Love let­ters: The sec­ond day

Gen­tle­Spirit is sit­ting next to me on her lap­top, wad­ing through our ear­li­est cor­re­spon­dence, while I am intently study­ing the trad­ing strat­egy and mod­el­ing impli­ca­tions of equity options’ expi­ra­tion day volatil­ity crashes. (Yeah, it’s a mouth­ful as well as a brain­ful). She is a study in girl­ish­ness, next to me; there are ran­dom gasps and squeaks and, yes, some tears, as she gets all emo reliv­ing our get­ting to know each other. Can’t say that I mind; girly is good in my book.

This con­tin­ues from where we left off in Love let­ters: The first day.

Gen­tle­Spirit:

I fell asleep wait­ing for your response, I am so sorry. That is very unusual, but it was an unusual day for me. I was exhausted. You really are such a giv­ing man, and I thank you for tak­ing so much of your time to respond to me.

As far as my pics go, I am a nat­ural brunette. The color you see now is close enough to my nat­ural hair color. It’s funny that the pic you liked the most is the one I like the least. It is my thought though that pic­tures are not a good gauge of any­thing really but to give you an idea of a per­son. They speak noth­ing to the essence of a per­son, their aura, vibe etc…

Yes, your inten­sity comes through and I would not like the idea of being hurt for the sake of being hurt. This does noth­ing for me and men­tally and emo­tion­ally I would strug­gle with this. I am strug­gling already as it is. I feel myself afraid and resis­tant but in the sense of want­ing to reject myself, the way you describe it makes it sound some­what okay to me.

I also want you to under­stand that I don’t mean any­thing I say to be in any­way neg­a­tive or judg­men­tal about you, I think you are a beau­ti­ful per­son, it’s me I am hav­ing dif­fi­culty with so please under­stand that.

I can only imag­ine then that you under­stand the hurt of hav­ing some­one that you love or even loved, to think those things about you. It only gave fuel to that voice in my head (I am not schizo or any­thing like it) I am speak­ing of that inner dia­logue that just never shuts up, that tells you… You are ugly, not nor­mal, sick, twisted, why can’t you just be like every­one else, you’re dirty, dis­gust­ing, no one could really love you if they really knew you… blah blah blah.

As I said ear­lier, that is the tor­men­tor I wish to escape, I can­not imag­ine a more cruel one as the one I live with, that I lis­ten to, that I am a slave to. I am very emo­tional typ­ing this right now, unex­pected, but I haven’t talked of these things in this way ever before.

In try­ing to fig­ure all of this out and give it a rea­son, maybe I just am not strong enough to bat­tle that demon any­more, and need some­one else, some­one stronger to take on that fight. Per­haps through sur­ren­der, I find that one who will slay that Demon, because I real­ize I can­not. Maybe sounds a lit­tle crazy, but I am just throw­ing out what comes to me, as it has never come to me like this before.

This is it exactly, fear of the unknown. All of it is so scary to me, because I just don’t know how to cross that invis­i­ble line in the sand. The one that stands between myself and free­dom. It should be easy in the­ory, but not for me. It is so hard, I am so afraid of let­ting any­one see me. I mean really see me, but I am also aware that only in that moment can I ever expe­ri­ence free­dom, love, accep­tance and surrender.

In my past rela­tion­ships I have made the mis­take of con­fus­ing con­trol­ling men as strong men, when really it was the exact oppo­site, as they, too, were slaves to their thoughts and weak by nature. I have never been happy because as soon as I rec­og­nized this, I real­ized that I could never sur­ren­der con­trol or power to them. In fact, usu­ally I ended up with the power in the rela­tion­ship which I hated.

I am deter­mined to find a way to do it though this time. I know it is a jour­ney, spir­i­tu­ally, emo­tion­ally, men­tally, phys­i­cally, but talk­ing, rec­og­niz­ing and acknowl­edg­ing there is some­thing wrong I think is the first step. If I don’t do any­thing now, I am the aware accom­plice to my own self destruc­tion, unhap­pi­ness, to being unfulfilled.

I have to make the choice with full clar­ity to betray myself, I don’t believe I can do that now, but the fear comes from the thought that maybe I could. No… I won’t, I can’t. No mat­ter what I have to endure to get there, I will cross the line. I am just prepar­ing for bat­tle right now. (Fig­u­ra­tively, of course.)

The scary part of allow­ing your­self to be this vul­ner­a­ble is… will the voice have been right all along and can I afford to take the chance of find­ing out, because I don’t know how to rebuild if it was right, if rejec­tion comes.

