It happens sometimes that I wake up in pain. If I'm unlucky, it persists through the day, the night, and into the next. This is the legacy of a cartoonish fall a few years back that would have been a sure winner on a funny home videos show.
Massage has made all the difference in My recovery and is the most important element of My day to day comfort. I like to have new boys talk to Me while they massage whatever I extend, so that I can assess their instincts and skill. It's curious to observe whether My body's opinion about a boy matches the conclusion of My analytical mind. A long-term boy would surely be dispatched to some attend semi-pro classes. Sometimes I can look back and recall the moment when I heard a click or snap in My body and thought, "Uh-oh". Sometimes it's, "Hmmm, maybe throwing those two big bags of topsoil in the trunk Myself wasn't such a hot idea." Sometimes, I just slept wrong or sat at the computer too many hours. Sometimes the pain is a house pet that comes and goes at will.
This need for pain management nicely tees up a core challenge for Dominants... accepting the limits of our power and control. We don't really have total control of much in the grand scheme of things, but people on both sides of the slash get a lot out of the fiction that we do, and out of the process of making the world bend. At M/s conferences, there is sometimes a class on how to deal with situations in which the Dominant falls ill, needs surgery, or is otherwise unable to sustain the previously-normal degree of visible control in the relationship.
It's a somewhat different thing, though, to have to surface the issue early in the get-to-know you process. The illusion of power doesn't get the chance to take hold, and that can be a bit more reality than many new-ish boys are ready to cope with. As I live with the pain, I'm coming to accept it as just another facet of reality. As the acceptance happens, I'm more comfortable presenting it when it arises. We're all middle aged, everyone has something by now, this is My piece of it. I'm hopeful that the pain also has the effect of weeding out earlier the boys whom time would show to be unsuited, leaving only the gems.
We Midwesterners like to think we are made of hardy, tough stock. No whining. Soldier on. But I found this mindset doesn't actually work very well in a D/s dynamic. I really can't swing a flogger when I'm in pain, and it's not in anyone's best interest to try. Hiding pain is seldom successful and creates a question about what else I might be trying to hide. Yet announcing this physical weakness doesn't mesh smoothly with My self image as a with-it Dominant, or what I believe most boys are hoping for. I had to get to the point of having compassion - for My pain, My need to complain more than I think I should, for the body that is no longer resilient in the ways I took for granted - before I could accept it enough to make it an oh-by-the-way when talking to a new boy.
Pain management has taught Me to ask for and better receive service. It has cut some of those Midwestern roots of self-sufficiency out from under Me, and put more focus on community, another fine Midwestern virtue. Service meant less when it was limited to things like serving tea. I like tea, but its absence meant little to Me, so its appearance didn't mean a great deal more. But to have an important service provided, something I can't actually do for Myself, something like massage for pain relief, that's a different thing. It requires Me to be fully aware of My vulnerabilities, to admit them in the moment (Dominants love doing that), ask for help (another favorite Dominant pass time), and to trust someone to meet a need I would prefer to not even have. It requires Me to do several things I'd rather not, in order to receive a wonderful experience I do very much want. In fact, I find now that the emotional significance of the service I receive is directly proportional to how much vulnerability I am willing to share.
After all, what can you really give the person who has everything?
I can't say I have enjoyed the process as it unfolded, but I like where it has taken Me.
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