I’m feeling stronger. I’m feeling very loved. Secure and all that. Time to rip those feelings away from me! Ha. Ok, this is not just the people who were involved with the scene planning, but I didn’t include very many new people. Just a couple who might have relevant views and that I think are pretty fucking nifty.
I’m ready to talk about the mistakes in planning and afterwards.
My opening comment: I am sorry that some of you felt I didn’t value your input or support because I did and I do.
It is going to take me forever to write this because I am lying on my side in bed.
I’m writing this just to let you know that I am lying here with my Puppy pressed full-length along my back. He’s snoring. It is very cute. I love him so much. I don’t know how I managed to find someone so wonderful and perfect for me, but I’m not dumb enough to question my luck that much. I have him. I’m keeping him.
I am so happy.
This is in a slightly funky format, but this is an idea for a lesson plan. What do ya’ll think? I am leaving at 2 and I was wondering if anyone would be online between now and then to read it…
I am posting this because when I load the page to look at new comments this will come up and be a reminder to me to get my ass in gear. No one else cares though.
Puppy and I do quite a bit of lovemaking. Yes, I actually use this expression. I use it in reference to sweet, gentle, loving sex. The kind that involves many words of love and sweetness. The kind that can go on a while and doesn’t involve pain. A steady diet of just this kind of sex can make me crazy, but mixed in with lots of kinky/painful sex it is good stuff. Before we nodded off last night we had some really nice sweet lovemaking. It was wonderful. As I was trying to fall asleep I kept doing the startle awake crying thing. He commented after the third time, “This is going to be a rough night.” Well… it was rough. But not how he thought.
So I need to do something with my hair. The roots are getting ridiculous…
How about if ya’ll weigh in…
How come no one told me that today was free Ben and Jerry’s day?! GEEZZ!!! Why do I check livejournal????!!!
Info here: http://www.benjerry.com/scoop_shops/scoop_shops.cfm?state=CA+
Go. Eat. Be merry.
So I’m listening to Prince and the line…
“I want to be the only one you come for” is repeated a few times.
I had this very interesting thought: now there is a limit for play with other people.
I wonder what Puppy would think of that idea. hmmmm…….
At the direct request/order/suggestion of several friends I walked away from the drama that was blowing up for more than 24 hours. I’m not sure if it was long enough yet. I still feel pretty shitty but I find that the motivation for my feelings have changed quite a bit as time is marching on.
First: I still feel like the manner in which I was treated by the person I was negotiating with was disrespectful and inconsiderate. I’ve had some time to think about it and talk to a few really awesome people about it though. I absolutely unequivocably stand by the statement that he is an asshat in regards to how he handled the situation. I do however know that he is not a bad person in general. He is still someone that I have loved and held close to me for a long time. But he disappointed me in a way that I am going to have trouble forgiving and forgetting. I don’t think I will risk putting myself out there with him anymore.
Second: I think the way in which people took my ranting personally is pretty ridiculous. The people who got the most angry are people who were not who I was ranting about and having to placate them in the process of me being generally upset was really fucking annoying to put it mildly. In the future if I have people who start yelling at me like that when I’m in the middle of something really crappy I will simply take them off the filter and delete the comment. I thought about this a lot. I worried about whether or not this made me immature or selfish or whether this meant I would be requiring people to unequivocally agree with me at all times. It took several people giving me the same advice before I decided to follow this course of action.
I am pretty fucking tolerant of people arguing with me in general. I am really ok with people questioning my behavior and actions in general and I will generally go out of my way to explain myself even when it really isn’t something that I have any reason to do. Just because I love my friends and I respect them. When I am hurting really bad isn’t the time to dump lots of criticism on me though. Every single person who went off on me in the last few days seemed to be saying, “You are wrong/bad/etc” and I really wasn’t in the place to hear their words in any other way. If they had waited a few days there would have been the inevitable follow up postings (this is me after all) wondering what I could/should do differently in the future and asking how people think I fucked up. I mean Jesus Fucking Christ people I am always asking what I have done wrong I just usually need a few days before hearing it doesn’t feel like I’ve been smacked in the face with a two by four of “you are a sucky loser.” I don’t think needing this lag time is compromising anyone’s integrity. If waiting a few days before telling me off is that horrible, then yeah–we do have a problem in general.
