I'm still here, honest, you just can't see me ...

Hi All

I am sorry that I have been away for so long but there has been a lot going on in my life, both inside my head and in reality which has made blogging too difficult for several reasons.

The reality part is a combination of the end of the school term and the chaos that causes when you have 4 kids to sort out (in 2 different countries and 3 different schools) with the usual round of concerts, sports days and exams to manage and the shenanigans of my ex-husband. He has been acting in a manner which at least spectacularly stupid and at worst possibly dangerous and I have had to spend some considerable time ensuring that my children are properly protected from the worst of his actions by numerous consultations with various legal and professional authorities.

This latest incident is just one of a series which is part of an ongoing saga which stretches back more than 5 years, although I am more able to handle the situation now and do not get as upset as I did before, it is nevertheless emotionally and physically draining to have to do it and it leaves me unable to give much energy to anything else. But the next steps are in the hands of the police and the lawyers and for now I can do no more thus I have time to "enjoy" a bit of a breathing space and to deal with the "stuff" inside my head.

So with no further ado I'll move on to that !

As you will have seem from my recent posts I have been struggling to come to terms with some parts of me which have been slowly emerging as Andrew and I have been following our DD path, namely submission and masochism. I have known, since I was in my mid teens, that these parts of me existed but had not been able to acknowledge or admit to them until very recently. As a small aside I can honestly say that "choosing" a relationship where I get regularly spanked had absolutely nothing to do with these masochistic tendencies, in fact they did not enter my head at all, as chronicled earlier in this blog we started DD for completely different reasons.

However, I digress, what has been happening over the last few months is that I have found that this journey seems to be changing my life in a really radical way and this is not because DD/ BDSM is in itself a radical lifestyle, but because it has started to change something much more fundamental within me.

I have spent some considerable time discussing all this with The Heron Clan, mostly because they are wonderfully nice, non judgemental people, who have "been there done that" in the DD/BDSM world but also because they have some real understanding of my issues on a much deeper level coupled with a real gift for mentoring and excellent communication. Swan pointed out to me that I ought to be posting all my conflicts here in the blog, not because I have found answers yet, because I haven't, but because it helps to write it all down, and perhaps it might help me unravel it a bit, a tough task but here goes!

Well what is the problem, let me try to explain...

Although the changes in Andrew's and my life which we wanted to bring about by embarking on this DD path have indeed started to bear fruit the truth is that this new journey has actually started to change my life in a completely unexpected and radical way, not because DD/BDSM is a "radical" lifestyle but because it has started to make me feel that perhaps I am "finally" allowed to do something for me and this is a pretty unusual concept for me.

For most of my adult life I have lived to do things for other people (partners, husband, kids, family, colleagues), sometimes even doing things to them happy even if they did not make me happy. The truth is that I have always put my needs/wants/desires on hold and made sure that their needs/wants/desires were fulfilled. It is what I believe(d) the traditional role of wife and mother was really about, even though I clearly was/am not a typical wife and mother but perhaps even more because I was not. This traditionalist view was also carried through in my beliefs about sex, a woman is supposed to be totally submissive in the bedroom and lie back and think of England she is not supposed to ask for sex and she is definitely not supposed to like pain etc. I have found that actually I am only happy adopting a submissive role in the bedroom and that when forced into a more dominant role with my ex-husband I was really unhappy. Strangely this is one place where I am a reasonably good submissive, if I can just lick that in the rest of my life that would be great!!

I started therapy 5 years ago after a nervous breakdown induced by a very stressful situation caused by my ex-husband, what I thought would be a short term thing to get me through these issues and involve much cursing and swearing about my stupid ex has turned out to be a long term thing where I mostly talked about me and started to finally deal with the very significant issues that I had, irrespective of the stress related to my ex. Most of my problems centered on my extremely negative self image which was deeply ingrained from years and years of bullying at school. Although I am very lucky in that I had and indeed still have a very supportive and loving family, my school environment was extremely abusive, in short a living hell. In short I had believed everything that the bullies had told me about myself and despite outwardly being a confident and happy person, inside I was deeply unhappy and self-loathing.

It was this self-loathing had always meant that I refused to "allow" myself to do anything that was good for me or would make me happy. I hated the fact that I was overweight but could/would not control my eating, indeed I would often deliberately eat the wrong things to "punish" myself and reinforce the view that I was fat, ugly and useless as I had been told for years. Yet I would proclaim to the world that I was happy with my size and it was the rest of society who were wrong and narrow minded, they should love me for who I was on the inside and not what I looked like on the outside, despite the fact that I despised myself.

This "double bluff" worked well for so long that I had managed to convince myself that it was not my problem it was just the world's problem and it was only through the many, many sessions with my patient therapist that I was finally able to first identify this negative record, that was constantly playing in my head, and then counter it's damaging effects. Thus about 18 months ago I finally started to exercise and lose some weight and become much more happy with my body. I even started to really enjoy the exercising, something that I had always considered as a necessary evil before. I get so much satisfaction when I run 5km or have a good session in the gym, things I never thought I could do in a million years, things that the bullies had said I could never do because I was so fat. I will be honest and say that the record is still there, I know it and recognise it for what it is, but sometimes I still have problems not reacting to it. It sometimes tells me for instance that, because I not only enjoy running and the gym but they are also good for me, I am not "allowed" to do them.

I have been battling this mindset for a while and have been working with my therapist on getting used to the idea that I should be "allowed" to do things that make me happy. As I said before I have spent a lot of my life doing things to make other people happy even though, in some cases it did not make me happy or indeed made me very miserable, but I do get great satisfaction, or you could call it "indirect happiness" out of making others happy. However, "direct" happiness, doing things just for me, because I want to, has not been possible, or if possible has been associated with great feelings of guilt, e.g. I cannot go shopping to spend the money (that I alone work hard to earn) on myself unless I really "need" the item, but I can buy totally frivolous things for other people who clearly do not need, nor often in the case of my kids deserve them. I suppose in a warped way doing things to make others happy and at the same time me unhappy has continued to "feed" my need to punish myself because I "know" I am a bad person, I suspect this is why this behaviour has continued for so long.

And so to now, coming to terms with my self image issues when dealing with "normal" things like diet, exercise and body image was one thing but now, starting to deal with much more "not normal", but even deeper and stronger issues like submission and masochism is a whole new ball game. I am already "bad" as I am overweight and cannot control my eating, for example, what must I be because I have a deep desire to be submissive and an enjoyment of pain - crazy, evil, certifiable?

Perversely it is purely because these needs are so strong that I have been forced to address them, now I have taken "it" out of the box, I cannot put "it" back. I have finally to admit that there is something that I want AND need so strongly that I cannot any longer suppress it. I am going to have to "allow" myself to have something that I actually want, because I cannot face the alternative, living without it, this now seems impossible. It is too late to turn back, I am out of control now, even though I am terrified of what the future may hold as Andrew and I continue down this path, I know I cannot go back to life as it was.

So the battle between what I want (the good stuff) and what I am "allowed" to have (the bad stuff) has been raging for a few weeks now. It seems the more I move down the path to what I want towards submission the harder the other good stuff (diet and exercise) becomes to do. I have been eating badly and missing the gym in order to somehow "compensate" for exploring and enjoying the "wanted" submissive and masochistic side of me. It is like I have to do these negative things to balance out the positive ones.

So, this is part one of my current turmoil, I'll try and post the rest in a couple of days, just need to put the washing on and start packing for my holiday which starts on Friday - yippee.

Hil