To put your faith in another person’s hand is a huge act of love, espe­cially when you are frag­ile and just don’t want to end up shat­tered after. This is what is hard, how do you say that to some­one, I would fear that respon­si­bil­ity if some­one said that to me. I don’t know the recipe, I have never baked this cake before. I just know I need to find the right per­son, and give in. Whether that be sadist, dom, vanilla what­ever. I just want and need to con­nect with a per­son on a very deep level, to allow my surrender.

I do find it ther­a­peu­tic talk­ing with you and am very grate­ful for you tak­ing your time to write to me and read what I say. There are not very many peo­ple in the world that are will­ing to give time to a stranger, espe­cially one that is a bit lost and confused.

I don’t feel like the same per­son who began this jour­ney, and I def­i­nitely don’t rec­og­nize myself right now. Maybe it will calm in a cou­ple of days, but I am feel­ing like a stranger in myself at the moment. I think your writ­ing touched my soul in some way, regard­less of what­ever label I am. The labels I am not sure about, I am evolv­ing and am not sure what I am, what I like, who to iden­tify with. I am first, though, human, and I felt your human­ity very very deeply through your writ­ing, and you are so beau­ti­ful to me.

Dreamwalker, I am afraid I was ruined for “nor­mal” sex a very long time ago. I have no idea what expe­ri­enc­ing this would be like. I won­der, would I love it, hate it, freak out, melt­down. I am not sure, but I do ask it.

The only issue I need to resolve is fear. I fear pain so how do I walk into it, ask for it, beg for it, cry for it? or… Get it, then real­ize it’s not what I want. This is the ques­tion that needs to be answered. The only cer­tainty I know right now is my need to sur­ren­der, sub­mit, give in. That is one fact I know. In what arena to do that, I do not know. I guess I will have to fig­ure that one out. Is there a check­list? (LOL)

Find­ing my com­ple­ment, that sounds amaz­ing. I am so glad to have you to talk to. Thank you for every­thing. I will be at work all day today, but hope to talk to you more later. If you are busy, no prob­lem. I will try to talk to you again soon.

Dreamwalker:

Don’t be sorry; it was late and you must have been exhausted and emo­tion­ally worn out. I’ll be around to talk to you as long as you want; no need to try to squeeze it all in on one day.

I agree that pic­tures are not a good gauge about any­thing sub­stan­tial about a per­son. Me, hav­ing the writ­ing gene, look deeply in how a per­son expresses them­selves, for instance. Besides, peo­ple mostly think in terms of faces when they think pictures.

I have come to real­ize that I don’t view faces like “nor­mal” peo­ple do. I view faces as a col­lec­tion of parts; eyes, mouth, nose, rather than a unity. I guess I don’t see the for­est for all the trees.

I don’t know if that pro­motes or detracts from my per­cep­tive­ness but I am extra­or­di­nar­ily per­cep­tive of people’s emo­tional state. Goes with being a sadist, I sup­pose; how can I enjoy your agony if I can­not immerse myself in your emotions?

I don’t know if it’s weird or not but I have never been phys­i­cally attracted to a woman because of her face, only her body. Her face is not part of the equa­tion for some rea­son. Her face is a con­veyance mech­a­nism for what I make her feel; it’s a com­mu­ni­ca­tion device that bridges her heart and mine. Until I touch her and make her feel, her face just… is. Although I sup­pose she’d look weird with­out it. Grins.

I con­fess to won­der­ing how your fea­tures would trans­form in sur­ren­der. Espe­cially your lips. I find the mouth to be the most expres­sive part of the face, the clos­est to and most hon­est about your emo­tional state.

It breaks my heart when you tell me about your inner tor­men­tor. Sadly, it is not very uncom­mon for women to have that inner voice that puts them­selves down. Still, hear­ing it described like you did really tore at my heart. Does it really feel like that?

And how could some­one not love you if they really knew you? Your deep­est, dark­est secrets, that you con­fessed to a stranger yes­ter­day only serve to make you more beau­ti­ful. Trust me on this; every­thing you have said so far just makes you that much more radiant.

Did you get to How Can I Explain yet?

From your descrip­tion, I can def­i­nitely see why hav­ing some­one tak­ing the reins is such an attrac­tive thought for you. I kinda like the thought of replac­ing your inner tor­men­tor with an exter­nal one. An exter­nal one that finds you beau­ti­ful and desir­able and the trea­sure of his life.

