my outer world is normal. every day, i get up, drink coffee, watch a little Buffy, and get ready for work. lately, John and I have been sharing my more-reliable car, so there’s a slight rush to leave, but we’ve pretty much got the routine down. i work my tail off every day at my job, and i come home with John and eat a good meal one of us has cooked (usually him, he’s SO good in the kitchen), then digest in front of the tv a short while. sometimes we take a walk, sometimes we don’t, and there always seems to be a phone call that needs to be made in the evening. in general, pretty normal.

within that normalcy is my relationship with John. I am not only his fiancé, i am also his submissive. we do not live the lifestyle 24/7, i don’t come home and put my collar on instantaneously, nor do i sit at his feet while he makes dinner. but we do have a very strong lifestyle relationship that is pretty well integrated into our dynamic and our daily lives. he moves me in to new territory a little at a time, and sometimes i have to be nudged more than others, and when i’m ready for something to move more quickly, i tell him so that he knows. i try my best to be good for him, and no matter what he suggests, i tell him honestly how i feel about it, whether i think i’m ready, and whether i’m interested in that particular aspect of fetish at all. the truth is, now that i’ve found him and realized that he is the person for whom i’ve been searching all my life, i find myself wanting to move faster than i ever thought i would, and i find myself willing to try many more things than i thought i would be. some of them i’ve liked, some of them i’ve been pretty indifferent to, but i like a lot more things/ideas than not. every new toy he’s brought home has been fun. every new style of play has been amazing and something i’m more than willing to do again.

this feeling of wanting to do it all, and do it often, wrt play, has caused quite a stir in my inner world, especially the parts where i’m so completely submissive to him. i’m your typical college-educated career woman: strong, intelligent, used to being on top of things, used to being in control of my world. this is actually why submission is so attractive to me, but it’s not as if it’s an easy thing to give up that control to anyone. so when i get in that particular head space we call “subspace”, and i know that he is the only person that can put me there, and i know that i can actually stay there a while and not worry about my outer world at all, that’s pretty damned special. but it means that my head gets a little confused when i return to “normal”, or normal for me.

it’s because of this that there have already been a thousand moments, and there will be a thousand more, when i look in the mirror and don’t recognize who is there. i keep expecting the changes in my being to show up on my face somehow, to show at least in my eyes, if not some other way. (a wart, perhaps?) and when i think of myself, sometimes i don’t even recognize the thoughts in my head, causing even more of a disconnected feeling than the mirror moments. i keep asking him “who am i?”, and he just answers “you’re my angel.”

he’s right, of course, but he’s as much an angel for me as i am for him, precisely because my whole life, my whole self, is changed, and changes more every day.

he says that when i look in the mirror and don’t recognize myself, it’s because so much has changed inside that i expect it to show outside, and when it doesn’t, there’s the confusion. i’m glad he could articulate it, cuz i was at a loss. my life has changed on every level, not just wrt to d/s, so it’s not as if it’s only the submission blossoming that has me confused. for the first time in my personal history, i am acutely aware that my biological clock is ticking, and that i actually WANT a baby. i am old enough that my mother had pretty much given up hope of grandchildren from me, so that gives you some idea of the revelation that has been. and i’ve finally found a man i want to marry and build a life with, which was the first step to all of this, but is in itself pretty huge. after all i’ve been thru, to be able to trust anyone enough to really share my heart with them is pretty amazing to me. that’s really more of a testimony to his soul than to mine, but it means once more that i am not the same person who looks at me from the mirror.

i imagine i’ll get used to it, at some point. so far, it’s been a little shocking every time. i keep expecting it to make more sense as i go, and perhaps it will. for now, i guess i’ll settle for being able to talk to John about it, and hope he can give me insight when i can’t find it on my own.

and i give thanks to all the gods of every dimension for sending him to me.

blessed be,
L