Sometimes Life Is An Annoying Poem

My boy tarin has had an intense summer. If you know him, you have read his own writings elsewhere. Since he has been public in other forums about his struggles there can be more detail here. 

When I met tarin 18 months ago, he was the walking wounded. Sweet, smart, kind, witty, I enjoyed his energy and his company. I felt how deeply he was hurting and I knew I could help. he was several years out from being in an Owner/property relationship, in which his Owner treated him abysmally throughout, and ultimately abandoned him. he had not been in another /s since.  he doubted whether there would even be someone he could serve. he was growing his hair long with the beautiful and romantic idea that if he ever found a worthy Master to live happily-ever-after with, he wanted to have cutting his hair off be part of his collaring ceremony.

I told him I could be his Master, but it would not be sexual for Me. That was our agreement - nonsexual M/s - and for a good while it worked. I taught him to be emotionally honest and transparent with Me, about everything. I cut his hair with him, provided life leadership in a number of areas, and taught him to protect the property at all times - even when that involved pushing back on Me. Along the way, we spent a lot of time processing his trauma history, and the marriage was the tip of the iceberg, there was long standing childhood sexual abuse by a brother, and much earlier, there were beatings by a parent with mental illness, lack of compassion from the other. He had done a lot of counseling already, I was just helping him raise the bar from survive to thrive.

I taught him that service to Me included becoming the best and fullest version of himself.  I taught him that he has value because Master believes he has value, even in the moments where he feels he has none. We did A LOT of emotional heavy lifting.  And I grew too. I opened up, allowed Myself to be more vulnerable, allowed Myself to trust someone more to meet My needs, and got better at forgiving. Having Tarin be so already excellent at service when I met him allowed Me to rely on him, allowed Me to grow in what areas I was willing to rely on him, and meant he was spotting even more areas as we went along.  It was the first and only time I have felt evenly matched in an M/s dynamic.

I was aware of sometimes being the Angel who has no pain, so that I could help him with his, but I was conscious of it and made sure My needs did were properly tended. I was careful to not be a martyr, careful to care for both of us. And it worked really, really well. It was unexpectedly comfortable and easy, and I enjoyed feeling that some good was coming of the years I had suffered Myself in comparable ways. Above all, I felt privileged to be part of his life, someone he chose to share the road with him. I felt I was doing good in the world by supporting him to grow. I felt for the first time like a true Master.

I admire tarin immensely. What he has been through would have destroyed many others. Many people have marvelled at My own tenacity through life's adversities, but the struggles he lives with daily would make Me give up. I have been honored to teach him how to be happier than he has known how to be, to introduce him to Joy as john introduced Me. I will always consider it a great accomplishment of My life to have been a Master to him.

Last year I sent tarin to Butchmann's Experience as part of My requirement that he be the fullest version of himself. It was hard but tremendously positive. This year at Fusion he did some ordeal track classes: the Ordeal of Pain, the Ordeal of Pleasure, the Ordeal of Power. I was a little surprised he chose these classes, and it meant we spent less time having fun together at Fusion than I expected, but I support anything that helps him process his extensive trauma history and opens a path to greater Joy in his life. Two weeks after Fusion, he went to MTTA slave academy, and the next week to Butchmann's again.

I knew he needed time to process the Fusion ordeals, and that was ok. I knew slave academy would be an intense experience for him. I figured it would be August before the dust began to settle from all that deep exploration; I knew it would be months more before the work was done. I was prepared to have him less focused on Me for that span of time so he could do the work. I felt it was the right thing for My boy. A good Master would do that.

I was not, however, prepared for him to come to Me in the hour between leaving slave academy and getting in his car to drive home three states away, and to tell Me that he has been struggling for six months, and had concluded that he can no longer remain in our nonsexual M/s dynamic. As good as things are, it is no longer enough. he needs, deserves more. Though he didn't use the words, he wants, as Julia Roberts' charachter in Pretty Woman says at the end: he wants the fairy tale. he wants the dream. The relationship that is everything, he wants to find The One. 

And I want that too, both for him and also for Myself. 

It has been a sadness for Me that I am not able to give him the sexual component he longs for. I think it has to do with the Master role, perhaps the age difference, it just feels too... parental? I feel more like a bossy big sister. Maybe I am just deluding Myself and I was afraid.

But still, something like parenting is what he needed, and I was able to provide it. That has been the wound he carries, the absence of someone he can look up to, trust, someone who advocates for him, encourages him, is loyal and clannish, cares for him, teaches him. And he has grown to the point he is ready for more than I can give.

That is a successful relationship. I am proud of us.

I always knew the platonic element was a difference; I thought we had addressed it at the beginning. I did not foresee that it became more of a problem for him - not less - as the relationship deepened. That was admittedly naive of Me. My executive mistake was in not putting more structure in place. Perhaps if we had had a contract that renewed every few months, that would have given us a structure for grappling with his emerging concerns.

Perhaps.

I heard a new story the day he ended our relationship, a story much earlier than the bad Owner, even earlier than the abusive brother's harm for 10 years. At the age of 5, his un-diagnosed mentally ill parent beat him, and he went to school with a black eye. He's on good terms with the parent these days, who is now properly medicated, but somehow, they have still not talked about what happened back then.  When asked by the teacher what had happened, little five year old tarin told the truth, not knowing he should lie. When Child Protective Services came to the house and asked him again what happened, he saw his parents' faces of anger, he understood he had done something wrong.  Or as I see it: he intuited that if he told the truth about the harm those he loved had done, he would lose them one way or another.

