decisions, decisions

specifically, do i write, or do i get another spanking?

seems like the answer should be easy, right? i don't want a spanking right now. pretty much i (the part) *never* want a spanking. but then, maybe there's some subconscious thing going on, because i keep on doing things that will earn me a spanking.

and it's not like there aren't parts who can write. there are tons of parts of this system... lots of people who live in my body, and who love to write. who would spend their days expressing themselves in words, and more words.

and it's not like the rules say it has to be *me* who writes. but somehow, i find myself stuck out here, and i really hate doing this.

so i go back to that first question: do i write, or do i get another spanking?



i don't FEEL like writing.

and i don't WANT another spanking.

but i guess i've gotten this far so i may as well try to write something, since why else would i bother to post anything in the first place.

part of the problem, maybe, is that i'm not even sure who i am. maybe that's hard for people ont he outside to get, or understand, or whatever. i know that i'm not one of the parts who feels really comfortable with writing. i usually can't even bear to look at what is happening while i'm doing it. i know some of the others can tell i'm around because i start to stare at the ceiling as i type so that i don't have to see it happening. so please forgive any typos, because i also really hate reading what i've written.

what's going on with me? maybe you want to know why i was getting a spanking in the first place. i guess it's because i didn't eat today, and i didn't journal, although maybe i did, i can't really remember. i know there was a fair amount of typing happening, but whether that was journaling, i couldn't precisely say. well, ok, so i do know that the specific kind of journaling, the kind the rule is aobut, that definitely didn't happen.

sometimes, i really wish that i could know why it is that i am breaking the rules. i'm not used to breaking rules for no good reason. i'm not used to pushing the boundaries. i'm the kind of person who always used to follow all the rules. but here i am, breaking them.

and really, this is all i can write just now. my head is hurting more and more, and i'm feeling nauseated. that is how much i hate to write. but maybe making myself do this was enough.


well, ok, so one of the reasons that i don't feel comfortable with writing is that it is really triggering and it makes me feel sick with fear to write things down, particularly things that are more specific and with details. i don't mind when some other part is writing a story, at least, mostly i don't mind, but i really don't like it when something about my life is getting written, and it is easier if writing just gets stopped generally, thanks. i'm pretty scared of someone finding out about the things i've written. well, like some specific people.... but i won't specify, because that feels like a way of making it happen.

testing

i really wish that when parts are feeling the need to test people, there were some way of letting the people KNOW they were being tested. because, damn, i doubt people would do the same things if they knew what was behind the words the parts are saying. and double damn, it's hard to convince the other parts that their fears aren't true when every test they set up appears to confirm they are right.

the one today... she came out as my therapist was talking about how the rules and structure are a bad idea, and how we should stop because it just seems to generate testing (by the way: this is the first time she has ever said this; before, she was all for the rules, although she was a little doubtful about the spanking, but didn't seem to object beyond wanting to be sure it wasn't abusive.)

so then the other part came out. and was talking about how she just needs to learn to stop expecting people to help, because they pretty much aren't going to. that she should be willing to accept that other people will do things when it is easy, or if they see it as part of their job, but aren't going to help her to feel better. what did she want/need to hear? that it is a good thing to look for help, and she does not need to cope on her own. but my therapist was saying that she DOES need to stand on her own (i don't *think* in the same way this part was thinking, but i have nothing to prove that wasn't what she meant.)

the therapy session ended with that part saying she just wanted to understand what was wrong with her, that kept her from deserving help. my therapist said she would help her to understand what was wrong that kept her from deserving help. i'm pretty sure, once again, that my therapist didn't mean the same thing that part heard, but... there it is. and now that part is pretty much at the point of quitting therapy, because she has put this together with other things my therapist has said to mean that she (my therapist) basically wants us to suck it up and just convince ourselves that things are different than they are.

then, after therapy, a friend called. he wanted to talk about having picked up his new car, but that part was out really strongly, and was feeling ready for rejection at the drop of a hat. the friend commented that i/she sounded sad, she said "therapy," he said, "oh, ok. just wanted to tell you about picking up my new car. we can talk later." now, i figure he was respecting my space, and not intruding. i figure, had she said she wanted to talk, and needed some support, he would have been glad to do it. but what did she take from it? that people don't want her around when she is not doing well, and only want to talk to her if she is listening to them talk about what is going on in their lives.

i wish she had subtitles or a voiceover or something, letting people know what she is really saying when she says things. because what keeps happening is that a bunch of parts come out, and test people, and somehow, people keep confirming their negative beliefs.

therapy stuff

i keep trying to start this post, and then erasing it. i guess a lot of it is about having trouble figuring out where to start, and how to talk about it. anyhow. this post is about things that i probably would've written about over at jigsaw analogy, but i'm not particularly wanting the comments that are meant to be sympathetic, but that just kind of grate on me. the point of saying this is, if you're looking for something about DD or sex or the usual topics of this blog, you're going to want to wait around for a different post.

ok. i will try to just start writing.

one thing that came pretty clearly into my mind after therapy today was this: usually, when i tell my coming out story, i talk about how i figured i couldn't be a lesbian, simply because i didn't find men repulsive. i liked guys perfectly well, and figured the only reason i wasn't attracted to them was, hey, who is attracted to high school guys? (sorry, any high school guys who are reading this blog. i'm sure some people do find you attractive. sorry to any guys who went to my high school who are reading this blog--it really wasn't personal. turns out, i'm a lesbian.)

anyhow.

but there was another reason, something i had trouble acknowledging to myself, something i never talked about. and it is this:

not only was i not repulsed by men, but i got physically ill when having sex with one particular woman. the thought of doing it repulsed me, i hated it, i wished i could find a way to make sure it wouldn't happen. at the time, i thought it was because i wasn't interested in having sex with females. but the fact is, it wasn't the femaleness that was making me ill.

maybe another part could put this into touching words, or make it something more readable. but i'm the one who is writing this, and it's something i need to get out of myself. i'm finding i need to talk about this, even though i'm really not sure how to do it.

you know how "they" say that homosexuality is somehow caused by sexual abuse? i'm pretty sure that's not the case with me. the fact is, what the abuse did was make me not want to have sex at all. made the whole concept of sex really repulsive and unpleasant. it was something i hated doing. i did everything i could to distance myself from it. and when those memories come up now, i still can't stand the thought of sex. i get angry at w, because we are in a relationship that, on the surface of it, includes sex. we haven't been having sex, but the undercurrent is there all the same.

other parts have been trying to get me to see that the feelings i have are about being triggered, rather than about anything that is happening in the present. and when i can pull back a little bit, i see that that is true.

but it's complicated. what triggers me, what makes me feel ill, what makes me want to escape any way i can think to escape is this: i, me, the part, am in a situation that has some similarity to what happened when i was a teenager. that is, i am in a relationship where i am expected to take on the role of a partner.

well, honestly, no. w doesn't expect me to take on the role of her partner. that's messed up, right? that the person who met me when i was an adult, the person who got into a relationship with an adult, can have the boundary of not asking me, or the other non-adult parts, to be in a relationship of that kind with her. whereas, when i was a teenager, when i really was too young for it....

my first serious relationship? it was with my mother. it started... i don't know for sure. some parts probably started when i was in middle school. it was definitely going on by the time i was fourteen. it's hard to say where it started, or ended, because in a lot of ways, the sex was the least of it. the sex was just one part. there is so much more than that in a relationship. and the complicated thing is, a lot of that stuff would've been fine as part of a parent-child relationship. just... not all of it.