There are peo­ple out there, good, sane, lov­ing peo­ple that are just like you or are your per­fect com­ple­ments and they would smile indul­gently and shake their heads at the secrets you have been ago­niz­ing for so long. It really isn’t nearly as bad as you think; in fact, it’s the oppo­site. You are in pos­ses­sion of a trea­sure that you can share with your lover if you choose and dare, you just have to find a way to make it okay for your­self to do so.

Judg­ing from yes­ter­day, you caught this thread of thought in flight and I’d really like to see you fol­low­ing it inwards. You have a great oppor­tu­nity right now to grow and to take giant leaps towards your own emo­tional ful­fill­ment. This whole area, this whole con­cept is about press­ing bound­aries, though; a pri­mary tenet is to go out­side your com­fort zone. With­out that you won’t grow and get to know the self that you can be and should be.

That still doesn’t mean that you should be reck­less, of course. Like in any other com­mu­nity, there are bad apples in the kink com­mu­nity as well. Although I have heard sur­pris­ingly few neg­a­tive sto­ries for the num­ber of peo­ple I have met. Per­son­ally, I have never felt more accepted and loved by friends than now; the kinksters I sur­round myself with are incred­i­ble and mag­nif­i­cent people.

You say that in your past rela­tion­ships you have con­fused con­trol­ling men as strong men; would you please tell me more about that? And how do you per­ceive the difference?

I like the deter­mi­na­tion in your voice when you say that you are prepar­ing for bat­tle. It sounds like you are ready to take respon­si­bil­ity for your own hap­pi­ness and ful­fill­ment even though the jour­ney will be scary. I bet that the future you will look back and notice that all the scari­ness was in the unknown; I bet that the jour­ney itself will be quite exhil­a­rat­ing. And pleasurable.

And for what it’s worth; you will dis­cover that the voice was com­pletely and utterly wrong. I agree: putting your faith in someone’s hand is a huge act of love and trust espe­cially when you are afraid. And it is an equally huge act of love and, yes, trust to accept that faith in you. It is okay that you would fear that respon­si­bil­ity if some­one wanted that from you but that is not your role, is it?

The role that you are carved out for is to be the recep­tive one, the vul­ner­a­ble one, the one that feels. The role that I’m carved out for is to be the inva­sive one, the con­trol­ling one, the one that guides. Nei­ther of us could ful­fill the other’s role.

Frankly, the thought of being on your side of the fence is just as ter­ri­fy­ing to me as it is for you to be on mine. We sim­ply long for the roles and things that feel nat­ural to us and that we instinc­tively feel will ful­fill us and sat­isfy us.

To take that respon­si­bil­ity is some­thing that feels nat­ural to me; it makes me feel accepted and trusted and adored. And that is exactly what I need. To sur­ren­der is some­thing that feels nat­ural to you; it (prob­a­bly) makes you feel loved and cher­ished and trea­sured. And that is (again, prob­a­bly) exactly what you need.

I don’t know the recipe either. The thing is that every time we bake a cake, the pantry con­tains dif­fer­ent sup­plies and we have to work with what we have. That means that the cake will come out dif­fer­ently every time. That’s why it’s so impor­tant to pay atten­tion to each other and not sim­ply rely on talk­ing. As soon as you start talk­ing you engage your brain and it really likes to stir the pot and make a mess out of things.

I’m a com­mu­ni­ca­tor and I sure like to com­mu­ni­cate. (In per­son I am kinda quiet unless I think I have some­thing of sub­stance to say.) I’ll beat the poor dead horse into pulp with words if I don’t stop myself. I do real­ize, though, that the great mass of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between a male and a female is out­side the realm of lan­guage. And that goes dou­ble for doing some­thing as ele­men­tal and pri­mal as what we are dis­cussing right now.

I am first, though, human, and I felt your human­ity very very deeply through your writ­ing, and you are so beau­ti­ful to me.

Oy. Bless you, girl, for you made me blush.

Con­sider one thing, though; we were males and females long before we were human. That’s why I make a dis­tinc­tion between men/​women and males/​females in my writ­ing. Per­son­ally I think that we are males and females first and then humans (and then men and women.) I think that we are dis­sat­is­fied and feel lost because we keep for­get­ting the pri­mal dis­tinc­tions between the sexes. We are too occu­pied being men and women and we don’t pay nearly enough atten­tion to our­selves and our part­ners as pri­mal sex­ual beings.

