Why do I have Dominants?

Hello everyone! Hope your week is going well. Today’s post is going to be interesting because it’s a punishment.

So, when I started this blog I intended to write from the perspective of what I am, a writer, and discuss things in a theoretical sense, and not as someone who lives these things or experiences them. That lasted for about two posts I think, before I realized that’s not really who I am or how I want to run this blog.

What I really am is a submissive, and I’ve been pretty much open about that my whole life, except when it came to my day job where it wouldn’t have been appropriate or gone over well. Once I stopped having a day job I felt I was finally free to express myself openly, without fear of how people would react, and I dropped the last of my pretenses, or so I thought.

But then I stepped out of the shadowy world of short story writing and into the world of writing novels where things are a bit different. You’re expected to interact with your readers, put yourself on display, be active in social media, and then there’s reporters. Not so much for me that last part, not yet and maybe not ever, but for some authors there have been problems with reporters exposing their naughty writing as though enriching people’s fantasies is something to be ashamed of, and that makes me a little nervous. I’m not sure why honestly, since I don’t have a lot of secrets.

Everyone who knows me knows I’m a submissive, even my mom, yes. They know I write this stuff, because I’m not ashamed of it and I’m not ashamed of living it either. I guess it was the idea of someone pushing me out into the public eye to be judged that made me nervous. It gave me a touch of stage fright, I suppose, and so for a short time I contemplated pretending this was just a job for me with no personal attachments.

But nah, that’s just not going to work. So, let’s just go from here with the understanding that I’ve done and lived most of the stuff I write about, and most of what I’ll talk about here. Now, having made this decision I sort of figured I’d ease into it, deciding how much of my personal depth I felt like sharing as I went along and then—Haha… I got in trouble. My Doms felt an essay posted to my blog would be appropriate. So now you know a thing about me: I have Dominants, more than one. I’m a group project and I’m extremely happy with that.

The topic is supposed to be “Why do I have Doms?” and the reason is because I sometimes forget to let people help me. I forget that they’re there for me, sometimes when I can’t be there for myself. I’ve been struggling recently with a few things and one them is feeling that I’m weak. The fact that I’m clingy with them and need them is normally okay with me, but when one of them goes away and is unavailable, the reminder of how much I depend on them can be shocking to my system.

There was a little bit of confusion over the dates for a recent trip W. was taking. I was preparing myself for the absence but suddenly discovered that I had the dates wrong. W. wasn’t leaving in two days, W. had already left!

Oh.

And normally trips don’t mean a complete absence of communication, just much less time for them to pop online and check in with me, spend time with me. This particular trip however, was a camping trip. No signal. No Internet. It was something I should have figured out myself, because duh, but somehow it hadn’t clicked, and it wasn’t explicitly stated so I hadn’t realized.

Oh.

I handled things well overall, I think—at least after the first day of being anxious and needing reassurance, which was provided, because as I said, I’m a group project so I’m never really unattended very often. But the feeling—the …gap of someone being briefly gone from my life was felt. Instead of accepting that, of course, I’m going to miss someone so important when they aren’t there, I got very angry at myself for feeling upset about it.

What kind of idiot is going to be upset over someone they love having a wonderful vacation, which they badly needed? What kind of adult woman can’t handle, not even being alone, but just having less people giving her attention for a week? How selfish must I be to be upset by this when I should be happy they are off having fun, right?

Well, that’s what I told myself because, in my years as a submissive, I’ve collected a lot of baggage, and a lot of ideas about what a submissive should be. Not all of those ideas are healthy or even possible, but they are there in my head. Those nasty inner voices who tell you that you aren’t good enough–the inner bully, I like to call it, telling me that I’m wrong for being so weak that I miss someone when they can’t be with me for a few days. Telling me I’m selfish because I think about how things will affect me when, as a submissive, I should only be thinking about them.

The reality is this: none of that is fair or logical, and I know that. It just doesn’t matter that I know it because those feelings of self-anger overwhelm the analytical thoughts entirely. I expressed these thoughts in the form of putting myself down to Dom K. and it was decided that I’ve been doing that too often lately, so it was time to stop, and since my communication skills also need work I was going to need to discuss being upset about the mix-up with Dom W. after the vacation too. (The initials make them sound so mysterious right? I love it, but I might call them something different every time.)

Note: Discuss is not a euphemism here for punishment. It really was just meant to be a conversation about me being upset about the mix-up in dates and how I’d handled it.

That was the first day W. was gone, after that I settled down and everything was fine, but W. came home, and I didn’t bring it up, because part of me still feels like they will both judge me as harshly as I judge myself. It never happens, but it’s always a fear I have. Then the other day I got in trouble. It wasn’t a huge thing, but it was the first time I’d broken a rule in a while and I was upset because I have this idea that I’m supposed to be perfect, or else I’m too much work.

I don’t think I was actually in much trouble. I don’t even think there was going to be punishment, but there was some disappointment that I wasn’t taking care of myself properly, since most of my rules are the health and safety type, and that made me sad. In the context of discussing why I was sad it came up that I hadn’t spoken with W yet about being anxious during the vacation.

I really didn’t want to do that.

I avoided and evaded the discussion all day. I was angry at being pushed, and sulky over it. I bordered on a total tantrum for a couple of hours but managed, barely, to avoid doing anything that was going to dig the hole deeper. Pretty sure it was stressful on all of us and then, finally, there was counting. I don’t know about other submissives, but nothing gets me moving faster than a Top slowly counting down.

I gave in. We had the discussion. It was fine, as it always is, and I immediately felt much better as I always do. Eventually, I hope, I’ll get over these fears. In the meantime, they are always patient and understanding, which I appreciate, but now I have this essay. In the interest of not boring the readers I’m going to sum this up succinctly. (Yes, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it.)

I have Doms because I need them. Not because I’m too weak to take care of myself, but because sometimes I need to not be the strong one. I have Doms because my doubts lead me to make poor choices on my own and I am much healthier and safer when I have an authority figure watching over me.

I have Doms because I’m a submissive woman and we, as a general rule, tend to flounder without someone to balance the other side of the scale. I need to be held accountable to someone. I need to be loved and cared for. I need to be kept and cherished and yes, punished at times too.

Dominant influences are a necessity in my life, as essential as water and sleep. They keep me grounded and they keep me safe from the world and from myself too. They create a structure of rules that allow me to function at my best.  Knowing what you need and being able to ask for it is the opposite of weakness. No matter what my internal bully tries to tell me, these things take confidence and strength.

And finally, I have these particular Dominants because I’ve learned that I can trust them to see the darkest parts of me and not love me despite of them but instead accept and welcome those broken pieces as part of me to be cared for.