Love let­ters: The third day (Or the calm before the storm)

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

Dreamwalker:

The email I sent you last night was still in the out­box of my email pro­gram this morn­ing. It sent as soon as I quit the pro­gram and restarted it. I’m sorry, sweet Gen­tle­Spirit, for being a klutz and not ver­i­fy­ing that it actu­ally sent.

I hope you will have a great day today.

Gen­tle­Spirit:

Dear­est Dreamwalker,

You are every­thing that is good and kind. You never need to say sorry to me about any­thing. You have been a lit­tle mir­a­cle in my life, have wrapped your hands around my heart, and given it a beau­ti­ful warm hug and you make me feel like every­thing is going to be okay.

Dreamwalker:

Sweet Gen­tle­Spirit,

It’s grat­i­fy­ing for me that you feel safe enough to tell me things you haven’t even really con­tem­plated your­self. This is the best reward I can ever receive for open­ing up myself and telling the world about what is going on inside me. I enjoy lis­ten­ing to you and I feel a con­nec­tion to you too. You have no idea how refresh­ing it is to talk to some­one who expresses them­selves as well as you do in writ­ing. And man­ages to con­vey what is going on inside. I enjoy this.

Thank you for explain­ing how you see the dif­fer­ence between strong men and con­trol­ling men. Your descrip­tion helped set­ting off a light bulb in my head about the whole thing and I appre­ci­ate that. Although the men you call “con­trol­ling” I would call “juvenile.”

Just curi­ous; how old have your part­ners been? Does age fac­tor in or is it just a per­son­al­ity thing?

It is inter­est­ing that you have never cho­sen any­one in your life. I’m not entirely sure why yet, but I know it is sig­nif­i­cant. You really have never gone after a man? Ever?

One would think that the way you react when approached, feel­ing invaded, would mean that you would pre­fer to do the approach­ing instead. Then again, I imag­ine that is some­thing that goes against your grain. So you wind up in a sort of limbo.

Still, once they “wore you down,” did you feel open and safe and at home, at least until they showed them­selves to be con­trol­ling rather than strong?

I’d like to know why you have always shied away from men. Is there some­thing going on or did some­thing hap­pen to make it so? Or are you just gen­er­ally skit­tish?

Yes, I read the com­ment you left for me on “Is Sub­mis­sion a Gift.” I sup­pose the bat­tle has already gone on for two weeks then. Grins. Good girl. It’s a huge leap to make and nobody has to be braver and stronger than the sub­mis­sive woman who is com­ing to terms with her long­ings and desires. I am here to help you in any way I can but I am also here to admire the dis­play. You have some inter­est­ing times ahead.

It is true that it is so sim­ple for some and deathly scary for oth­ers. Unfor­tu­nately, it appears that you fall into the sec­ond camp. On the other hand, your sense of accom­plish­ment and the free­dom you will feel will be that much stronger, you will feel it that much keener. It all bal­ances out in the end.

You have told me about your fear but I still feel like I don’t have a grasp on it. Can you tell me what exactly is the most fright­ful for you? Is it that you’d risk your part­ner reject­ing you and think­ing that you are strange? Is it that you are afraid to relive the expe­ri­ence with your ex? Or is it some­thing else?

I know so very well what you say about nor­mal sex. The last few years before I said I wanted a divorce I could take it less and less. I checked out just like you. I can’t fan­ta­size or think about some­thing else dur­ing sex, so I just shut down. I had to because if I allowed myself to feel any­thing good, my hands would do things, I would do things… for­bid­den things. Scary things. So I grew colder and colder, my heart became harder and harder.

The inter­est­ing thing is that since I came out to myself and to the world, I thawed up more than I have ever been before. I am more present now, more lov­ing, more ten­der if you would believe that, more open and vul­ner­a­ble, more affec­tion­ate. It’s because I get to express what I feel and express it in ways that I under­stand. My love comes with bruises and aches and some­times blind­ing pain, but that blind­ing pain and those aches and bruises also come with love. In a rela­tion­ship with me, there is no demar­ca­tion between them.