The brain may be the biggest sex organ there is but I’m telling you that a woman looks a hel­luva lot sex­ier when you look at her as purely a female. And women are dang sexy to begin with. I think of myself as a gynephile, by the way.

Dreamwalker, I am afraid I was ruined for “nor­mal” sex a very long time ago.

Tell me more about this.

I won­der, would I love it, hate it, freak out, meltdown.

Yes. Grins.

This is a highly emo­tional jour­ney; you will feel all kinds of emo­tions. I have. The good ones out­weigh the bad ones, though. Significantly.

Gen­tle­Spirit:

I con­fess to won­der­ing how your fea­tures would trans­form in sur­ren­der. Espe­cially your lips. I find the mouth to be the most expres­sive part of the face, the clos­est to and most hon­est about your emo­tional state.

Funny again, the fea­ture I least like on my face. The imper­fec­tion of my face, is my mouth. I know most peo­ple wouldn’t notice, but I am hyper crit­i­cal of myself. When I smile, it doesn’t look even, one side of my lip turns up slightly, and it really both­ers me. It sounds so vein and petty but it seri­ously, really both­ers me. I have sat and tried to retrain my mouth to smile prop­erly, for hours some­times, but noth­ing has worked. You see… the tormentor…

It breaks my heart when you tell me about your inner tor­men­tor. Sadly, it is not very uncom­mon for women to have that inner voice that puts them­selves down. Still, hear­ing it described like you did really tore at my heart. Does it really feel like that?

Yes, it really feels like that. It feels over­whelm­ing, and I feel pos­sessed some­times by the hate­ful thoughts, some­times to the point of tears.

As I told you in a pre­vi­ous email, some­times the only thing I can do is to grab my arm, dig my nails into my skin so hard so that the pain of that moment is louder than that voice.

I have never shared this with another soul but I feel fine talk­ing to you, maybe I just don’t feel judged by you, or maybe it’s the safety of the com­puter screen.

Some­times I really think I am pos­sessed by this cruel demon, but I am glad it only projects onto myself. In a strange para­dox, I am extremely kind and non judg­men­tal towards oth­ers. I would give my last penny to a home­less per­son, and run to anyone’s aid who needed help. I don’t mis­treat peo­ple, at least I don’t think I do and am always keenly aware of how peo­ple are feeling.

When it’s quiet and those thoughts start, they are very dark. I can’t stop it and I have tried. Med­i­ta­tion, books… I belong to those thoughts, they do not belong to me, and I really do not believe there is any­one that could tor­ture me more.

And how could some­one not love you if they really knew you? Your deep­est, dark­est secrets, that you con­fessed to a stranger yes­ter­day only serve to make you more beau­ti­ful. Trust me on this; every­thing you have said so far just makes you that much more radiant.

The truth is, peo­ple do really love me and are very attracted to me (not sex­u­ally, but my energy). You see, Dreamwalker, I read those words but I don’t com­pre­hend them because all I see is… “they wouldn’t love you if they really knew you.”

Thank you for your very kind and car­ing words, just for­give me if I can’t believe them just yet. My hope is that some­day I will believe those things about myself, deep down, way down where no one has ever visited.

On the sur­face day to day I have a very strong and happy demeanor, when peo­ple are near me, to dis­tract me I give them my whole atten­tion so I don’t have to be alone with myself. This is hard to admit, but heal­ing as well.

I have never felt this level of hon­esty with myself much less any­one else and yet it is flow­ing with ease. I am sorry to bur­den you with this, I must appear very dis­turbed, but if you met me, you would never think any­thing was wrong.

Tank you for listening.

Did you get to How Can I Explain yet?

I just read it, incred­i­bly pow­er­ful. Your writ­ing affects me. A LOT. I love read­ing it, I can get lost in it. It is so hon­est and raw, I don’t think I have ever read emo­tion in words like yours.

It scares me too. It’s like a roller coaster, you want to get on the ride, wait for­ever in line, but once you get on you hide your eyes, scream and can’t wait for it to be over, and then when you get off, you want to go back and wait in line to take the ride again. This is how I feel when I read your words.

From your descrip­tion, I can def­i­nitely see why hav­ing some­one tak­ing the reins is such an attrac­tive thought for you. I kinda like the thought of replac­ing your inner tor­men­tor with an exter­nal one. An exter­nal one that finds you beau­ti­ful and desir­able and the trea­sure of his life.