i keep hearing those voices in my head, telling me that i'm making this up. but the fact is, i really can't see that i gain anything from making up something like this. i don't get any more sympathy than i would from anything else. i don't get more attention. probably, this blog would get waaaaaaaay more hits if i could be writing about sex, you know? so it's not like talking about the abuse gets me attention, or positive reinforcement.

thinking about this stuff doesn't make me feel good. i feel much better after therapy sessions when i talk about my life right now; after therapy today, i felt (and still kind of feel) like i was choking, like i was about to puke. the contents of my stomach were utterly unwilling to stay there. i feel ill.

having this stuff in my brain makes it difficult for me to have sex, or even to think about sex. (and it intrudes on the other parts, who, sure, maybe i made them up too, but... oh, right, still no real advantages except i can be in therapy for longer.)

makes it hard to sleep. makes it hard to eat. makes it hard to have a relationship, because the sheer fact of the relationship existing makes me want to be dead.

so i'm telling the voices that they are not working in the real world. i have no reason to be making this up.



the thing about all of this is, it makes me feel horrible, but i do still also love my mother. that really makes things hard. in some ways, the stuff that happened with other people, when i was younger, is much easier to deal with. i mean, i really don't particularly care about those people, other than the obligatory love for family members. if we never spoke again, there would only be a kind of theoretical regret for what could have been.

but my mother? that was a relationship. there was good so mixed in with all the bad that i don't think i'll ever be able to sort it out. there were things that were totally appropriate, and they were so thoroughly mixed in with the inappropriate stuff that maybe i did like, and the inappropriate stuff that i definitely did NOT like.... how to figure it out? i hear myself (well, other parts, actually) talking with her on the phone. and i understand why they do it. visiting with her. spending time with her. being grateful for the gifts she gives.

and the thing is, the gifts no longer come at a cost. so it's likely that the gifts when i was a teenager had very little to do with what else was going on.

because there's another piece to this: i am beginning to strongly suspect that my mother is further up on the dissociative scale than i had thought before. i've started to notice how often she will express one strong opinion, and then a day or two later say the opposite, and really not remember the other state. and we're talking about things like whether or not she likes muffins, or enjoys a particular author, or likes a particular color. not things where someone would want to deny their opinion. and my mother being dissociative explains a lot about how inconsistent things were with her, and how she could at one moment be one way, and at another, totally different.

not that it excuses anything, but... it explains it. and the mother i generally interact with is not the one who was abusive, and i think she honestly doesn't remember it. not in her usual states, not in the states where i talk with her.

but it explains part of how other parts of me are able to have a relationship with her. but it also makes everything that much more murky. i mean, how much of the stuff that has become tangled up with emotional incest really would have been fine, if it had only been the non-abusive parts of my mother i interacted with? and there is no way to know.

it's a tangled mess.

perfectly imperfect

Natty recently wrote a post about the ways that a discipline relationship helped her to be able to give herself permission not to be perfect.

It really resonated with me, and I found myself with more to say than it seemed fair to fill up the comments section of *her* blog with, so instead, I'm writing here.

For me, and I mean this collectively, I've worked for at least the past 20-odd years on being perfectly imperfect. What I mean by that is, somewhere late in grade school, and definitely by middle school, I realized that being *too* good meant that I wasn't appropriately demonstrating that everything was ok. It was vital for me to seem to be like the other kids at school. Home was something of a different story. At home, not only did I need to maintain levels of perfection that, looking back, were *insanely* difficult, but I needed to behave as though I was not, in fact, doing so. I needed to look as though I didn't consider myself to be especially good, or smart, or hard-working. So I guess some of the perfect imperfection happened at home, too.

So what could I do? I didn't have the space to make mistakes with this. It wasn't something I could really do through trial and error. I had to figure out how to be perfect without ever calling attention to the perfection (not that I achieved it, naturally. Not bragging here!)

I started by reading. I would read stories about normal kids, or kids who had access to magic but were otherwise normal, or kids who lived in the past but were otherwise normal. I would see that they made mistakes, or misbehaved. I memorized how they would respond, and practiced it in my head. Then I began to write my own stories, stories about kids who were normal, or maybe they had access to magic or lived in a different world, but were normal. That is to say, kids not going through abuse.

I did this for a couple of years, until I felt like I had some sense of where the boundaries were. How to be a little snarky in safe situations (ie, school), but not cross over the line into misbehavior.

And I learned to create a semblance of normalcy. I learned to put out a vibe that let people think that everything was ok, that the reason I didn't go to parties or really hang out except for at school functions was more that I was introverted, and not that there were things going on behind the scenes that made it impossible for me to be a normal kid.

I learned it well enough that I don't know if any of my teachers realized that the hard work I put in to doing well in school was that the only, absolutely the ONLY escape route I had been able to see was getting into college and leaving home. Because I practiced being like the other smart kids, the ones who had always known they would go to college, the ones who had some reason to be confident it would happen, the ones whose families might even be helping them to figure it out. I constantly watched the signals, figured out what to do by guesswork.

A lot of what I mean by talking about being perfectly imperfect is that I also did everything I could to act as though mistakes weren't life-shattering. By high school, I had a good sense of what "normal" looked like, and I was getting pretty good at imitating it. I don't mean that I tried to fit in much with the other kids, because there wasn't a snowball's chance of me doing that. But I *did* know that there was nothing wrong with being different, and I figured if I had the persona of being quirky, that might mask the deeper differences beneath the surface. So I was a nerd, I didn't bother trying to be fashionable. I made myself not care about not being able to do lots of normal teenaged things.

By adulthood, I realized another thing. Someone who had gone through my childhood was gonna have issues. I had issues up the wazoo. They were causing some problems.

However, I also had a community where this was... I guess normal enough. I knew lots of people who had issues, and I knew what to do. You go to therapy. You work to heal. And I knew what healing looked like, and did my best to copy that. Probably, if I didn't have DID, it would have worked.

The thing with being perfectly imperfect, though, is that the point is, you have an obstacle (lets say, oh, fibromyalgia and DID). And you accept it. And you do all of the right things, and choose to overcome that obstacle. By sheer force of will, in the Zen sense of force of will, which is to say, by accepting it and working through it, and doing all of the right things. You know, by walking with a cane and resting when necessary, but somehow, being able to continue to overcome. By going to therapy and support groups and writing in your journal and deciding that you're going to communicate with the different parts, and somehow, being able to make it all work.

I am desperate for that vision of perfection. The version where yes, these things are here, and there is something I can choose to do that will hurry me along to the place where I can continue to be perfectly imperfect. Someone with flaws, but who is able to be... I don't know. Perfect, without being perfect.

So then there's discipline, or rules, or this thing we do. And I still strive to be perfectly imperfect. I expect that maybe just by having the rules, or by breaking them very rarely, and then getting punished, then I will miraculously be able to have self control, and not need the rules any more. That I will be able to stand on my own, needing only the help that makes other people feel good for helping me, and not the help that makes other people (W) frustrated and overwhelmed.

Part of being perfectly imperfect is being able to be helped easily, with the first thing a person tries. Or, if not that, it's being able to explain clearly what it is that I need, and how to give it to me.

The fact is, though, I'm not perfectly imperfect. I'm just plain old ordinary imperfect. I hate that like poison.

I break a rule, get punished, and break it again. And again. And again.

