing to them, and constantly tell me i am wrong without even taking a single moment to consider if i just might be right. They simultaneously assert that I am brilliant, or one of the smartest people they have ever known, and so forth, so it might just stand to fucking reason that i know what i’m talking about at least occasionally. It might be nice if they realized i spent months or years listening patiently, adjusting what i do and how, just to make everything just right because someone else is controlling and has a whim.

i am a person who listens ten times more than i speak to begin with. i am a person who cares a lot more about understanding than being understood. So by the time i am willing to speak, i have already been treated in ways that are rude as fuck while being patient in return for many interactions. If i disagree, i still go away and think about it and i can actually very easily take several perspectives at the same time because i actually bother to pay attention and listen and am interested in learning people. The only reason i am interested in learning them is for the sake of learning itself and growth, making them happy and adding ease to their lives, and knowing them enough to make highly accurate predictions.

i have never lost the child like desire to please my humans. It is one of the best things about me, if i turn my full focus on to pleasing you. Most people show me with their behaviors (see above) and actions and lack of self discipline that they are not worth my full attentions. i’m certainly not obligated to offer that to anyone who doesn’t own me, and hell, i might not even be wanting to do that ever again after what i have been through in just the last few months alone. MK asserts i give 90 percent on my own, plus service. i don’t know that i have more to give to someone who doesn’t own me. i definitely don’t have it without what i need on a consistent basis. i’m not that hard to manage if i get lots of touch or physical closeness, and you belt me once a week. i don’t have those things and am getting treated to massive control stuff, where what i am told and what is meant are not the same things at all.

i am over people constantly interrupting me, nearly every time i speak. i am over having my time hijacked in listening to endless talking after i have already patiently listened to everything they have to say for months or years while they never listen to what i am saying at all. i am over having people be passive aggressive and tell me to shut the fuck up, when they damn sure wouldn’t appreciate me saying it to them. All i do is shut the fuck up. It’s all i did for ten years while everyone pontificated, and shared their precious viewpoints, and their thoughts and ideas. Do you think anyone ever asks mine or listens to the answers? Very, very rarely. When i do my viewpoint is immediately given less weight, blown off, dismissed. Which all points to me being unable to function outside of the world created for me by SR.

i’m a listener so i know how to do the right thing and when. So i know what little things people find very annoying and avoid them. So i can offer the right things at the right times. These small rituals of knowing someone very intimately is part of how i show love and care. Right now, my own heart is half steel, from the moment i heard Release. It is not the first time in my life that my heart literally physically hurts in my chest for not moments but years. i listen and focus and care my ass off. If i am not doing those things, it’s very likely i’m literally unable to in that moment.

The reasons why are likely that i don’t have what i need to release my own frustrations, which are constant and will always be constant, because that is what blindness is. That is what it is to have literally everyone you know hold you to a higher standard than they hold themselves to, and then ask you why you are a goddamn perfectionist? It’s not just me holding myself to enormously high standards, where people routinely break a cardinal rule of mine: NEVER DISH OUT WHAT YOU CANNOT TAKE. If i screamed, created public scenes, walked out while telling people to shut the fuck up, created rules without ever asking what they meant to the other person, lied, or behaved differently expecting just one person to suck it up, no one would allow that. These are all current examples from people who say i can trust them. If i did the same things and only got hit and not thrown out, i’d be surprised. So, i listen carefully already, and when i am the wounded party it seems egregious to spend MORE time listening when i have already done that work of just listening and making adjustments for a long time.

So it seems reasonable that i might have a few things to say after all that listening. It seems reasonable that others take the opportunity to not make me regret all of the listening and patience for all of their constantly controlling shit they do, because seriously, everyone loves to control everything. It is amazing that they cannot control themselves all that well in general, but they expend so much energy expecting that i will always be willing to do everything someone else’s way. When the one in a thousand times i want to be heard? It’s not done in a way that is fair, especially given that i have already done ten people’s share of listening and trying and asking and learning you and your ways. Given that i rarely stand up for myself or have anything to say that isn’t a reminder that i am doing things the way i was asked to do them. If you tell me your kitchen is in order and doesn’t need a deep clean, to just wipe it down, i’m going to do that. If you tell me to open a window even though its freezing ass cold, i’m going to do that. But i’m not good with then being asked why i’m doing it, because you don’t remember what you said and my brain is one that will literally get stuck on “but i obeyed you” and cannot go forward until someone acknowledges that somehow.