I couldn’t believe when those words came out of me, but I had never put words to those feel­ings. I never was able to find the words to describe the enor­mity of power that inner tor­men­tor, until today and I am so glad I was able to share that with you and maybe to think that some­one on this planet under­stands me, at least on some level.

There are peo­ple out there, good, sane, lov­ing peo­ple that are just like you or are your per­fect com­ple­ments and they would smile indul­gently and shake their heads at the secrets you have been ago­niz­ing for so long. It really isn’t nearly as bad as you think; in fact, it’s the oppo­site. You are in pos­ses­sion of a trea­sure that you can share with your lover if you choose and dare, you just have to find a way to make it okay for your­self to do so.

Judg­ing from yes­ter­day, you caught this thread of thought in flight and I’d really like to see you fol­low­ing it inwards. You have a great oppor­tu­nity right now to grow and to take giant leaps towards your own emo­tional ful­fill­ment. This whole area, this whole con­cept is about press­ing bound­aries, though; a pri­mary tenet is to go out­side your com­fort zone. With­out that you won’t grow and get to know the self that you can be and should be.

I do believe there is some­one or maybe many out there that could under­stand me, it is the find­ing the way to make it okay that is the struggle.

I am grow­ing right now, believe me I have never reflected like I am now. I have never even con­sid­ered some of the things I am now, I just feel a bat­tle within, but it seems I am win­ning it for the time being.

Going out of my com­fort zone, yes the ulti­mate chal­lenge. I have one wish, I feel if I could have the courage to do one thing, and do it that I would break through every­thing. This is my deep­est dark­est secret, shame, humil­i­a­tion, hate, and although I feel close to you, I can’t even bring myself to tell you what it is.

Do you know some­thing, if I told you, I think you would fall over laugh­ing it is such a silly thing, but I can’t do it. I need to con­quer it though. I hope that I can share this with you someday.

That still doesn’t mean that you should be reck­less, of course. Like in any other com­mu­nity, there are bad apples in the kink com­mu­nity as well. Although I have heard sur­pris­ingly few neg­a­tive sto­ries for the num­ber of peo­ple I have met. Per­son­ally, I have never felt more accepted and loved by friends than now; the kinksters I sur­round myself with are incred­i­ble and mag­nif­i­cent people.

Dreamwalker, this is very sweet of you but really my instinct to self pre­serve is extremely keen, and I would not let harm come to myself.

I have only spo­ken at this depth with you, and only because you revealed so much about your­self. I do feel a con­nec­tion to you, maybe I am being silly… but I do, I think I feel okay to tell you things that I haven’t even really con­tem­plated myself.

You are a great friend already and I don’t know you, which is prob­a­bly good, because I wouldn’t be brave enough to reveal myself this deeply face to face, at least not right now. I hope I can find the courage someday.

You say that in your past rela­tion­ships you have con­fused con­trol­ling men as strong men; would you please tell me more about that? And how do you per­ceive the difference?

Well, I won’t bore you with the details of my pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ships but what I found was that con­trol was mask­ing fear and inse­cu­rity. They were so focused on their need to con­trol me that they showed no self control.

When this was revealed to me in the many ways the peo­ple use, I could no longer give them my heart. The con­fi­dence was really arro­gance and inse­cu­rity, the inabil­ity to accept respon­si­bil­ity for their actions only to turn and blame me, many things like this.

If I can’t respect you, admire you, feel safe with you, I can­not love you, or give you any part of me. It’s the self preser­va­tion instinct. I dis­con­nected my heart and soul from those men, they chose me any­way, I didn’t ever choose any of them.

I have never cho­sen any­one in my life. I have always shied away from men, and the ones I have been with have heav­ily pur­sued me, and had to ask me out and be rejected at least 3 times. That is not arro­gance, it is fear. I fear men, espe­cially ini­tially. It’s strange, I know, but I feel so invaded when some­one approaches me ini­tially. I want to run away.

The dif­fer­ence between a strong man and a con­trol­ling man in that a strong man is even. He does not allow my emo­tional state to affect his emo­tional state. He can under­stand me and know that I am not react­ing to him but myself and try to be there with me through those moments.

He has a sense of bal­ance, and does not take his anger out on me, blame me for his fail­ures or mis­takes, takes respon­si­bil­ity when he needs to, says “sorry” and accepts “sorry,” doesn’t resent me or hold grudges.

A con­trol­ling man will try to tell me what is wrong with me, what I have to fix, he will lose his com­po­sure and act out towards me, bully me, shut me up, call me names, or what­ever else he needs to do.

