Alone amongst this year’s “Best of the kinky rest” selection, I want to post today’s final entry in its entirety. I hope the author – who posts at The Art of Babalon – doesn’t mind me doing so, but her insights into kink really do deserve as wide an audience as possible. It’s too perfectly-composed to edit into highlights, and it’s my favourite of the six pieces I’ve chosen.
Submission is not easy to define. It’s a broad term that we stretch and shape to suit our needs. There’s no one brand or flavour, no simple summation. What I mean when I call myself a submissive one day may be completely different the next.
For me, there’s an element of compulsion. It’s a need, a drive, not simply something I decided to try on a whim. But that doesn’t make it any easier to pin down. Often it feels like in trying to define my submission, it’s like chasing down an emotion. And emotions are tricksy things. They’re transient. They shift and change, like the weather over mountains. One moment it’s a serenity, the next a storm.
I am reliant on my Master. Not to rule me, but to guide me. He calls me on my crazy, he crafts environments in which I can be who I really am. He makes it safe and acceptable for me to do the things I need to do, but am afraid of.
And sometimes he despairs of me.
Because I am difficult. Hard work. Demanding.
I am not service orientated. I do not enter rooms upon my knees. I fight. I resist. I eloquently justify why the things happening are bad and wrong… And then sulk when they are removed from reach. I want and expect my Master to get it right, and yet I cannot always say precisely what it is I want.
Sometimes, I think it is easier for the new submissives – the fresh faced ones, just dipping their first toes. For them, there’s an endless list of things to try, boxes to tick. And showing willing is so simple. Any little effort can be seen and acknowledged. Recognised as some great milestone.
But what about a girl like me? How do I show willing when my willingness is taken as a given? How do I show devotion when my devotion is known? Can I continuously escalate? Where does that lead? Must I spend everyday naked, constantly engaged in only the things that make my skin crawl and stomach turn just to show I can and will?
And where is the excitement in a girl, tried and tested? When you know how far she will go, is there anything it’s worth asking of her?
I’m sure there is… But I am no Dom. Sometimes all I can do is hold myself up for comparison, and find myself lacking. I want to push boundaries, and yet the boundaries are so distant now, I can barely see them.
Today, this is what I want:
To be freed from the weight of obligation and responsibility. Powerlessness, through having my power stripped away. All other things rendered unimportant in the moment, so that I have the liberty to simply be me. To experience whatever there is to be experienced, to cope or not, to respond exactly as I respond. The freedom to do nothing but exist, precisely as I am in that moment.
To date, I have found restraint and pain are the best tools for such an outcome. Restraint effectively removes me from a position of power, resistance is impossible. Pain cuts through the defences and the barriers and obliterates my ability to do anything, be anywhere, but be present in the moment.
Both make me yield.
Nothing makes me fight like powerlessness. To begin from a position where I feel I have no control will make me fight for it. I will scratch and claw my way back to solid ground. In a situation where I start with nothing, I will fight for anything I can get my hands on.
Is it contrary? Does it make me a ‘bad’ submissive? I only know it is my truth, today. What I want, what I need is a Master who will work with me. Who can guide me. Or who is strong enough to laugh at all my definitions and dictates and take me precisely where he wants to take me, regardless of anything else.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my annual round-up. Thanks to the authors selected for sharing their wonderful writing over the past year.
So, dear readers: which piece has been your favourite?
This is a highly insightful post. That’s partly because the author probably plunged a few feet deeper into submission than myself. For example, I don’t share her fundamental desire “to be freed from the weight of obligation and responsibility” and see my boyfriend as a dominant partner (with all the ambivalence that goes with that) rather than a “Master”. Still, a number of her thoughts resonate: particularly the bit about watching fresh-faced ones and remembering how exciting it was to simply explore things, holding oneself up for comparison, wondering how to push boundaries within a kinky routine.
Among the entire selection, the third one (“Not so willing”) has been my favourite.