I suppose this is a long-winded way of saying that there is an official time lapse before people are allowed to tell me how I am wrong when something really shitty happens. An easy way to find out if this time period is over would be to ask me if I am ready to hear the other side yet. If I say no, hold it for a few days. I will say yes pretty soon. If you don’t like this policy, unfriend me and don’t read my journal anymore because I am going to bloody well stick to it. People who claim to love me tell me that they want me to have healthy boundaries, well this is a boundary for me. When I already feeling shitty I need at least a few days of simple support before my fuck ups are pointed out. You can criticize me when I stop sobbing hysterically. The panic attacks and crying jags of the past few days have been horrible and they have been worse because of the criticisms.
I’m not saying that any of the criticisms are wrong or inappropriate in general. Just that the timing sucks.
Third: ok, there were some people offended by a statement who were actually part of the target audience of the in question sentence. I said that I wouldn’t talk to vanilla’s in the future about this type of scene. There were a number of things behind this statement. I have spent hours and hours on the phone in the past three days with long-time scene friends. Several of them asked me why I chose to involve people who are not scene people in the negotiations. I said that the people I talked to really do love me and I thought their emotional support would be helful and good. The question was asked, “How well did you feel you were explaining your motivation?” I think I did a crappy job of explaining my motivation. This is not a reflection on my vanilla friends. I think that there are things about playing, and specifically playing extremely heavily, that I simply do not have the words to explain and trying to explain to people who do not innately have the same impulses is very frustrating, draining, and upseting. I don’t know how to explain why I want to play the way I do anymore than I can explain to someone who has never been the victim of sexual assault what it feels like every day to live with it. I feel like in trying to explain the impulses that are hard wired into my brain I am doing a shitty job of it and I am giving people on the outside of those impulses a really shoddy imperfect view of what is in my head. I just don’t know how to explain it. So I kind of feel like I learned that in order really talk about heavy duty play I need to talk to other people who do heavy duty play in the same way that I have to talk to other rape survivors in order for people to understand what my processing that looks like. It doesn’t mean I don’t love and respect and treasure the people in my life who are not perverts–I mean good grief. It just means that I learned a hard lesson about the limits of my abilities to effectively communicate with someone who doesn’t just “get it” on their own. (Yes, this one is open to debate already.)
I think that is all for now. I know the last thing will probably be debated hotly and I am feeling up for that debate. I am not yet ready to hear all the stuff on the “other side” of the original issue. It still hurts a lot.
That the motivation for my anger is unclear. Fine. I can clear that up.
I am disappointed and hurt that the scene isn’t happening after so many months of planning. But I am not angry because the person was not willing to go through with it.
I am angry because the scene was cancelled in a very disrespectful, immature, inconsiderate manner.
I don’t appreciate the reason touted for the scene being cancelled, but I don’t have the right to insist that people do something that they don’t want to do no matter the reason.
I am not angry at the people who were involved in planning the scene. At times I did not react well to their well intentioned questions and comments because I was not able to hear the intent with which they were trying to express them. They were willing to step up to a pretty fucking significant request and that is impressive. Can people please stop feeling like I am attacking them?
For the record: No. I did not remove you from the filter. I made all the entries private. I feel like shit about the dialogue and I want it to stop. The only way to do that is to not discuss it anymore in any public place.
More processing time. I set up a situation where I was going to work through some major issues from my past. Instead, I find myself dealing with the backlash of entirely different issues from my past. Instead of going through a scary situation and finding myself whole on the other end I am dealing with my lifelong baggage of trusting someone and having to learn in painful ways that the trust wasn’t deserved. I no longer deal with my mother because she made many promises that she couldn’t/wouldn’t deliver on and now I seem to be in the position of having other people take that role instead. I tell most partners that I can deal with just about any fuck up, but never lie to me. I wonder where disappointment falls into lying. I’m wondering if making huge promises that you can’t follow through on is lying.
I screamed at someone who loves me today. Unfortunately she bore the brunt of a great deal of my frustration and anger. It wasn’t fair of me and I am extremely grateful that she puts up with me. We talked about why I have felt attacked lately by the intensity of her questions. We talked about how she expressed her concern for me and how I interpreted her tone in the process. It isn’t always easy having friends. She told me that I shouldn’t feel guilty about some of the bad things that have happened to me. I can appreciate that sentiment and even say, “Yes sweetheart–you are right. I shouldn’t. But I do. And I don’t know how to change it.”