I like the deter­mi­na­tion in your voice when you say that you are prepar­ing for bat­tle. It sounds like you are ready to take respon­si­bil­ity for your own hap­pi­ness and ful­fill­ment even though the jour­ney will be scary. I bet that the future you will look back and notice that all the scari­ness was in the unknown; I bet that the jour­ney itself will be quite exhil­a­rat­ing. And pleasurable.

And for what it’s worth; you will dis­cover that the voice was com­pletely and utterly wrong. I agree: putting your faith in someone’s hand is a huge act of love and trust espe­cially when you are afraid. And it is an equally huge act of love and, yes, trust to accept that faith in you. It is okay that you would fear that respon­si­bil­ity if some­one wanted that from you but that is not your role, is it?

Oh, I think the bat­tle has started. It started when I read “Is Sub­mis­sion a Gift” on FetLife. Did you ever read the com­ment I left there for you? That was so pow­er­ful for me, I yearn for that connection.

I know it’s not my role, and thank you for say­ing that the voice will be wrong. I so want to believe that, and I will take the chance any­way when I feel ready because although I might be shat­tered, I will at least not have betrayed myself. What is so sim­ple for some is deathly scary for oth­ers. I just have to break through. I will.

To take that respon­si­bil­ity is some­thing that feels nat­ural to me; it makes me feel accepted and trusted and adored. And that is exactly what I need. To sur­ren­der is some­thing that feels nat­ural to you; it (prob­a­bly) makes you feel loved and cher­ished and trea­sured. And that is (again, prob­a­bly) exactly what you need.

Yes, I know this to be a fact. I need this.

I don’t know the recipe either. The thing is that every time we bake a cake, the pantry con­tains dif­fer­ent sup­plies and we have to work with what we have. That means that the cake will come out dif­fer­ently every time. That’s why it’s so impor­tant to pay atten­tion to each other and not sim­ply rely on talk­ing. As soon as you start talk­ing you engage your brain and it really likes to stir the pot and make a mess out of things.

Yes, the brain, the enemy, where the devil resides.

I’m a com­mu­ni­ca­tor and I sure like to com­mu­ni­cate. (In per­son I am kinda quiet unless I think I have some­thing of sub­stance to say.) I’ll beat the poor dead horse into pulp with words if I don’t stop myself. I do real­ize, though, that the great mass of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between a male and a female is out­side the realm of lan­guage. And that goes dou­ble for doing some­thing as ele­men­tal and pri­mal as what we are dis­cussing right now.

I am first, though, human, and I felt your human­ity very very deeply through your writ­ing, and you are so beau­ti­ful to me.

Oy. Bless you, girl, for you made me blush.

I am first, though, female, and I felt your ele­men­tal male very very deeply through your writ­ing, and you are so beau­ti­ful to me.

(Do you like that bet­ter?) Still, I was glad to make you blush.

Dreamwalker, I am afraid I was ruined for “nor­mal” sex a very long time ago.

Tell me more about this.

I don’t know what that means, “nor­mal sex.” I don’t think I have ever had it, and couldn’t even begin to explain what that means.

The only time I have been present in sex is when it was kinky, strange, dif­fer­ent. Another fact I have never shared with any­one, in Vanilla sex, I am not there, I am there but not present. It’s like I just switch off the lights and slip off to another place. Not sure you can even begin to under­stand what I am talk­ing about.

I won­der, would I love it, hate it, freak out, meltdown.

Yes. Grins.

So… Which one? All of the above? Have you ever wit­nessed a melt­down? If so, how did you han­dle it?

This is a highly emo­tional jour­ney; you will feel all kinds of emo­tions. I have. The good ones out­weigh the bad ones, though. Significantly.

I do get that. I want you to know that I am not trou­bled on a con­scious level. I feel per­fectly fine when I push all of this aside. Only when I get closer to where I need to be is where all of this is stirred.

If I am too bur­den­some or dark for you, please tell me. I don’t want to bring you down. I want to thank you though for being a sanc­tu­ary for me, for allow­ing me to be totally hon­est and for encour­ag­ing me so much. I feel so much grat­i­tude towards you I cant express in words. I can only say, you are the Mon­ster that I would want under my bed.

P.S. I don’t think you are a Mon­ster but I remem­ber yes­ter­day when I called you a Dom and you said some­thing like, “My sweet Gen­tle­Spirit, I am not a Dom I am a Monster.”