W gets exhausted and frustrated, and I'm not able to make myself trust that she's not going to give up on me, so I marshall all of my persuasive abilities to get her to agree to stop having the rules. And then I am furious with her for giving up on me.

Or I go to therapy, and I learn strategies, or I talk about the things in the past. And somehow, it doesn't get through. I find myself unable to use the self-care strategies, and instead, spiral into things like not eating, or pulling away from the people who might be able to help me. I close off, I shut down.

Even when everyone around me insists I really am working hard, and making progress, I find myself unable to accept it. Instead, I push myself to get better faster. Or, more likely, I get furious with myself (myselves) for being unable to get better faster. I struggle to make myself do the right things, and fail. I push myself to do more, and fail.

Not quite sure where I was going with this. I guess the point is, I'm never going to achieve that level of perfection, the one where I am flawed yet perfect. I'm just going to be plain old ordinary imperfect. And I'm not sure how to allow myself to accept that.

Spanking vs. abuse

I've been thinking about this subject a lot lately. I think part of what makes it difficult for me to figure out is this: it's not something I feel comfortable talking about with lots of people I know (well, really, none in real life). And more than that, it's not something I feel comfortable talking about with my therapist.

On the one hand, that's not too much of a problem. W. and I talk about it, and I write about it here and over at the Punishment Book. But on the other hand... it feels a whole lot like the "secrets" I had to keep when I was little. And that's a big piece of why it's so very uncomfortable for me.

The thing is, I do feel some shame to be an adult woman who needs disciplinary spankings. And I know that, with external children, I'd be inclined to think it wasn't a good idea, that there are lots of other ways to bring children up.

But... there is the simple fact that, for me, spankings work. They help me to focus, to behave, to feel in control.

And there is this: I do believe that there is a difference between spankings and abuse. I can tell with my own thoughts about it, that spankings, per se, are not the problem.

Even more, I can tell from the feedback from my kid parts. They do not perceive that W. ever "hurts" us. They articulate this with specifics: she doesn't yell, she doesn't hit us in the head, she doesn't punch us or pinch us or slap us. The spankings are controlled. They are understandable. She is calm when I get them. She is nurturing and caring.

And, as I said to my sister when I was eleven or twelve, it wasn't the spankings I objected to getting. It was the context, the way they were delivered. What was abusive was not being hit, it was the way the hitting (spanking, whatever) was delivered.

But. There is always that but. I can't talk about this with most people. I expect they would immediately decide it was abusive, unhealthy, something that I shouldn't be doing. They wouldn't look at it from the perspective of something that normal people do, as something that can be part of a healthy relationship. They would see it as a very unhealthy power dynamic. And I don't feel secure enough in my role in this to be able to make it clear to them that I believe it is healthy. So I just don't say.

I guess I wrote this post mostly so that my kid parts could know I talk about it somewhere, and that it's not a bad secret, just something we choose not to mention to most people. I guess it's that it's something private, rather than a bad secret. But it's still a struggle, because it's hard to make it clear to them that there are different reasons for not talking about things, you know? And also, that I'm not entirely comfortable with having them write a post to this blog, or to the PB, because these are, in my mind, more adult forums. But I don't want to write about spankings at Jigsaw Analogy, because while you can find this blog from that one, I don't want to make the people in our life who do read that one have to know about this part of my life.

It's all very complicated, to say the least.

So, in the hopes of getting some responses: has anyone talked about spanking (in the context of DD) with their therapist? Any advice? Warnings? Wise words?

Thanks.

Apologies

Just a quick note on something. Generally, I far prefer to read a blog where the person has edited what they've written before they post. It may not seem that way, but most of my posts here have actually involved some refining and polishing. It's easier to read, I think, and a general courtesy to the reading public.

But I'm finding it far easier to write if I just go ahead and write and don't think about it. And I'd rather be writing and trying to connect with people than making a good blog with excellently readable posts. So for a little bit, I'll just write them, and they may not be nearly as well written, but I do think that the posts will have something interesting to say, and that it will offer a different kind of thing than my more polished posts. Sometimes, the editing just serves to hide what I really want to say.

So my apologies for having a less "writerly" blog for the time being, but hopefully, you'll stick with me. Thanks.

As if my usual doubts weren't enough

Much of what I've written about in this blog has been about my process of coming to terms with spanking, and its role in my life. It's a hard process to accept all of the various elements, to admit that I need it, and to understand that it's okay.

And now I'm in the middle of coping with the idea that there are different parts of myself, and it feels like all of that work I've done on this issue has kind of disappeared. Because, somehow, it's like it doesn't count if there are different parts operating.

One of the biggest things is that I feel very... strange about spankings if the "reason" I need them is that I was abused as a kid. It's especially hard when I'm reading a book on healing from childhood stuff, and the person writing it states unequivocally that s/m of any form is just re-enacting childhood abuse, and should be something you try to heal from.

Now, on some levels, I can feel very clearly that this isn't true. I've gotten a lot of strength from having s/m as part of my sex life, and I've had a lot of good examples of the healing power of intimate relationships that are fundamentally based on "safe, sane, and consensual."

But there are other levels, and those are more... confusing. Is it okay to spank an inner child if that inner child really does understand the world as a child would? How about an inner teenager? Am I re-enacting abuse? Is the reassurance and grounding that I experience when there is consistent, reasonable (physical) discipline in my life just because those parts can't understand "appropriate" treatment, and feel less tension once a punishment has occurred?

Perhaps some of the doubts are because, in terms of interacting with actual, flesh-and-blood children, I wouldn't hit. Mostly, this is because I think there are better ways to raise children, and that the lines between acceptable and unacceptable are blurry and way too easy to cross. I don't know that I think spanking children is inherently abusive, but I think most of how it operates when I've seen it in action is abusive, if that makes sense. It's too easy to act in anger, to work out frustrations. And it's not like a spanking can be taken back. Once it's been given, it's happened, and it leaves no room for the person giving it to say, "Whoops, I was wrong, you didn't actually deserve that punishment."

And some of it's the fact that different parts respond differently to spanking. I can recognize that in a lot of ways, this is perfectly normal. Lots of people have a variety of different responses at different times. But when one of my child parts is out, then both W. and I agree that, say, sex is absolutely inappropriate (partly because it's triggering to that part, and partly because, well, it's really like being a child, and that's just yucky).

So where do we draw the line? If something is sometimes incredibly sexual, is it okay to do that with a child? But then again, there are different ways of doing things... say hugging. That's definitely part of sex, but there are different ways of hugging that aren't sexual at all.

I also have to take W's feelings into account. It's hard for her to grapple with the ways that spanking works for me. She wasn't "into" spanking when we got together; she is often very uncomfortable with the role of disciplinarian. But neither of us would feel comfortable with me getting that need met by someone else, for many of the same reasons we struggle with figuring out what to do with the different parts of me. I mean, if a main reason we're uncomfortable with spanking-as-discipline is that it's too close to doing something sexual with a child, then going to someone else for a spanking is awfully close to infidelity.

And I often worry that the things I'm asking for aren't fair, and that I should just learn to figure out other ways of coping. And, certainly, there is some of that in there. It's not 100% W's job to take on raising these kid-parts of me. But it's not 100% not her job.

