Freak on a leash

When I was first introduced to the concept of BDSM, and the fetish/kink lifestyle in general* I assumed, as so many do, that it was simply about sex. Kinky, taboo, whips and chains and leashes and paddles laden sex. Obviously something that has been an acknowledged, if not embraced, sub-culture for longer than I could imagine, couldn't have anything else to it. I mean, like, duh.
Oh how thankfully wrong I was.
I've had what could be called a difficult life, as everyone has in some way. Absentee father, abusive step father, molested as a child, the whole cliche she-bang. Whatevs. I've dealt with it as best I can, and I've moved on as much as possible. One of the lasting side effects though has been and probably will always be, my attitude towards sex, or anything sexual. To put it simply, I'm a prude. Only in private though. I love to talk about sex, read about sex, watch sexy movies, etc etc etc. But when it comes to my own sex life, I blush, and giggle, and trying to talk dirty send me into a panic attack. I rarely if ever initiate things, and I can never seem to ask for what I want, hoping that the guy will simply read my mind. This is not to say I don't enjoy sex, I do. I enjoy it a lot. I've never had any problems with the physiological side of sex, everything works the way it is supposed to, and thank goodness for that. However, I do tend to use sex as either a shield, or a reason for avoiding emotions. It is complicated and I should probably see a therapist about it, but until then, lets leave it at the fact that sex is not something I need complicating my life all the time. I may, in the future, be ready to mix my submissive, masochistic life with my romantic life, or my sex life, but right now, I'm perfectly okay keeping everything separate and neat.
Finding out that I could explore this side of me, without having to be someones dirty little slut, was utterly exhilarating. At this point in my life, playing, or sceneing are completely non sexual to me. I don't have to worry about dealing with my submissive feelings, and my sexual feelings as well. I don't have the complications of a vanilla romantic relationship all tangled up in my D/s relationship. I have the ability to completely explore my boundaries as a submissive without having to worry about anything else, and it is fabulous.
Not to say there aren't complications sometimes, my Dom (to be discussed in a later entry) and I are friends as well. Which can lead to blurring of lines, and trying to figure out when and where we are D/s and when and where I can tell him to shut his face if he says something annoying. Like any type of relationship, there are conflicts and issues to be worked out, we have our good days and bad days, and days where we both want to just smack each other. It works though, and I am pretty gosh darn happy about it.
I won't be so bold as to say that the majority of women who seek out this type of lifestyle or relationships must have deep seated psychological trauma in their pasts, because obviously that isn't true. But in my case, it is, and this lifestyle is unexpectedly therapeutic for me. Every spanking/beating I get, where I can relax, enjoy it, and embrace it, negates some of my abuse as a child. I'm owning the pain, taking it in, and turning it from something fearful and shameful, into something utterly lovely and amazing. Every moment of submission is allowing me to trust someone fully, without fear or reservation. It is knowing that despite everything, I still have the capacity for trust, and love.
And that is a beautiful gift.



*everyone will always have their own labels and own definitions for all of this, the scene, the lifestyle, whatever you choose to call it, I don't care to get into semantics, you all know what I mean.

First things first

One of the things that has been hardest for me as I've started exploring the kinkier side of life, is how to successfully keep my kink life away from my child, and still have a kink life. I belong to an amazing community of people in my mid-sized Midwest town, but very few of them have children, and even fewer of the regularly active members are single parents. I of course, am one of the latter.
The immediate problems were how do I even meet people and learn about this without exposing m child; the internet solved that problem for me. Some of the sites I found were pretty skeezy, no doubt about that, but a few of them were pretty decent.
Then I found Fetlife. *insert angels singing and rays of light shining down*
It took me a long time to get brave enough to even explore this, it was one thing to tell a boyfriend to "do me harder!" in bed, and a completely different thing to say to the e-world, "Here I am! I'm submissive and I like pain!". To me that just screamed that I wanted creepy old men to proposition me for sex, or more likely, I would end up locked in someones basement for months and told to put the lotion on my skin or else I would get the hose again. Neither of those were scenarios I was looking forward too, so I made a profile and began to lurk. And lurk. And lurk some more. I lurked for over a year, hiding my lurking from people on the site, people in my real life, and even my then boyfriend.
Finally someone emailed me (I had gotten the propositions for sex from creepers the whole time, but I chose to ignore those) and actually told me something about herself, told me she was a mom too, and welcomed me to talk to her about all my fears and concerns. So I did. Then I posted in some local groups, and finally started meeting people.
Game on.