That doesn’t hap­pen all the time, of course. Some­times I am sim­ply cud­dly and want to snug­gle while watch­ing a movie. On the other hand, some­times I am gnarly and I’ll want to play “mad sci­en­tist.” When­ever you see me in gog­gles, a rub­ber apron and rub­ber gloves, car­ry­ing a shoe­horn and a fun­nel, you’d bet­ter resign your­self to be walk­ing funny for a few days. Just sayin’. He he.

I was just kid­ding about the last part. I don’t own an apron.

I’ve weath­ered some pretty intense PTSD storms (not my own) and I’ve seen a lot so please define for me what “melt­down” means to you before I answer your ques­tion about it.

I don’t think you are bur­den­some at all and I am not dis­turbed in the least by your dark­ness; I only want to help. Besides, I have quite a bit of dark­ness myself. I’m sure I can help if you allow me to. I imag­ine just talk­ing about it helps quite a bit. As for any grat­i­tude; take me out for pie one day and we’ll call it even.

And thank you for say­ing that I am the mon­ster that you’d like under your bed. That’s one of the sweet­est things I have heard in a long time. And I can’t imag­ine not want­ing to be your friend, just so you know.

Gen­tle­Spirit:

Hi Dreamwalker,

Oh I love read­ing your emails, I feel very calm inside. I feel so thank­ful and lucky to have you here, some­day I will be able to repay your kind­ness to me. I know you will say there is no need, and I feel that from you, but then maybe I will be able to pay it for­ward and help some­one else. Pie? No prob­lem, I would love to meet you and you are not a mil­lion miles away either.…Someday, definitely.

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.

It’s not so notice­able in that pic, or it would have been deleted (lol). You are very sweet to say you like my smile, thank you.

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.”

This idea totally and com­pletely turns me on.

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.

Dreamwalker, I know you are not mak­ing light, I have a great sense of humor and I am quite funny too. In per­son, I would keep you laugh­ing. I like to laugh as much as I can although you wouldn’t know that because I have been focused on fix­ing myself and fig­ur­ing myself out. I just am a bit lost right now.

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.

This is beau­ti­ful, I wish, hope, dream… some­day… Ahh, you under­stand me so so well. This is exactly what I need, the sur­ren­der that I lust for.

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.

This is who I need to find, who I have been search­ing for, I just ques­tion will I know who that per­son is or get involved and months later be disappointed.

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.

In some ways I feel strong, but then there are parts of me that are not. I do fully believe I have a deeply sub­mis­sive nature, since I was born, prob­a­bly. I have always wanted to please every­one close to me.

My moments of joy almost always come from see­ing some­one I care for happy and feel­ing I may have con­tributed in some way to their hap­pi­ness. I think it is why I devel­oped my humor, it brings me immense warmth and sat­is­fac­tion when those I care for are happy and I live for those times.

Equally, it causes me anx­i­ety and I feel dis­tressed when I see some­one I care for unhappy, and when it’s some­one I love, I feel tremen­dous pain if I have in any way been the rea­son for their dis­sat­is­fac­tion or hurt.

I just really feel the need for some­one to be strong enough to not abuse that part of me, and accept my nature gra­ciously, but also know and be will­ing to give me back what I need in return.

My desire to please and com­ply out­weighs the power of my dark thoughts, so if I could just find that miss­ing link, then I feel I would live in peace and hap­pi­ness. If I were not allowed to engage the devil, I wouldn’t do it. You said it bet­ter than I did.

I just think that most men would pre­fer a chal­lenge and don’t want some­one to con­trol, or pos­sess. I don’t know how to be a chal­lenge so con­ven­tional rela­tion­ships just don’t work for me.

I need to set my Soul free, I need to be released from the Mas­ter I serve now.

In sur­ren­der, I become free.

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?

The con­text of what I was describ­ing was that many peo­ple feel very attracted to me, women, men, kids. They are attracted to my per­son­al­ity, prob­a­bly because I give them 100% of my atten­tion, they feel spe­cial because I am very open with peo­ple… on the surface.