I have a much easier time acknowledging that it's not fair for W to have to be coping with the results of my childhood than I do in acknowledging that it's not fair for me, either. It's kind of sad, because, let's face it, even if I did fail to keep myself entirely safe as a child... I was a CHILD, and even if I thought I could do special magic things to keep myself safe, and even if they seemed to work (or did work some of the time) it wasn't my job to be able to prevent the adults in my life from hurting me. And staying at home even though things were bad wasn't actually saying that I was willing to accept what was happening. I didn't have other options--a five year old, or even an eleven year old, really can't survive on her own in the world. Just because I chose to stay, because on considering my options, I decided that the most likely way of succeeding as an adult was to stay at home so I could finish school and get into college... that doesn't mean it was okay what happened after I made that choice. Looking back, it was definitely the best of available options to stay. But that doesn't mean the available options were good ones. And it doesn't mean that I'm supposed to immediately be healthy and happy and not have any after-effects.

(Okay, that was really rambling, but this is a blog, and that's okay. Back to the original topic.)

So I have these parts. And some of them really do seem to need spankings in order to feel balanced and whole and... just not wildly out of control. The really ironic thing is, compared to my siblings, I was hardly ever hit as a kid. And it wasn't the spanking, per se, that I minded.

Thinking about it... I absolutely do NOT want the emotional environment that I experienced. I'm really not turned on by being emotionally or verbally abused.

When I think about punishment spankings, the context is very specific. I want clear rules, and consequences for breaking them. I want the person (W) giving the consequence to be calm and authoritative. I want the consequence to not be overwhelming. I want that sense of, "Okay, I messed up. I want to remember to not do this again. I want to have the consequence as a reminder, and as a way of closing off the stream of guilt that comes from having made a mistake or done something bad." I want the recognition that I'm still loved, but that someone cares enough about me to notice when I've done something wrong, and to give me closure on the incident.

I didn't get that at all when I was a kid. I got hit, not as a consistent response to anything I'd done or not done, but as a reflection of the people who hit being out of control, or me being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although sometimes it bore some relation to my behavior, the relationship was tenuous at best. I didn't, and couldn't, know what the rules were. I couldn't predict what would happen. I didn't get a chance to learn from my behavior, because the adults in my life just erupted, and then didn't address what had happened. I got hit because they were angry and had the power to hit, not because it was something that would help me to be a better person. I got hit for being a child--for crying, for forgetting to do something they wanted me to do, for making a mistake. Our house didn't have any rules that I could articulate, so, obviously, the spankings I received weren't related to deliberate misbehavior.

They might have used the phrase, as they hit me or pinched me or whatever, "That'll teach you not to (hit or pinch or whatever)." But what it taught me was that the reason I couldn't hit or pinch was that I was a kid, and that I didn't have the right to exert power over other people.

And then, when I was a teenager, and babysitting my younger siblings, my mother couldn't seem to understand why I didn't just spank them when they misbehaved. Because, of course, by fourteen, I was supposed to magically transition from being forbidden to hit to being one of the people who was allowed to hurt others (but only when I was the oldest person in the house, of course!). For whatever reason, I really couldn't make that transition.

I don't know. It's a lot to process through. I'd really appreciate comments on this if you've got any thoughts on it.

National Coming Out Day

Today is National Coming Out Day, which got me thinking about the different ways that I can think about coming out.

Obviously, most people who know me know that I'm a dyke. Coming out as a dyke has never been much of a challenge for me: if I get a decent sense that the person in question isn't likely to do violence, then I don't bother to hide my sexual orientation (I may not bring it up unless it's relevant, but I don't hide it). I often don't mention the specifics of what I do in the bedroom, but much of that is because 1, what I do in the bedroom involves my partner, and I prefer not to share things she'd rather not have shared, and 2, what I do in the bedroom rarely has any bearing on, say, whether I want my produce bagged in paper, plastic, or not at all.

There are other kinds of coming out. I am comfortable in many situations being "out" as a pagan; I've had to become comfortable being "out" about having an invisible disability (and in making it more visible so that I can, for instance, get a seat on the train, rather than getting glared at for falling down).

It's harder to come out about things like having grown up poor (although I've gotten more comfortable with my "white trash" roots as I've gotten older. Kind of. In a theoretical way.)

It's even harder to come out as a survivor of childhood abuse, especially because when it comes down to it, in a weird and twisted way, I'm FAR more ashamed of things that are presumably not my fault than I am of things that I have done of my own free will. I struggle with both denial and shame. (Is it a hope that I made everything up and it didn't really happen? Is it the fear that it was all my fault? Is it just believing that either I'm a horrible liar, or someone who is so flawed from the experience that no one would ever like me, or something I can't even put my finger on?)

And then, having come to various degrees of peace with the ways that I've needed to out myself, life throws in one more. Two weeks ago, my therapist "officially" diagnosed me with dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder).

On the one hand, it's not like it was a surprise. I have been working at not covering things up in therapy, and I'd been suspecting something of the sort myself already. Certainly, as a diagnosis, it makes far more sense than me being Borderline or bipolar. I have the symptoms, and it explains those little quirks that sometimes make life difficult for me.

On the other hand, if shame and denial are a struggle just with accepting that I experienced abuse, they're a much larger hurdle with accepting this.

I've been lightly passing off my struggles this past year as "being crazy." In some ways, this is true, if you go with the first definition of crazy--being cracked, precarious, fragile, falling apart. But I can also recognize that dissociation is perhaps the most adaptive way I could cope with what happened (whatever happened) in my childhood.

I know that I'm on the high-functioning end of the kids in my family (given that I haven't been able to cope with a job for most of the year, or with routine things like eating, this is a sad statement; I'm still on the high-functioning end). So, obviously, there was something going on, and none of us are crazy in the same ways. But all the various ways that we're crazy point towards abuse as the cause.

I'm rambling, mostly because it's difficult for me to manage to write anything at all, but I realized it had been a very long time since my last post, and this seemed like a time I would be able to manage to get something written.



As a PS--I finally got fed up with Verizon, so I'm switching my email address to a gmail account; and since someone else has "Dyke Grrl," I'm using jigsaw.analogy {at} gmail.com.

On a More Serious Note

I’m starting to work on quitting smoking. There are many good reasons to do this: the cost of smoking, the danger to my health, the fact that W and I would like to start trying to get pregnant (and both of our unwillingness to subject a baby or child to cigarette smoke), and, of course, the fact that my smoking is a definite source of tension in our relationship.

It’s a difficult thing for me. Arguments about the dangers of smoking aren’t helpful for me in quitting, because, honestly, they are precisely why I started smoking. Five or six years ago, I was becoming more and more violently depressed. When I’m that severely depressed, the urge to hurt myself is nearly insurmountable. I finally decided that, if I was feeling suicidal, it was better to smoke—something that I knew could kill me, but not in an immediate way—than to stop eating, or to start cutting. So that’s where the smoking started, as something to do that would hurt me less in the short run than the other things I wanted to do at the time.

The problem is, smoking had sides I hadn’t planned on.
They never bothered to mention in all of those anti-smoking lectures in high school that nicotine actually makes you feel better. And the way I smoke adds to that: I go outside, I separate myself from the source of tension, I don’t try to do anything else right then, for a nice, concrete stretch of time. And I breathe deeply—in, hold, out… in, hold, out. I’m often not good at remembering to breathe, so this is a good thing.

I had started this week by trying to quit smoking cold turkey. And then the stress kept piling up. For one thing, withdrawal from nicotine, for me, seems to induce severe depression (um, yeah, because smoking suppresses many of those depressed feelings on a regular basis, so it makes sense that those feelings would emerge when I stop). And then things kept happening that really challenged my commitment to quitting immediately. I finally decided that perhaps cold turkey wasn’t the way to go. So I’m working on, I don’t know, slightly microwaved turkey. Room temperature turkey, perhaps.