To me you are no Mon­ster, you are per­fect as you are, and I will be for­ever grate­ful for your friend­ship, even if some­day you don’t want to be my friend.

Dreamwalker:

It’s not nearly as drain­ing on me as it is on you, sweet Gen­tle­Spirit. You’re the one that is going through emo­tional upheaval right now, not me. I am far from con­quer­ing all my demons and smooth­ing out all the bumps in the road but my sail­ing is easy com­pared to yours.

I have done my break­through work already; yours is only start­ing. If you don’t mind I’ll stick around; it is beau­ti­ful to watch. You’ll prob­a­bly hurt like hell and I will be here to keep you com­pany and enjoy watch­ing you spread your wings.

I have a thing for mouths. To me, mouths are the most expres­sive of all parts of the face. I have fallen in love with mouths, just how a woman artic­u­lates her lips, how she smiles, how she purses her lips when she thinks.

How her lips swell when she’s aroused.

In some ways a woman’s mouth is so inti­mate too. Push­ing my fin­gers into her mouth is a dif­fer­ent level of inti­macy than push­ing them in else­where. To me, it almost feel even more intimate.

I have often won­dered why I feel that way. The best answer I have for now is that her mouth is closer to where her aware­ness is located. We all feel like we reside in our heads because that’s where all our senses are rep­re­sented. So pen­e­trat­ing her mouth is pen­e­trat­ing her closer to her “core,” if you will. Shrugs; that’s my hypoth­e­sis at least.

Any­way, the pic­ture I said was my favorite was my favorite because of your smile. There’s noth­ing wrong with your smile. In fact, it is lovely. And if it were to be a lit­tle uneven, that is just icing on the cake. If I wanted Bar­bie I could buy her at Toys R Us. An uneven smile would be a trade­mark, some­thing for a lover to imprint on. I know it’s a big deal to you but, I’m sorry, I’d just think it was cute. And I don’t see the uneven­ness in the picture.

Yes, I can def­i­nitely see you need­ing some­one to unex­pect­edly pinch your nip­ples or grab you by the hair when you start obsess­ing over things. It could be quite the fun “reboot.”

I know this is not fun for you and although I try to make light of the sit­u­a­tion, I am not mak­ing light of how you are feel­ing. To a cer­tain degree, I know how impos­si­ble it is to stop those thought, that voice in your head. And to a greater degree, I can imag­ine. Being a sadist, I don’t do sym­pa­thy very well but I’m pretty good at empa­thy. When it comes to fol­low along with your emo­tions, I have incred­i­ble sta­mina and attention-​span.

No, nobody could tor­ture you more than those dark thoughts. And my heart keeps break­ing for you, Gen­tle­spirit. You need so much to have some­one reach into you and help pull out those thoughts while you push from the inside. I can’t even imag­ine how much of a relief it would be to have that help, to have a method to quiet the darkness.

To have some­one do the same with your thoughts and emo­tions as he does to your head, hold­ing it securely between two strong hands and not let­ting you move as he takes a kiss. Imag­ine those two strong hands reach­ing into you and keep­ing your mind cap­tive in the same way; no mat­ter how much it wants to jump around in cir­cles and bounce off the walls, there is noth­ing it can do because it is securely held by his attention.

To have a stronger, more insis­tent, more demand­ing voice drown out the one in the back of your head. To fol­low the voice on the out­side that is even more greedy for your atten­tion, per­haps more needy for your atten­tion, and feels more enti­tled to your atten­tion, than the dark voice inside you.

You said that you belong to those thoughts, that they don’t belong to you. I under­stand now the dri­ving force behind your need to sur­ren­der; until you find some­one else to belong to, you will con­tinue to belong to those thoughts. You are like the flag on the rope in a tug-​of-​war; it’s just that right now there is nobody on the other side pulling you away from the dark­ness. You need some­one to pick up the rope and start pulling you away from the dark­ness, some­one stronger, more arro­gant in his enti­tle­ment to you, greed­ier, more stub­born, more pos­ses­sive than the force that is pulling on you exclu­sively now.

The truth is, peo­ple do really love me and are very attracted to me (not sex­u­ally, but my energy).

Why not sex­u­ally? Why did you feel the need to make that distinction?

This is hard to admit, but heal­ing as well. I have never felt this level of hon­esty with myself much less any­one else and yet it is flow­ing with ease.