Nobody knows what lies beneath the sur­face though, and I really mean nobody (except you, you obvi­ously don’t know all of me, but you know more than any­one else on this planet).

Sex­u­ally, I do not want to come off as an arro­gant per­son because I am not at all. I do believe, though, I have a very strong sex­ual energy. I don’t want that and again it scares me because I can get very intense reac­tions from men that I do not ask for or welcome.

It is a pri­mal energy I believe, I have been called a Femme Fatale more than a few times in my life and I don’t think I am this at all, nor do I want to be. In fact that is quite the oppo­site as the way I iden­tify with myself.

I don’t know where this comes from, I am not pro­ject­ing it because I don’t like this atten­tion, to the point that I have put on weight to deter it when I can’t han­dle it, or when I have had to deal with grief in relationships.

The funny thing is in every rela­tion­ship I have ever been in I have ALWAYS been accused of being unfaith­ful, which has cut me to my core. I never ever have been unfaith­ful, I am extremely loyal and could not betray any­one I was with.

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 can tell you exactly. I wanted to be con­sumed, pos­sessed, rav­aged, sav­agely. I wanted to feel his power over me, and give him that power to do what­ever he wanted.

I wanted to tell him that I was his and I hoped he would under­stand what that meant. I wanted to be used by him and I wanted to release all that was inside of me, to reveal myself to him. For him to see my soul to be one with his soul.

When he did it, I felt a bit stunned, because he did put all of his might into it. I saw stars for a few sec­onds. It did hurt, it stung and burned and then it felt numb. I wanted it because I felt it would show him I had no lim­its with him, and I wanted him to be my Savior.

What hurt so deeply though was see­ing the look of revul­sion in his eyes as he stopped, got off me, and left the room. He looked so incred­i­bly dis­gusted by me, I could feel his skin crawl­ing at just the sight of me.

It has put a huge imprint on my psy­che and again it gave the tor­men­tor a great sat­is­fac­tion… all I could hear inside was a seething, “Seeeeeeeeee you are dis­gust­ing, you are sick, you have ruined every­thing. You don’t deserve love, you hor­ri­ble, revolt­ing thing.”

I have never been able to iden­tify with that moment other than to asso­ciate it with extreme emo­tional pain. Even now it stirs emo­tion. Had he under­stood me, he would have known I was not doing it because I crave pain. I crave love and accep­tance and this is why I did it.

I am not sure if you under­stand what I am say­ing, I hope you do. If not I will try to explain again bet­ter. It is impor­tant to me that you get this.

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.

Oh my gosh, Dreamwalker… Really, I will try to work up the courage to tell you.

It is noth­ing kinky at all. The truth is, I love golden show­ers. I have kneeled in front of a toi­let while my ex (this was before the slap) peed and stuck out my tongue and just feel his urine run­ning over my tongue, drip­ping into my mouth, down my chin and I found it incred­i­bly erotic. I don’t feel ashamed of that. I loved it. Again, I don’t think he did, but he allowed it until the slap.

The thing I refer to is such a human, every­day thing, that all peo­ple do. I can­not, which is why I feel so much shame, embar­rass­ment, humil­i­a­tion about it. It’s why I think when you read it, you will laugh.

You might not laugh, but it is a huge trauma for me. I will really try to work up the courage to tell you, I promise I will really, really try.

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.

I want to tell you some­thing that might come off as really weird, and I under­stand if you think that and I will risk that out­come because I want you to know this any­way, you are one of the best friends I have ever had, and I feel full of emo­tion in say­ing this to you.

I will now work on part two and send it.

* * *

Dear Dreamwalker,

I love it that you call me Sweet Gen­tle­Spirit, it dis­arms me, and brings down my defenses totally.

It’s grat­i­fy­ing for me that you feel safe enough to tell me things you haven’t even really con­tem­plated your­self. This is the best reward I can ever receive for open­ing up myself and telling the world about what is going on inside me. I enjoy lis­ten­ing to you and I feel a con­nec­tion to you too. You have no idea how refresh­ing it is to talk to some­one who expresses them­selves as well as you do in writ­ing. And man­ages to con­vey what is going on inside. I enjoy this.