As I see it, I have three types of issues to contend with in quitting. The first is the sheer physical addiction. My body wants the nicotine. The other times I’ve tried to quit (or not been able to smoke), this has cleared up in about two or three days. I don’t smoke all that much, so I think it’s perhaps a bit easier for my body to cope with not getting the drug.

The second issue is dealing with the habit of smoking. I tend to smoke while on the phone, at least for the first several minutes of a conversation; or I smoke while walking alone; or I smoke when I feel particularly tense or agitated or anxious. Not all of that is about addiction: much of it is simply that I’ve gotten used to doing it. Smoke breaks punctuate my day, and I’m soothed by the routine of them.

The last type of issue is the hardest to cope with: smoking serves a lot of purposes, and I need to be able to figure out ways to get those needs met without smoking. In some ways, I can deal with the addiction by just working through it, and with the habit by blowing bubbles (also something I do outside, also something that can represent a break in my routine).

But it’s hard for me to find a substitute for the desire to hurt myself. I have difficulty acknowledging the reasons I want to hurt myself, and while so many people blithely suggest that I do something self-nurturing to replace it, well, that was the problem in the first place. I’m not so good at that self-nurturing stuff.

And, as time has gone by, smoking has become helpful in more areas. It gives me a way to mentally separate from situations that I have trouble coping with. And that whole drug thing has a role, and helps to push away those emotions I’m having trouble dealing with. Smoking helps me to suppress anger, fear, sadness… I can numb those feelings to the point where I’m able to deal with them. And unlike cutting or not eating, smoking doesn’t seem to actually make those feelings more entrenched; it just suppresses them for the moment.

Smoking also gives me something I don’t have to share. I hate to acknowledge this one, because, well, it’s so selfish. But as I’ve moved into the reality of a full-time living-together being-married kind of relationship, I’ve had a harder time being able to manage that whole “sharing” thing. Growing up, despite having a ton of siblings, I mostly had a room of my own. I have almost always had a lot of personal space, and had to share surprisingly few things for someone from a large family. And, I hate to admit it, but I am sometimes desperate for something that is all mine, that I don’t have to share with anyone.

And as I examine the reasons I keep on smoking, I’ve also realized that some of it is a fear of moving on to the next stage in my life. Remember how I mentioned that I have to stop smoking before W and I can have a kid? Well, even though I mostly am desperate to start that process, there’s a big part of my less-surface brain that would rather put it off, just a little longer. It’s a scary move, and there are a lot of parts inside of me that would rather not make it. I’m trying to work out a deal with those parts, but it’s still something of a challenge.

In the end, I know it’s something I need to do. There are parts of me that wish W were willing to punish me for smoking, to help me quit. The problem is, I’m not sure it could work. I know how very much W hates smoking, and I think the punishments would feel very wrong, were they to happen; we’ve been reluctant to use spanking for things that are issues between the two of us, in large part because we don’t want to cross a line into abuse. Beyond that, I don’t know that punishment is the right approach in this case. On the one hand, I do feel fiercely guilty; but on the other hand, I really do need to learn about being more gentle and supportive for myself, and quitting smoking may well be a place to practice those skills.

So I’m not going to get a light-hearted (yet painful) spanking for smoking; but I’m going to figure out how to quit anyhow.

Troubled

Sometimes, I wonder how much of my response to things is because of having been abused as a kid, and how much is actually related to the situation at hand. Over the past couple of days, two things have happened that are still troubling me.

In the first case, it was all about tone of voice--I got intensely triggered overhearing my SIL putting her kids to bed, snapping and yelling at them as they got more resistant to laying down to sleep. I could understand that the situation was stressful--the kids had had an exciting day, and were in a strange bed, and we'd had dinner later than we should have; SIL had had a long and tiring day, hadn't gotten enough rest the night before, and didn't have the support of her husband putting the kids down for the night. But as she snapped and snarled at the kids, I couldn't help feeling that sense of impending danger that I felt throughout my childhood. SIL wouldn't beat her children, and I know she loves them, but emotionally, it's still hard for me to separate.

The second case is even harder. I was chatting with one of the kids who lives next door to us yesterday. He had on a sleeveless t-shirt, and I noticed a bruise near the side of his chest. It was a narrow, sideways u-shape. It's a shape I'm familiar with, peering in the mirror, or craning my head, the day after a spanking with the loopy toy. And try though I might, I can't think of anything other than a looped cord that would result in a bruise like that.

In neither case am I sure what I should do. I will definitely keep an eye on the kids next door; but would social services actually help? It's such a hard thing to figure out. And W. and I are trying to figure out how to approach tone of voice with her sister in a way that will actually help both the kids and SIL.

Yeah, so that's what's on my mind right now. I'm just not sure what to do.

Fear of Writing

I’ve wrangled around with this entry a lot of different ways, and the words fight me every single time. I think the problem is that I’m so used to not writing about this issue, that it’s really difficult to find a way of facing it down.

See, the reason I haven’t been writing on my dissertation is that, separate from all the usual reasons people don’t write, I also have to fight intense terror of the act of writing itself. It’s been with me for as long as I can remember, and gets worse the more direct and real I have to be in the writing. Thus, writing a history dissertation becomes something of a problem, because I have to take facts and make my interpretation of them as clear as I possibly can.

When I sit to write, and it’s something that touches on reality, I struggle. When I’m lucky, I can find that clear space in my head, and write without connecting to what I’m writing about. Things focused on the present, touching only peripherally on my emotions, are the easiest. I can write lists and charts with very little difficulty. Stories are pretty easy, most of the time, until they become stories about myself.

But writing, real writing, writing where I take facts and state an interpretation of them… this becomes terrifying. I sit to write and my hands shake, my vision grows dim, the world tilts and spins around me. A filter intervenes, somewhere between thought and expression, to make what I’ve said as inscrutable as possible.

I thought, for years, that this was just a problem with academic writing. In college, both I and my professors were puzzled by it, because I could express my thoughts clearly in words, and I had definitely mastered the mechanics of writing… but my papers did far more to obscure my thinking than to express it.

And then, after college, I read over some of my journals, and realized that the avoidance and inscrutability were more, rather than less, present. I noticed that, and kind of worked on it, but mostly put it aside. I couldn’t really face the reasons that I find it so hard to put words onto paper (or onto screen, as the case may be). I hoped that the problem would go away, without me having to actually face it.

But I’ll keep trying to do this.

After I was in the hospital last February, I had voices in my head, repeating over and over “This is what we SAID would happen if you told. It’s what happened the last time.” And I could only respond, “What last time? I’ve never told.”

Then my brain would thrust forward a half-remembered event from my childhood. When children’s services came to investigate. The thing is, I always remembered this as being because my sister said or did something in school that made them come. But the image was persistent.

So I make my guesses. Perhaps I was the one who wrote something at school, something that made my teachers wonder, something that caused social services to come. I don’t remember what happened afterward, but I cringe every time someone mentions a social service investigation. I am terrified for the kids in the family.

When I worked in a high school, and was a mandatory reporter, I hoped I would never have to call children’s services. I remember my absolute fury in the training, because they instructed us not to tell the kid whose parents we were reporting that we were doing so.

And I have to wonder. Why do I remember the… violence coming towards me, if I wasn’t the one who told? Why am I the one who has such fear of putting things down in words, if it wasn’t me who made the mistake in the first place?