I don’t talk about my shit very often. In fact, I try to avoid it in general. But every so often it comes up. I have really bad nightmares. Often every night. It’s a good thing that most of my partners sleep very heavily. I wake up crying a lot. I feel pretty worthless a great deal of the time. I don’t know why I survived my childhood; there is no good reason for anyone to have survived what I did. Since I was told today that someone has no clue about my past–who I thought should/would–I’ll give more details again.
Don’t read if you are feeling squickable
I’m not as angry as I was. Yelling at the person that I was most angry defrayed a lot of it. A few conversations with truly amazing people did most of the rest of it.
I doubt all the details will ever be public knowledge. That isn’t my decision. Sorry I’m being so cryptic–but I need to vent and ya’ll are here and that is life.
I have learned many lessons in the past few weeks. For one: I will never include vanilla people in planning a truly extreme scene again. The hassle and stress isn’t worth it. Second: I will never even think about bottoming heavily to someone without a very high level of experience. I was given some amazing advice earlier today and I am going to listen to it.
I have been working really hard to overcome the snotty attitude that many in the scene have about how a person has to put in their time before they are ready to be an edgy player; I have been trying to give people credit for what they claim they are up for. I am going to work really hard at not pinning my hopes on someone again who can’t deliver for whatever reason. One person said, “Don’t plan scenes like that with someone who is not out to their friends and family. If they are not out and ready to embrace that this is a major part of their life–they are not actually up for doing it.” He is right. It isn’t that the potential top in question is a bad person, but I was asking far too much of a newbie and I should have known better. I suppose I should be more angry with myself about my poor judgment. I should stop trusting people’s words and demand actual action to back them up. Silly me trying to trust someone.
Yeah. And discussing it with people outside the scene? I guess that was stupid and naive of me. I confused tolerance of “kinkiness” with understanding of the psychological motivations behind heavy play. That’s a fuck up I hope I won’t make again. There is a big difference between people understanding and being ok with bondage and spanking and understanding why I want to do really heavy play. Even in the scene there are lots of types of play that are edgy and taboo and aren’t talked about. I need to spend more time with the edge players. Although now I get to worry about dragging Puppy along for more than he is ready for. *sigh* I guess I need to get ready for a long, slow road of helping him gain the experience that he needs before we can do any heavy play. This time investment will be worth it if I never go through the abrupt dropping of plans again. I am still upset. Just less upset.
Oh–and people, please don’t tell me to get over it or justify the actions of other people involved. At least not for a few days. I am allowed to be angry. It is healthy to be angry. If I try to move into “getting over it” before I am ready I will be repressing my emotions and for those of you who know what was going on that should be a particularly ironic twist.
At least this one isn’t going to my absolute entire friends-list. Just you special people.
I suppose my opinions are twisted by having “grown up” in the bdsm/alternative sexuality community. I have this little thing called respect for other people. I believe that when I am dealing with adults I need to allow them to make their own decisions and direct their own life–because that is what being a grown up is about. I believe that if I want to allow people the autonomy to live on their own, decide who they date, etc that I need to allow them the autonomy to decide when and how they are going to play. This does not mean that I have to be happy about the decisions that they are making, but I need to stay out of it because it isn’t my call. Early in my scene career I would leave the play space when watching scene’s where I was not ok with what was happening. I would never have interrupted a scene though. It was not my call. Even as a DM I have never interrupted a scene because it was too edgy and squicked me. I believe that would be far more inappropriate than anything people are doing. I have no right to inflict my morals or ethics on anyone else.
The rumors are flying fast and furious. Given my state of mind it isn’t a good idea for me to really clear them up because I will announce some things publicly that some people would prefer remain private. I will say: whatever you were thinking was going to happen was probably wrong. You were making judgments about things that you don’t understand. If you claim to have any respect for the people who were involved then you would have respected their right as adults to make their own decisions. But no. No one had any fucking respect. Instead, the morality police showed up and decided that the participants were evil and wrong and had no right to make such decisions about their lives. You know what? Fuck every single one of you. You didn’t help. Yeah, you got the event cancelled. Fucking congratulations. Now, there have been months of stress around a very emotional event and instead of having a healing event take place that would have been a god damn big deal, there is so much anger and frustration that it is absolutely overwhelming. I am so glad that you all got your way about enforcing your morals. Just because something is outside your realm of experience, just because something would be bad for you does not make it bad or immoral and it is pathetic and pissy and immature of you to imply that your standards have to apply to the world.