I am so glad that you don’t feel bur­dened and afraid of me. You open­ing up in your writ­ing had made me feel total trust in you. I never worry that you will tell any­one or come back at me with shock or hor­ror at what I say, feel or think. You make me feel accepted which I can­not put a value on or tell you how much it means to me, again I fill with tears in say­ing these things.

Thank you for explain­ing how you see the dif­fer­ence between strong men and con­trol­ling men. Your descrip­tion helped set­ting off a light­bulb in my head about the whole thing and I appre­ci­ate that. Although the men you call “con­trol­ling” I would call “juvenile.”

Just curi­ous; how old have your part­ners been? Does age fac­tor in or is it just a per­son­al­ity thing?

I am now curi­ous, what was the light bulb in your head about? Will you tell me?

I have had 3 sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ships. The first was 18 years older than me. The sec­ond 4 years younger. The third 6 years younger. It is a per­son­al­ity thing.

I like this whole lifestyle because I think it is more trans­par­ent. Peo­ple tell you about them­selves, it is almost like nego­ti­at­ing a deal when you go into it. Every­thing is spelled out clearly. That is what it seems like any­way, I might be wrong, but I like that honesty.

It is inter­est­ing that you have never cho­sen any­one in your life. I’m not entirely sure why yet, but I know it is sig­nif­i­cant. You really have never gone after a man? Ever?

No, I have never gone after a man before, ever, ever, ever, ever.

I want to tell you that I won’t lie to you. I would choose not answer some­thing before I lied about any­thing, and I hope you feel the same way too. I have no rea­son or desire to lie to you, the purity and hon­esty of my friend­ship with you would be destroyed with one lie.

One would think that the way you react when approached, feel­ing invaded, would mean that you would pre­fer to do the approach­ing instead. Then again, I imag­ine that is some­thing that goes against your grain. So you wind up in a sort of limbo.

No, I feel like when some­one approaches me in a sex­ual way, or with roman­tic inter­est that I want to flee. I feel trapped, I feel like I can’t breathe, I get anxious.

I don’t mind in a group of friends, I am okay then I have my friends around me, I can chat away and deflect atten­tion onto my friends.

I mean on a one to one level, when I am out and about just going about my busi­ness, or out with a friend and then approached. I can explain the cir­cum­stances of my three long term rela­tion­ships another time, but I got to know all of them for a while before I dated them.

I also have only ever had one 1 night stand. I am not promis­cu­ous and did not like the time I did it so I have only ever had sex inside a rela­tion­ship. That might sur­prise you as well.

Still, once they “wore you down,” did you feel open and safe and at home, at least until they showed them­selves to be con­trol­ling rather than strong?

Yes, I did. I felt safe, because I knew them and had estab­lished rela­tion­ships with them, even if it was a friend­ship first.

I’d like to know why you have always shied away from men. Is there some­thing going on or did some­thing hap­pen to make it so? Or are you just gen­er­ally skit­tish?

I think it is a com­bi­na­tion of all three.

Yes, I read the com­ment you left for me on “Is Sub­mis­sion a Gift.” I sup­pose the bat­tle has already gone on for two weeks then. Grins. Good girl. It’s a huge leap to make and nobody has to be braver and stronger than the sub­mis­sive woman who is com­ing to terms with her long­ings and desires. I am here to help you in any way I can but I am also here to admire the dis­play. You have some inter­est­ing times ahead.

It would appear then that you have to be “worn down” as well… hehehe.

Well, I made a deci­sion to start the jour­ney two weeks ago. I decided that I can’t live the rest of my life as a dis­con­nected soul. It’s like a bat­tle within of good and evil.

The light in me is say­ing, “Set me free, I need to con­nect and con­nect in a deep, very deep, heal­ing level. My soul has been tor­tured enough, and it’s time for my hap­pi­ness,” and again with the emo­tion swelling inside, and tears forming.