As I told him... at five years of age he was wise enough to understand the choice: truth of self or abandonment. And so he chose to lie, he recanted. CPS left, he stayed with his parents, and they beat him again.

This is the memory that he had been wrestling with at slave academy, and two weeks before at Camp during the ordeals, and for much longer before that. But I only just heard it after he told Me he wanted out of our dynamic. When I heard the story, I felt we had struck bedrock.  This is his fundamental struggle, the choice between truth and enforcing his boundaries vs being unloved and being abandoned.  Many people have some version of this choice that operates to drive their decision making in life. His is a lot bigger, starker  than most. The stakes are far higher, because the wiring that gets created so early runs deep, and it has had a long time to be reinforced by a string of later events.

And so, when I heard he had concluded he cannot stay in our nonsexual M/s relationship, I saw it as an opportunity to create a counterbalance to what happened at the age of 5. I supported him telling Me the truth of his feelings, and I didn't do or say any of things I might have chosen, that would have applied emotional pressure on him to knuckle under. I didn't speak of a slave obeying the Master. I didn't tell him a slave shouldn't do this. Fortunately, I was so stunned that I didn't even feel angry at that moment. It didn't seem real.

I told him I had always known that if I did My job well as a Master, some day he would want more, and I was proud of him for getting there so fast. I told him I was sad because I had hoped that My feelings would change in that direction, and they hadn't, and it pains Me not to be able to give him the complete package. I told him that it hurt a lot, but I didn't hate him for telling Me these things, I promised not to abandon him. We would find a way - I, as the Master - would find a way to transition us.  These might be the last acts of Mastery I can ever offer him, but I am hopeful they might be the most powerful.  I have considered it My job to define and raise the bar for how he can expect people to treat him.

A few weeks passed and we had a good, multi-hour call in which it became time for Me to talk about his decision, where My feelings are. It took a lot of prompting from him, a lot of dead air on the line and "Talk to me, Goose" before I could tell him the truth of those feelings. That I was sad and surprised. That it hurt My feelings others at Fusion and slave academy knew more of what was going on before I did. That it deeply upset Me he had not handled the need for change within our M/s dynamic, he had broken it, seizing control and announcing a decision, rather than coming to Me with a problem and trusting Master to navigate the whitewater with him. More profoundly, I felt blind sided and abandoned by the one person from whom I did not expect it. he apologized and explain how deeply confused he has felt, which meant he didn't know how to say something; this was the first relationship he has had which he actually wanted to end well, but he doesn't have any experience winding down a relationship amicably. 

So then for a few weeks I felt we were in a no man's land. he still wanted and needed some support in life, and I was offering leadership where it seemed to be welcome and made sense but obedience is off the table and he doesn't necessarily do as I advise; he has been somewhat unresponsive, which caused Me worry and upset; and I no longer felt there was a balancing level of energy being provided to My life. It has been difficult and hollow and unsettled. It has really knocked Me for a loop.

In Hope Floats, Sandra Bullock's character says: "Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome. Beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it's the middle that counts the most." We had an awesome middle and nothing happening now will take that away from us.

Tarin promised in that first call that he would come to see Me in August and October, to wind down the relationship and figure it out in person. Then his three open weekends of August passed, and each weekend I couldn't get a straight answer, and he never did come. And I knew at each step that what I feared was indeed coming to pass.

So now we have had the second call, on Friday. And now he has said that tarin has left the building. All the little things that were threads to connect us over distance have been teed up and are officially gone. I will no longer call him My boy. I can no longer expect from him the thousand little things I have come to rely on. All the answers are

"I don't know" or "I cannot commit to anything".  My M/s relationship ended the day slave academy ended in July;  it just took us time to accept fully what had happened.

I said that it seemed we had landed in that trite greeting card: if you love something, set it free. He made Me laugh - not easy under the circumstances - by dryly noting that sometimes life is an annoying poem. And I was reminded again how much I miss him.

It's heart breaking to lose the person I have most trusted and deeply enjoyed and relied on on a daily basis for so long. You wouldn't think that's possible from 600 miles away, but it is. I'm trying to focus on the good, trying to focus on feeling gratitude. I'm choosing a positive narrative and resisting the negative one.

But I don't want to go to Master slave Conference. I don't want to deal with people innocently asking where My wonderful boy is. I don't know how to give a cocktail party length answer. I don't want to answer in a way that disserves him or Me, or in a moment of weakness, tarnishes what we had. I don't want to ugly cry on anyone's shoulder in a hotel conference center surrounded by miles of low pile industrial carpet over concrete.  If there is support to be had from other Masters, I will find it elsewhere.

Meanwhile, I did meet a new boy at Fusion, and we spend good time together. I hate that he is getting to know Me while I am grieving and depressive; I don't like this side of Myself and I have always hid it. But the new boy d swears he doesn't mind. he cooks, massages, helps, amuses, distracts Me, and puts up with My grumps and considerable irritability. Now he is playing the Angel to Me, and it is uncomfortable but maybe it is good. Maybe I've grown enough to let someone in easier, further, so that I can be deeply known and supported too. Tarin taught Me that.

For that I will always be grateful.