I really should stop now.
Oh I should be fair. Not everyone was a pathetic twat. There are a few reasonable people out there. Just not enough.
I used to think that the bdsm scene was pretty drama filled and ridiculous. Yeah. Compared to the shit I have seen in the last year–it ain’t nothing. I am so sick of the histrionics and posturings and bullshit that seem to be fucking par for the course with most of the people I know these days.
I think I might be either crawling back to the scene or staying home for a while. I’m really sick of being jerked around.
Scene cancelled.
I am so angry I could spit nails.
I guess all the hysterical god damn emails filling my inbox can stop now.
http://www.twistedmonk.blogspot.com
Go read. There are two parts to the scene report up so far.
There were several big comments made on the last scary filter entry. I suggest reading them.
*hugs*
I am caught up on all of the bills I have been…not…looking at…
*sigh*
I have one event in the next month or so that I need to pay an entrance fee for. There is no way around it. I am not going to be eating out at all. I am not going to clubs for a while. Nada. If you love me and want to see me, don’t ask me to go out for lunch/dinner with you. I can’t do it this month. How about if we split groceries and one of cooks instead?
My Puppy left me this morning.
We were both quite upset.
I told him that we can handle three days without cracking. It isn’t as if three days is forever or as if Illinois is that far away. He is not going to the moon or anything.
It is going to suck when he goes to Nepal next month. 🙁
I need to post. I have been trying to find stuff that I have written about after care and regressing and I just can’t freakin find it. It is not to be located through lj or that other blog site. This is most frustrating.
The dinner conversation on Friday was very good. We went over most of the logistics of what we are going to do and when. I found out that there will be a person there that I hadn’t expected. Oh… uhm… ok. I had been told a while ago that she was going to be invited but it was never brought up again so I didn’t think she wanted to. Silly me apparently. It is fine. She will not be in the room while the scene is happening.
We discussed how we don’t want to have absolutely all the logistics worked out before the event because things need to be a surprise. Although my understanding is that it will not happen immidiately or too early in the trip because I will get to establish baseline.
Then there was major drama. The scene was almost cancelled. We did decide to go through with it, but it wasn’t an easy decision. It turns out that the person who is doing this with me is making a much bigger commitment to me than I had anticipated and I am quie grateful. This is such a scary thing and to find out that it is even a bigger thing than we thought is unnerving. There was also a minor drama with the person I didn’t know was coming. I believe it has been resolved and that she understands that I do indeed want her to come.
Aftercare stuff. I tried and tried to find reference to this. I even have an ljbook now so that I can search through the archive of my lj easily. Oh well.
This scene will require much more intense aftercare than usual. Puppy is going to show up around midnight. He asked and the other people involved in the scene gave consent as well. I think it will be good. I will almost certainly withdraw; it is SOP for me when I am upset. It is not a good idea to touch me without permission when I am like this. But asking to touch me is probably a good thing. I will probably hesitate before giving consent; tell me that you love me and I am safe. (Do you have any idea how odd it is to be able to dissect this about myself? This is freaky.) I will probably want to sit in laps and be rocked. I will want my hair stroked. I will have trouble talking, but it is important that you encourage me to talk. Give me gaps of air time in encouraging me to talk–it will be very hard to find the words that I need. I will probably start crying mid-sentence, stroke my hair until I can talk again. I know it will be hard to listen to what I am saying when you love me.
I am going to bring Ted and Edmund and Nighty-night and “security blankets” from childhood. I do not know if I am going to go little or if I am going to handle this as an adult. I really don’t. If I seem to be very regressive that won’t significantly change how you will want to treat me in this event anyway. I do specifically make the request that people speak somewhat softly and try to make sure your tone of voice is gentle. I am going to be very easy to scare. If I pull away from your touch, let me go and don’t take it personally. It will be so easy to overwhelm me. That being said, if I put my hand out even slightly, I am probably requesting touch and I won’t be good at doing so verbally.
I may have trouble being touched by men. It is not about whether or not I love you or trust you. I may want men to touch me more than usual. I don’t know yet.
Thank you. Thank you so much for being part of this on any level. Thank you for loving me. Four more days.