It is heal­ing for you. Telling me this, just artic­u­lat­ing it, is an incred­i­ble heal­ing exer­cise for you. If that were the only thing you took away from this, it would be more than enough, right? It’s so hard to find some­one to talk to about things like this. But I’m not just inter­ested in heal­ing you, I also want to help you grow. You have such great poten­tial for peace and tran­quil­ity and I’d love to watch you achieve it.

We all take dif­fer­ent paths to find peace. Some find it in reli­gion while oth­ers find it in books or med­i­ta­tion. It seems like you have exhausted your “main­stream” approaches and you are still with­out a path that works for you. Per­haps this one is it. You have already instinc­tively reached out for it in some ways with your pre­vi­ous lovers. That must mean some­thing. Also, the reac­tion you have to my writ­ing also is a strong indi­ca­tor that you sub­con­sciously know which path to take. You just need to have a sit-​down with your brain about it first.

It’s like a roller coaster, you want to get on the ride, wait for­ever in line, but once you get on you hide your eyes, scream and can’t wait for it to be over, and then when you get off, you want to go back and wait in line to take the ride again. This is how I feel when I read your words.

This made me smile. You just described how it is to expe­ri­ence all this live and in hi-​def and sur­round sound where avail­able. So often, in the mid­dle of things, you may hate it and want it to be over but as soon as it is, you can’t wait to do it all over again. That’s the most com­mon thing I have heard from masochists.

Pain is pain. It fuck­ing hurts. It’s just that some­where along the line, that pain shapes your emo­tions in ways it doesn’t for “mun­dane” peo­ple. You’ll come to appre­ci­ate that. You’ll come to form a love/​hate rela­tion­ship with it. It may very well be like going to the gym where you may not feel like it and even hate it but if you skip it you feel out of sorts and you wind up even more miserable.

Tell me what went through your head when you asked your ex to slap you across the face as hard as he could. Why did you ask him to do it? What made you think that you wanted it? What did you feel when he did it? Did it hurt? If it did, why did you want it? Did you think about it after­wards? Did you want him to do it again?

I have one wish, I feel if I could have the courage to do one thing, and do it that I would break through every­thing. This is my deep­est dark­est secret, shame, humil­i­a­tion, hate, and although I feel close to you, I can’t even bring myself to tell you what it is. Do you know some­thing, if I told you, I think you would fall over laugh­ing it is such a silly thing, but I can’t do it. I need to con­quer it though. I hope that I can share this with you someday.

I hope so too. Remem­ber that you have noth­ing to lose to tell me; I’m not sit­ting there watch­ing you. You are safe behind the screen and pretty much anony­mous. If there was ever a good time to ver­bal­ize it, now seems like it.

I sin­cerely doubt that I would fall over laugh­ing but I will prob­a­bly tell you that it was noth­ing to worry about. I promise you; I have heard some really strange stuff (and done some pretty strange stuff myself) with­out rais­ing an eye­brow. Remem­ber that you are talk­ing to some­one who has you beat, no doubt about that.

I once was with a woman who was ago­niz­ing about a hugely shame­ful thing and she wouldn’t tell me because she was too humil­i­ated by it, but time was run­ning out and finally she blurted out that she was dream­ing about me piss­ing on her. If she had been able to sink through the floor, she would have at that moment.

I said, “come here,” grabbed her hair and half-​dragged her to her shower where I pro­ceeded to ful­fill that par­tic­u­lar dream. Later on she said that it was so ironic that she needed the humil­i­a­tion of being peed on but wouldn’t tell me because she felt humil­i­ated by say­ing it. She loved it, by the way.

We’re not deal­ing with per­fectly rea­son­able lines of thought here. We’re deal­ing with emo­tions and with our sub­con­scious. Things don’t always make sense. Some­times we sim­ply have to go on what feels right and trust that our instincts are show­ing us the right way.

When­ever you choose to share that secret with me, Gen­tle­Spirit, I will lis­ten intently. And there is no way I will think it’s strange.

I received your sec­ond install­ment a lit­tle while ago and read it. How­ever, it is already late and I need to go to bed. Tomor­row I will be out of touch with my com­puter so you are unlikely to hear from me. Wednes­day I will be back, though, in the later evening. I will respond to the con­tin­u­a­tion of your mes­sage then.

In the mean­time, please feel free to con­tinue to write me. Don’t feel like you have to wait for my response before writ­ing again if some­thing occurs to you. Just writ­ing in itself is a good thing for you. I will respond as soon as I can. I promise.

Good night, sweet GentleSpirit.

Read our con­tin­ued cor­re­spon­dence in Love let­ters: The third day (Or the calm before the storm).