All i know is that i want to believe love doesn’t always fail. That hope doesn’t always float. That dreams don’t always dry up in the sun. And that one day, someone is going to love me enough to show me their best and hold me so long and hard that my pieces come back together again. i know for sure i’m worth the work it takes to own me, worth understanding and taking the time to make sure i understand. i’m practically like getting a live in maid, household servant, and babygirl all in one. The babygirl part has been dying and keeps getting kicked when she’s already in a tight ball inside, bruised and battered by indifference and mean words and angry fists and people who just leave, even when i have done nothing bad. The same people who leave me are the ones who tell me i’m a good girl, that i’m worthy, that i’m strong. Just because i’m stronger than everyone else doesn’t mean i am prepared to handle another kick now.

i. need. release. now.

What it makes me feel is comfortably numb, something i am fighting against and losing because there is no need for me to be in my body for any of this at all. i feel like i’m slowly drowning into comfortably numb, when i promised myself i would rather feel anything than feel nothing at all.

i believe in miracles, and right now, i need one.

The only prayer i have left is this one,

that what is meant to go will go,

and what is meant to stay will stay.

That i keep my heart alive somehow,

that i will not always have to be brave and strong and ten times better than everyone else just to try and defend my own worth,

especially in the total absence of being gifted with anyone who actually means forever family.

There is nothing else to do but totally let go of the attachment to any out come and wait to see who comes closer and who falls away.

That is my will, so mote it be.

You would think i know a lot about fear, given my life.

i do not.

Fear was the unacceptable emotion in my family, and showing it (through trying to protect your own body or crying or doing something known as “acting like you are afraid, because how dare you treat your own mother that way”) meant you created and deserved the escalation.

And the escalation was always directly into the total mask drop, her beautiful moon face transformed into something made ugly with pure hated for me. It was never a disappointment in creating a memorable lesson on why i must not feel fear.

The next one to go was anger, unless it was rage extremely tightly contained, which is why i can be deadly calm in any circumstances. If i had been sighted, been smarter, i’d have been a trauma surgeon for that that reason. i am never sick at sea. i make logical choices, step in physically and energetically and shield people at the right times, and can tell even if its silent when to get in there immediately.

Rage is a luxurious emotion, a fire you cannot stop being dazed at, a steady calmness, adrenaline on tap, motivation, but called on very sparingly. Let in very rarely, in measured doses, felt only a bit, just enough to act. i can guarandamntee that no one with even a grain of sense wants to become my first Hate. So i have to contain myself, because its not as if i don’t know how to turn myself to ice and heat, turn you on and leave you there, perfectly in control of myself and not a goddamn thing you can do to make me feel anything. i am the knife buried in your heart, but like a surgeon i calmly remind you to not remove it unless you want to bleed out.

Rage feels like my mother looked going down the runway: untouchable.

i have molded and melded, shaped and perfected, fine tuned, and never stopped working to become each person i have loved individual sense of completion. i cannot imagine why someone would mold a person for years on end and end, just to smash the finished product.

i am not your unworkable experience.

You are mine.

Every last one of you who said you love me are content to say anything and do nothing.

i wish that just once someone besides me would just be a goddamn man, stand up, be resolute, know your goddamn self, handle your own fear, use my body for what it was created for, an object to take in your everything and transmute it into anything you want. Love on tap. Adoration. Loyalty. Determination. Joy. Total satisfaction, any way the person in control wants it, any time.

No one can judge me on how i responded to one relationship by looking at anything from the outside, because i will create in myself what you cannot live without and what makes you feel best and always deliver.

The getting there part is always bumpy, mostly because what most people say and what they do are a complete mismatch. What they know to do, even if it always works, might never be done at all. Even a robot, a stepford wife, a slave, a girl needs something to respond to.

Anyone who can see anything at all can see that i’m absolutely worth the work, the effort, to have the most intense connection we can create and sustain together. It is the intensity itself that i am in power exchanges, because it is the finest way i have ever found to literally be inside of each other always. i enjoy yielding and creating harmony and study, and nothing will ever be more interesting to me than an Owner. i enjoy understanding what each ritual and rule means to them, how the small nuances have great meaning. i enjoy knowing people better than they know themselves inside. i enjoy finding a pleasure, discovering how much of each thing i can offer feels just right. i enjoy going to bed knowing i could not have physically, mentally, or spiritually have one more thing to give. i enjoy getting dirty and making things clean. i enjoy being pushed right over the edge and white knuckled pain.

But i need, my God i need, to feel that i can and will be made to surrender if i cannot get there on my own.

i am absolutely done making any apology for that, or for the level of security i am needing in life in exchange.

Everything you ever wanted is on the other side of fear.