Ain’t That a Shame

Gosh, Master, that was kinda a SUCKY day, wasn’t it?

Yes, Princess, I agree. That was not the day I was hoping for.

I mean it’s bad enough we had a HEADache all day LONG. And we had to drive FOREVER to physical therapy. And we got BEAT UP, but we are STILL in pain, and then that BOY doesn’t want us AFTER ALL when we thought he DID, and then the PT we go all that way for raised his RATES 36% but he didn’t TELL us until after he beat us up and we were ALTERED. And then we felt so EXHAUSTED we had to sleep in the CAR for a long time and then it was so BRIGHT and we didn’t have SUNGLASSES and it took FOREVER to get home on STUPID I-95.

I know, Princess. It really was an all day odyssey and it was not a whole lotta fun. But we made it all that way safely, the car is ok, we are ok.

I’m not very HAPPY, but I’m not sure WHY and I don’t LIKE it.

Ok, Princess. C’m here. Would you like to be a blue budgie, would that help?

*nods yes with tears welling*

Ok, let’s get you into your onesie and get your feeties warm and get some painkiller you. Maybe a little lie down for a bit. Then we will see about dinner, I bet you are getting hungry.

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There’s a great line in Room With a View in which Mr. Emerson says of his child: he only tried when he should not have tried. That was Me today.  It was a good, calibrated object lesson. Princess is new to dating and she is totally undefended. I’ve been gradually opening us up to the guy from camp who gave us the big cum. Outside of a dynamic in which I have all the power, it feels very different to say: "Hey, I wanna get laid, would you like to do the deed?"  It’s way more uncomfortable.  We were getting conflicting signals from the guy, so when he kept the date, we got our hopes up and opened the kimono emotionally, only to be turned down, with still more conflicting signals. In My adult headspace, it was no big deal. In Princess headspace, it was. She is very sensitive about feeling unwanted.

As I struggled through the long drive home, I tried to name the feels. Disappointed, sure. A little angry, possibly. Embarassed, very. But more than that. Something like embarassment but much deeper. And then I realized. Ah... this must be Shame.

I have known of Shame in the abstract. Heard it discussed. But I never knew what it meant as an experience that I could name in My own body.  Shame turns out to be the original gaslighting. Ask for what you want in a situation; the situation chooses not to grant the wish, but doesn’t accept responsibility for that decision. Instead, it’s YOUR fault for wanting it, there’s something wrong with YOU that you’d even THINK about asking. How do you manage to even exist in such epic wrongness? You should know no one would ever agree to THAT, certainly not with YOU.  

Shame is being so embarrassed for asking, for wanting what you want, that when you get told no, even nicely, you want to die.  Or at least, you want to change, cloak, cut off, even suffocate the part of yourself that is unwanted. That black, oily feeling of Shame make such choices seem well advised.

In sharing with the guy, I made passing reference to wanting to explore “the things I have not allowed myself” sexually. And flipping through the internet tonight looking at fun alternative vibe clothes I would never buy, much less wear out the front door, I was struck again by the things I do not allow Myself. Is this why I don’t dance around or do other movement alone in the house? Is this why I don’t do yoga outside of a supportive class where I get lots of encouragement?  Does My shame run that deep? Am I that estranged from Myself?

I know it has to do with feeling stupid. I know it has something to do with not wanting to look dumb even - especially - in My own mind’s eye. Public ridicule might be easier, come to think of it. "Pathetic" was My father’s go-to word. This makes some sense. Something big and still only vaguely understood happened in Me that put Princess in the dark for decades. Maybe I’m starting to get an idea of what it was. 

Ten years ago, as I went through depression, I went through a form of delayed adolescence, but Princess wasn’t with Me yet at that point. Maybe that process is still incomplete.  I tripped across this line in the news today:  “the path to truth so often runs through shame”.

A while ago I named a new piece, distinct from Master Me, Princess, and the General. I haven’t given it much thought since then, but I had named it The Shadow.  It’s a swift and silent reflex in Me that shuts down, recoils from even faintly uncomfortable and slightly dangerous-feeling situations. Could it be a form of shame in action?

I have long been aware that I became a Femdom and a Master type in kink without ever wrestling much with self acceptance.  It always felt like a logical extension of My vanilla self and it was. It took a while to get comfortable with being sadistic, sure. But I have watched so many people -- usually subby boys -- struggle with self acceptance and honestly, I have felt a bit superior to them, beyond them. 

But maybe... maybe the reverse has been true, maybe they were much further down the road than I am, because I have fundamentally been playing it safe as a Dominant. Maybe I am only just now excavating the thing I struggle with.  Maybe shame is the flip side of brave, when brave doesn’t go as hoped.

I think it is the author Robert Bly that writes about how we are born with a bag that we carry around. Any time we cannot deal, we put that unprocessed experience into the bag. Eventually we get so good at stuffing things we cannot deal with, we hardly notice, there’s just a faint doppler effect as another whizzes by. But in middle age, the bag has gotten several blocks long and heavy, and we are struggling, dragging it around. It gets stuck in revolving doors, elevators. We get to work in the morning and cannot understand why we are so tired. At some point we have no choice but to set it down and open it up, and when we do, what we find inside is a whole other person. And usually... that person is pissed.

Surfing internet clothes, I had an intense moment looking at a fun outfit where I thought:  That’s Me.  That’s a different version of Me, which I have not allowed Myself to be. 

I like Her very much. She’s not terribly far away, I don’t think. But it’s gonna take some work to get there. I’m careful of the consumerist promise that buying things solves problems, but the fleece onesie has been very instructive and so have the warm boots. Clothes help us explore and communicate identity, not just to other people but even to ourselves. Clothes make the man as the ancient saying goes. Maybe it would be worth buying that outfit.