But I struggle with that, because it’s tied up with realizing that perhaps there was a time when I wasn’t able to keep myself safer than my sisters and brothers, when I wasn’t able to maintain that protective distance.

Rationally, I know that there’s nothing my family could do to hurt me now, no matter what I put into writing. It’s still hard, to get past that part of my brain that has kept me safe for the last quarter of a century. I am accustomed to writing around and through the barriers, finding ways of getting words out without alerting my internal censors to the danger.

I need to find a different way, though. I have a strong sense that the only way for me to get this dissertation finished and get on with my life is to finally face those censors directly, to address why they are there, and hopefully to put them to rest. It feels like dragons or monsters, lurking in my brain, waiting to attack as soon as I make the wrong move. And let’s face it, I can’t write clearly enough when I’m cringing, waiting to be attacked.

So I’ll give this a try, writing about those forbidden topics, trying to prove that it’s really okay, that I can say what I need to say without being beaten or yelled at. I can’t say that I’m looking forward to it.

Is It Okay To Spank an Inner Child?

So, yeah. I posted three weeks ago about W’s and my conclusion that it’s okay to spank an inner child. But time goes by, and one goes through actual, rather than theoretical experiences, and things become less clear.

I have continued to be varying levels of cranxious. Most of it, I think, is the process of working through the feelings that therapy and my foray into craziness are bringing up. (No, I don’t really think I’m crazy. I just, you know, have issues to work through.) And when the emotional load gets to a point where I can’t ignore it, I don’t always manage to let the feelings out in a reasonable, responsible, adult kind of way.

Last weekend, after several days of hearing my inner child demand—ever more loudly—to be allowed to throw a tantrum, I let it out. And, boy oh boy, is my inner child childlike. So I threw all of the socks at the wall. And then all of the pillows. And then I dumped all of the dirty laundry on top of that. It wasn’t enough. That inner child had a lot of frustration and anger to let out.

So I proceeded to my playroom (and, for the dirty-minded out there, I really mean “playroom”—it’s where we’ve got the playmobils and the blocks and the arts and crafts supplies). I dumped out all of the blocks and rattled them all over the floor. It wasn’t enough.

So I did something entirely, utterly childish. I got out the finger-paints, and proceeded to paint all over the wardrobe. Boy, was it satisfying. My inner child finally felt like it had gotten a chance to do something bad. It wasn’t quite enough, though. Since my (by then inner) adult objected to writing “bad words” on the wardrobe, just in case the paint didn’t wash off, the child wasn’t entirely satisfied. So we got out some expensive Post-It brand poster paper, put several sheets on the wall, painted on them, and then used pens to write bad words.

And in a full display of maturity, my inner child decided that the “bad words” it needed to write were things like “uglybutt” and “fart face.” Silly? Sure. Satisfying? Very much so.

But on some levels, my inner child was destined for disappointment. Because as much as it wanted its bad behavior to be recognized and limited… well, W. didn’t quite comply with our plans. Partly, it was because she thought it was just silly and funny. I can see this, and, yeah, it was pretty silly and funny. Mostly, though, it’s because she felt that it was good for me to let my feelings out, and she didn’t want to discourage me from doing it.

I’d like to say that I think she’s right. But as I check in with that part of me, I can understand the disappointment. There’s a safety in having reasonable limits imposed on my behavior. It wasn’t safe for me to behave badly as a kid, because the response was disproportionate, dangerous, violent. So I have always fiercely controlled myself, and I have learned to turn all of my anger and frustration and rage on myself.

My adult side has trouble letting go enough to let this inner child out into the world. It’s an embarrassing part of me, especially when it doesn’t behave well. It’s messy and irresponsible and bratty. And it’s looking for limits, and I can either test limits or impose them. I can’t do both.

So we go back, W. and I, to pondering whether or not it’s okay to spank an inner child. (Or, for that matter, wash its mouth out with soap, or send it to bed early, or whatever.) If it were a real child, neither of us would consider those options. And if I’m behaving like a child, then shouldn’t I be treated like a child? So it becomes difficult.

Several times recently, W. has brought up the idea of couples counseling with someone we could talk to about the role of spanking in our lives. I admit that I’m incredibly wary of this, for a lot of reasons. But it’s still something to consider, and perhaps having a neutral person to mediate the discussions could help us to stop going over and over the same ground.

And, who knows, maybe they could help us answer the question:

Is it okay to spank an inner child?

It's Okay to Spank an Inner Child

Yesterday was a particularly cranxious day. (Cranxious, of course, means that combination of cranky and anxious that is no fun either for the person feeling that way or the people they are around.)

By the end of the day, I was craving a naughty girl spanking, but (as often happens in that mood), I couldn’t find the words to tell W. what I needed. And so I was “hiding” in my study. W. came in to let me know she was concerned, but since she didn’t tell me I had to come out of my study, there I stayed.

Partly, it was just that I really didn’t want to try to go to sleep. And partly it was that I knew I’d just get more cranxious when faced with someone being soft and nice and trying to cuddle and nurture me.

I wanted to throw things around the room, stomp my feet, yell and shout; basically, my inner child was demanding a chance to be bad, bad, BAD!!! And my outer adult wouldn’t let it, or didn’t know how to make a compromise. Usually, I buy my inner children off with toys or similar treats. But this isn’t a good long-term strategy (my outer adult likes to have a place to live, and electricity, and all of those other things money has to be spent on). So there were no treats, and there was no chance for a tantrum, either.

I finally went to bed, thinking W. was asleep. I noticed that there was a text message on my phone, which had been charging in the bedroom. I checked it, and saw that she had asked me whether I thought a spanking would help; in her next message, she noted that she thought it would definitely help. I was sad at the lost opportunity for a spanking, but texted back that I agreed, but my phone had been in the bedroom.

Turns out she was awake, and she offered to give me the spanking. But the spanking wasn’t giving me the release that I needed—she was giving me a gentle, loving spanking, trying to help me feel better. But I so needed a naughty-girl spanking, to be sternly told what to do, not allowed to make any choices right then. I needed—desperately—for her to take charge. So we gave up, and turned off the light, and got under the covers.

And then my phone rang, with a friend asking whether she could stay the night, because she was locked out of her apartment. I started talking with W. as I waited for the friend to find out whether she could get in touch with her landlord or a locksmith, and then W. offered to come with me when I drove to pick her up.

As often happens, I was much more able to talk while I was driving. We discussed how I had been feeling, and what I needed. W. explained that she still feels ambivalent about ordering me to come into the bedroom, or giving me a spanking when I haven’t asked for it. But she also said that there are times when the main thing she wants to do is tell me to behave, to stop hiding, to stop expecting her to read my mind.

I’m not sure how to manage the divide there. In my ideal world, I could just say, “But that is exactly what I need you to do! Please do it! Please feel okay doing it!” But that’s not really fair, and so I don’t tell her this.

We also talked about the cranxious feeling. It stems from a desire to be a little kid, to be told what to do, to be given limits. And I find myself acting like a kid, pushing against the boundaries of appropriate behavior, just to see whether anyone will make me do the right thing. It’s such a comfort when it happens, and it gives me the strength to get through another day or week or month of being a responsible grown-up. But it also feels just a little weird, to allow my very child-like inner children out, and then to spank them. I wouldn't spank an actual child, and my inner children feel very much like the child versions of me. But W. reassured me that it is okay to spank an inner child. And, on further reflection, I do realize that inner children are capable of informed consent in ways that actual children aren't. Of course, I admit I'd rather I only had well-behaved happy inner children.