I can give so much to some­one, and I know I have the capac­ity to love very intensely and inti­mately, but maybe it’s just not con­ven­tional love like in the movies. I don’t think it is any less real, or spe­cial, or beautiful.

You have told me about your fear but I still feel like I don’t have a grasp on it. Can you tell me what exactly is the most fright­ful for you? Is it that you’d risk your part­ner reject­ing you and think­ing that you are strange? Is it that you are afraid to relive the expe­ri­ence with your ex? Or is it some­thing else?

I think it is the risk of my part­ner reject­ing me and think­ing I am strange, that I am dam­aged goods, not worth hav­ing. I have some scary sto­ries that i feel okay about now. Telling some­one else them, though, makes me think that they will be afraid to even engage with me.

I know so very well what you say about nor­mal sex. The last few years before I said I wanted a divorce I could take it less and less. I checked out just like you. I can’t fan­ta­size or think about some­thing else dur­ing sex, so I just shut down. I had to because if I allowed myself to feel any­thing good, my hands would do things, I would do things… for­bid­den things. Scary things. So I grew colder and colder, my heart became harder and harder.

I can’t fan­ta­size dur­ing sex either. We must be the only two, because every­one else I know talks about that. I just leave my body, go into my head, and I think this is why I haven’t connected.

I was so excited with Brian, my ex, because I felt we were going to take the jour­ney together, but it never hap­pened. In fact, the worst out­come hap­pened. I blame myself for that, though.

I should have read the signs that he didn’t want it, I didn’t see them but he said they were there. The irony is, he became some­what phys­i­cally abu­sive towards me at then end of our rela­tion­ship so I could never get that one. I left him because of this.

The inter­est­ing thing is that since I came out to myself and to the world, I thawed up more than I have ever been before. I am more present now, more lov­ing, more ten­der if you would believe that, more open and vul­ner­a­ble, more affec­tion­ate. It’s because I get to express what I feel and express it in ways that I under­stand. My love comes with bruises and aches and some­times blind­ing pain, but that blind­ing pain and those aches and bruises also come with love. In a rela­tion­ship with me, there is no demar­ca­tion between them.

I feel tin­gles all through­out my body right now after read­ing this para­graph, it is amaz­ing that you have found this free­dom. I can only hope to find some­one who will accept me, warts and all.

That doesn’t hap­pen all the time, of course. Some­times I am sim­ply cud­dly and want to snug­gle while watch­ing a movie. On the other hand, some­times I am gnarly and I’ll want to play “mad sci­en­tist.” When­ever you see me in gog­gles, a rub­ber apron and rub­ber gloves, car­ry­ing a shoe­horn and a fun­nel, you’d bet­ter resign your­self to be walk­ing funny for a few days. Just sayin’. He he.

I was just kid­ding about the last part. I don’t own an apron.

LOL!!!!!!!!!

I’ve weath­ered some pretty intense PTSD storms (not my own) and I’ve seen a lot so please define for me what “melt­down” means to you before I answer your ques­tion about it.

Well, when I say melt­down, I don’t know exactly, but some­thing along the lines of emo­tional melt­down, like if you can’t stop cry­ing, are par­a­lyzed in fear, faint. I once fainted dur­ing sex. I don’t mean tem­per tantrum or any­thing way over the top.

I don’t think you are bur­den­some at all and I am not dis­turbed in the least by your dark­ness; I only want to help. Besides, I have quite a bit of dark­ness myself. I’m sure I can help if you allow me to. I imag­ine just talk­ing about it helps quite a bit. As for any grat­i­tude; take me out for pie one day and we’ll call it even.

Pie… that is very cute. I will think of some­thing nicer than pie.

And thank you for say­ing that I am the mon­ster that you’d like under your bed. That’s one of the sweet­est things I have heard in a long time. And I can’t imag­ine not want­ing to be your friend, just so you know.

You are wel­come, and I hope we are always friends. I think we will be though, I just have a feel­ing about it.