Balancing

So many blogs that haven’t been written and no time to pause and catch them up. Nothing to do but jump in again and go. I could have written stories but I’ve been having trouble connecting the dots among the stories, finding Meaning, finding Perspective.

Maybe that’s the victory, in and of itself. Maybe what’s new and important is that lately - since Fusion, since the shamanic thing - I ruminate less.  I’ve figured out how to use these tools and I have momentum. It’s no one big thing I can point to, it’s all the little things, all the course corrections, all the moments when I choose to be brave, emotionally honest and vulnerable, trusting that it matters more to Be Me Right Now than whatever happens next. All the times that what happened next was amazing and awesome and unexpected. All the times I have marvelled how weirdly easy these formerly terrifying or recently uncomfortable things have become. All the times I have felt a sense of flow and been happy for it, wondered why it is happening now and will it last.

Princess is around but the volume has softened, she is useful but no longer feels external. Princess is an inner radio station I can tune into and most of the time away from. Make no mistake, I want to dive deeper with Princess some time soon, see where that could go; but there is only one local person I would do that with right now and he’s busy moving at the moment. Princess is real but a year after the Battlestations blog post, she no longer feels disruptive and scary. We have worked out an arrangement. In a way she has become the testbed where I figure things out and take them for a drive before IRL implementation.  And the whole personal growth and development process has sped up. 

We are AGILE!  (Princess is giggling at her scrummy joke, we are amused.) 

We also are seeing the boy from the dungeon, the boy from the menage a trois. It could even be said we are dating, though the joke is that I picked him up on the side of the road. And it is a new thing. He is kinky, but switchy, he bottoms with Me but is a sadistic top too and also exploring a lot, he’s very much in flux, just had his first anniversary of entering the scene. We share some deeply nerdy traits and experiences, I feel deeply comfortable and surprisingly safe with him for no reason I can articulate satisfactorily.  It’s been two months since we connected that night in the dungeon. I don’t find Myself getting annoyed or tiring of him. It’s the closest thing I’ve had to vanilla dating since, well, ethan I guess.  Vanilla kinky dating... where you both know and understand what it means to be kinky, play kinky in bed but it just feels right, and you otherwise function without a dynamic and do normal life things very well together. It’s what I always thought a good Top-Top dynamic might be like. Two people empowered enough to own their stuff, express their needs and boundaries with compassion, and responsible enough to work at being good partners.

It’s interesting for Me to feel cared for and supported in this way, which I until recently associated with what a slave or deep submissive does... but he does it because he is a kind person who enjoys being kind to me.  It’s interesting for Me to feel I can be supportive of him at a level that is meaningful on his side without leaving Me feeling drained.  Also without Me feeling superior or aloof. It’s a lovely, fuzzy case of NRE.

At the same time, things are shifting. We agreed to go lift weights together. I reached out to an alumni group  for help with My resume. These are not small things that have bubbled up.

We share the usual gripes and even insecurities, but they stay — there’s that word again — in balance. Soon we are back to lobbing puns at each other or talking about other things, meaningful things. There are moments I wonder what to Do with this, and then I remember, there isn’t anything to Do. 

This is Joy. 

Be with it, enjoy it, share it, embrace it, be thankful for it.

I have now met a handful of men his age - Millennials - and found a delightful, unexpected resonance in them.  My married playmate with kids A. My burner boy. Assorted others. And now this D.  I’m seeing in them so much more emotional intelligence, a kind of wisdom even, and a version of masculinity I like so much better. A masculinity I think of as more European, not toxic American. It’s stuff I’ve only seen before in certain enlightened men who have successfully parented. But these guys are getting there independent of the kids, and usually without them. Could it be the Millennial thing overlaps somehow with the Unkey/Big thing?  Who knows.