Even though I’m not supposed to expect W. to read my mind, or act as though I can read hers, well… I do feel very much like W. would prefer me to be all the grown-up; I get a sense that she hopes my little kid side (particularly the bratty, needy, cranky, misbehaving, limit-testing version) will be eroded by therapy, or by life or something. On some levels, I also wouldn’t mind if that happens.

But from my point of view, it feels like such a central part of me, the part where all of my inconvenient emotions are stored, that I’m reluctant to send it away. More than that, even though I rationally know perfectly well this isn’t her intent, it feels like W. is rejecting those emotional, inconvenient parts of my adult self when she talks about a time when I won’t need the naughty-girl spankings.

So I stay in this cranxious state, wishing I could figure out how to explain what I need. My fantasy right now is that I could let my inner children be the brats they want to be, throw a tantrum or break the rules. And then W. would sternly send me to the bedroom and stand me in the corner. After I’d cooled off, she’d give me a hard spanking, and maybe some more corner time. And then I could come to bed and sleep through the night, safe and forgiven. But I know that even if things went exactly as I described, it would be more difficult and more complicated than it is in my imagination. We’ll see how it goes.

Bounded in a Nutshell

I might count myself the king (queen) of infinite space, were it not for the bad dreams.

Last night, I dreamt that I woke up screaming from a nightmare. I noticed that W. hadn’t woken up, and I realized that it had just been a dream. I whimpered, and tried to wake her up, but I wasn’t really capable of talking. And then, as she wasn’t responding to that, I realized it was still a dream. I think I actually woke up at this point, because I got out of bed. I managed to get back to sleep, but kept waking up from nightmares (and not remembering the nightmares) all night long.

Last night wasn’t what I would call a “good” night.

Sometimes I feel like I’m being really ungrateful, to my psyche, or to the gods and fates that determine how well or poorly I cope. For the last week or so, I’ve managed to have sufficient self-discipline to be able to get through the days, getting a lot of stuff done so that we could have people over for a Passover Seder last night. For most of a week, I was able to make myself do things, simply because they had to be done.

On the one hand, I’m profoundly grateful for that capacity in myself. It’s how I’ve gotten through the hard times in my life: that ability to manage to get things done, and even to get them done reasonably well, regardless of whether or not I can actually handle doing them.

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found myself more and more often in a situation where very little absolutely has to be done, and in this state, I seem unable to force myself to do things that aren’t vitally necessary. So I kind of fall apart.

It makes me feel rather guilty, since if I am capable of forcing myself to do things when they have to be done, if I am able to suppress the panic and the flashbacks and that horrible chaotic overwhelmed feeling some of the time, why can’t I force myself to have sufficient self-discipline to do this all of the time? I have those voices at the back of my head, accusing me of just not trying hard enough, not wanting desperately enough to feel better. If I tried harder, those voices reason, I could continue to manage all of the time, and not just when there is a deadline.

Now, rationally, I know that this is unreasonable and unhealthy. Heck, rationally, I realize that this is probably why I ended up with things like fibromyalgia (the year before I had what turns out to have been my first fibro flare-up, I distinctly remember having the constant sensation that I was sucking the energy reserves out of the very marrow of my bones, in order to get done all of the things that had to be done).

I realize that self-discipline alone isn’t going to keep me from having flashbacks. I understand that it’s not even healthy to suppress them. But, damn, I really wish I could.

I am also resentful that I don’t seem to have a choice about the panic, about the memories. If I could choose, I would have more time to just get to be peaceful and happy and enjoy living my life. And I hate that it takes strict self-discipline to pull this off, because if I’m not constantly putting at least part of my mind to the task of holding off all of the negative stuff, there it is, in the middle of my brain-space, taking over everything.

I suppose I do have a choice, but I don’t seem to know how to make it. Or I don’t have the courage for it. Because I know there is a dream I don’t even remember, the one that I dreamt made me wake up screaming. And I cannot bring myself to, I do not know how to, I am terrified to face the content of that first dream.

I wish I could just let the past be the past, inert, over, done. I wish that the fact of my survival were able to give me the strength to face what I survived. (And the voices in my head sneer, “It was nothing, it wasn’t bad, why are you whining about it?”) In a more positive sense, I try to tell myself that nothing I remembered could be as bad as the struggle to not remember. But I don’t seem to be convinced.

It's like a train wreck

For years, I had therapists who insisted that I would only have memories of my childhood when I was ready for them. I always figured that by “ready” they meant I would be able to cope with the memories; that I would have skills for dealing with them; that I would have a strong support network in place. I thought they meant that I could have the memories, but also live my daily life in between.

So I admit I’m feeling a little resentful. Through a combination of events, I don’t currently have a therapist. Most of my friends live in other states. I haven’t had the mental energy to keep up with my primary source of online support. My best friend has been getting increasingly volatile and difficult to talk to in the best of circumstances. So my tangible, daily support network consists of my wife. She is a wonderful, loving person. But I also realize that she’s not able to provide all of the support I need. And she really doesn’t know any more than I do about how I can cope with what’s going on.

On top of all of this, I’m getting very mad at the jerks on the Internet who feel the need to create websites about how people who forgot childhood abuse and then remember it as adults are making it all up. I was checking Google to see if there was an online version of The Courage to Heal. Most of the sites that came up were the ones debunking “false memory syndrome.” I suppose it’s my fault, for persisting in clicking on those Google links, even though I know the sites are going to be… um, wrong. And yet I click. On more than one site. On more than one day. This, from a person who generally doesn't even rubberneck at accidents when I'm driving!

The people writing these sites give me no credit whatsoever for being able to make up something that’s actually interesting. Really, now! When I was a kid, I created whole worlds! I can make up stories about things that are actually unique and original. So why would I bother to make up run of the mill physical, emotional, and sexual abuse? Why not come up with something like being kidnapped by fairies, or traveling through time?

In my more rational moments, I can laugh about it. I mean, where is the benefit to me in making up the memories? Oh, right, I really wanted to be unable to do anything I really enjoy because of the crippling panic attacks; I really couldn’t figure out how else to have nightmares every single night; I love shuddering and flinching during sex, and it’s a great way to build a healthy relationship. Yeah, that’s it.

So here I am, waiting (and waiting) for the people at the counseling center where I had my most recent intake to call me back. I would give up on them and go find a therapist on my own except for one thing. I am so emotionally drained, and having such a hard time getting myself to trust anyone right now, that I’m just not able to get the resources together to go find a different therapist. I need therapy in order to be able to advocate for myself to get good therapy. It was hard enough to manage to find the therapist who ended up dropping me after I was hospitalized. Going through the process all over again is more than I can bear.

Right now, it’s all I can do to hold myself together waiting for this stupid clinic to call me back, and talking myself into going and into talking once I get there. I suppose, in the meanwhile, it would be a good idea to stop reading the idiotic “false memory” sites, because I know if I keep reading them, I’ll manage to convince myself, once again, that I made everything up.

Long and rambling

Behind the cut there is a rambling post about childhood abuse stuff and current frustrations with health professionals. It may or may not be triggering, and it’s definitely self-centered, so be aware before you read. Oh, and it’s not about spanking in any but the most general way.

When I was a kid and got hurt, or someone hit me, they would often say, “Stop crying, that didn’t hurt.” And if I didn’t stop crying, they would “give me something to cry about.” Which is to say, hit me harder, hurt me more than I was already hurting. I suppose it was intended to give me a sense of perspective.

Another way my mother would encourage me to have a sense of perspective was to say, “If people could survive Auschwitz, surely you can survive this.” I was an adult before it occurred to me to think that most people didn’t survive.

When I complained about someone saying something that hurt my feelings, they would remind me that sticks and stones can break my bones, but words could never hurt me. My family always said I was too sensitive. They say this even more now, when I object to them saying things that are categorically racist (black neighborhoods are dirty because black people are lazy; black men are in jail because they’re all criminals… and we won’t even go into their “joking” use of the n-word around me, or their delight in referring to me as a “negro” because I won the National Achievement Award for Outstanding Negro Scholars when I was in high school). Because, of course, they don’t see me as black, so they don’t mean me when they say that blacks are bad people. And if I take it personally, clearly, I’m way too sensitive.

Why do I bring this up?

Because I feel like my health care providers are doing exactly the same thing right now.

My doctor is one of those people who thinks that the problem with fibromyalgia is that the people who have it just have a low pain tolerance (and, by the way, don’t exercise enough). It doesn’t matter that I experience migraines, abscessed teeth, and broken bones as mild discomfort. Because he can’t see a testable cause for the subjectively greater pain of fibromyalgia, he has determined that the problem is a low pain threshold. These things don’t really hurt, he is essentially saying. (And then went on to comment on how if you have a headache and then bang your foot, you stop noticing the headache because of the pain in your foot. You know, why not go get something to really cry about….)

And then there are the mental health professionals I’ve been dealing with.

I was in the psych ward recently because I made myself admit to W. and one of my friends that I was feeling suicidal. I felt guilty for admitting this, since it felt manipulative to ask for help (I was nearly 15% sure that I didn’t really want to kill myself, after all). My experience in the psych ward was horrible—I had no access to any of the things that make me feel safe or comforted, but the staff there acted as though I was unreasonable to not say I felt safe there. When I commented that it felt like being in the psych ward was a punishment for asking for help, I had more than one doctor on staff tell me it wasn’t a punishment, and then sternly add, “Well, now you know what happens when you tell people you’re suicidal.” (I had managed to convince myself they hadn’t really said that, until W. mentioned one of the doctors saying it to her as well.)

The staff at the hospital misdiagnosed me (in not only my opinion, but in the opinion of everyone who knows me that I’ve talked about this with) with borderline personality disorder. They offered no help for the panic attacks and anxiety that caused me to become suicidal. The antidepressant they had me start ended up causing increased anxiety (this isn’t their fault: it’s an antidepressant that usually reduces anxiety).

And over and over, the therapists and psychiatrists I’ve seen have insisted that since my life now is good, I’ve got no real reason to be so anxious. They tell me that I have a low tolerance for distress, and that my problem is that I am unable (read that: unwilling) to just get on with living my life and choosing not to feel the emotional upsets. When I asked for something I could do to reduce anxiety and panic attacks last week, the therapist I was seeing gave me a handout for people with a low tolerance for frustration that said, among other things, that a good way to better tolerate “distress” is “With comparisons: Compare yourself to people coping the same as you or less well than you. Compare yourself to those less fortunate than you; read about disasters, others’ suffering.” Because if people could survive Auschwitz….

I recognize that these people mean well. They are probably trying to help me. But somehow, it feels like they’re doing exactly the same things my family did to help me when I was little. If my body hurts, it is because I am a wimp, and I should be distracted with “real” pain. If my feelings are hurt, I should be told that I’m too sensitive, and reminded that other people are worse off than I am. They should tell me there’s nothing to be upset about, rather than help me to cope with the things that are causing almost constant anxiety.

Rather than getting better services, more suited to my needs (which is what my old therapist said would happen if I went to the psych ward), I have been dropped by my old therapist, and shunted from one person to another. I haven’t had a therapy session that wasn’t either an intake for care, or a termination of services since February. I am likely to stay at the center I’ve been referred to now, and they told me today that I won’t be assigned to a therapist for three more weeks. On the advice of the psychiatrists, given the adverse effects of the meds, I’m not currently on any medications for anxiety or depression.

And boy oh boy, are my inner children ticked off at me. I forced myself to admit, over and over, that I was definitely physically and emotionally abused as a child, and probably sexually abused. This by itself gives me severe panic attacks after doing it, and I’ve had to do it over and over and over, without actually getting any help in coping. Instead, I’ve been informed that my life is good, I’m clearly successful and accomplished, I am in a good relationship, and I am able to be in contact with my family, so I should stop feeling so anxious and depressed. (The psychiatrist doing the intake today actually said that in pretty much those words.)

I keep taking the risk to trust people, in the hope of getting some help, and instead, they send me to someone else, telling me I should be able to manage.

It really frustrates me. And I can’t help but think, “Would I be getting more services if I were acting out?” But I’m trapped in being “good.” And because the mental health providers recognize that I’m not going to actually do anything to hurt myself or others, or anything impulsive or dangerous, they trust that they can leave me to muddle along on my own with less help than I was getting when this whole business started. And I can’t help but feel the same desperation I felt when I was a teenager, knowing I needed help dealing with all of the stuff that had gone on, and realizing that it wasn’t going to come any time soon. (Yes, rationally, three weeks isn’t very long. But emotionally, it’s about 2 ½ weeks longer than I can handle right now.)

Denial: Pondering my childhood, in five parts

Denial, part 1:

My mother always insisted, “We’re not poor, we’re artists and intellectuals.” The thing is, we definitely were poor. Not working class, because working class implies that you have a job.

I have my ideas about why my mother chose to say this. She wanted us to think we were smart, to think that we could make choices in our lives. And, subconsciously, she wanted to pass on her internalized classism. She didn’t like poor people, she was ashamed of her background (rural and poor). She didn’t want us to be like the people around us—uneducated and uninterested in education. She wasn’t able to move out of poverty, and she didn’t know how, but she wanted to encourage us to use our brains and our talents.

There were some advantages to this. She didn’t encourage us to drop out of school to get jobs. She didn’t make fun of us for reading or drawing or playing instruments. She didn’t complain when I applied to colleges, and didn’t say that I shouldn’t go to a liberal arts college.

But she left us thoroughly aware that there is something shameful in being poor. And she coped with poverty through denial.

Denial, part 2:

The same thing was true of my race, although that wasn’t talked about very often. When my family acknowledges that I’m biracial or black, it’s always with the comment, “We don’t see you as black.”

Despite the fact that my skin is darker than theirs, despite my kinky hair, despite my black father… we are not supposed to notice that I am black. When I protest racist comments they make, I am reminded that they don’t see me as black. They are surprised when I mention experiencing racial profiling, I suppose because they expect the rest of the world to go along with their belief that I’m not “really” black.

In fact, the only time they bring up my race on their own is to explain that they could have gone to college or grad school, too, if only they had been able to take advantage of affirmative action. Because, of course, no one else in our family had the advantage of having black genes, so they couldn’t get all of the scholarships I got just for being black.

It doesn’t matter that the scholarships and grants I received were primarily need-based aid, which any of them could have gotten. And it also doesn’t matter that what fellowships I received were highly competitive, and not many other people received them, regardless of race. The fact that I had very good grades all through school, and that I scored well on standardized tests, and that I worked my butt off through high school and college and grad school… these things don’t count, and the only reason I have gotten where I am is because of affirmative action.

I am constantly reminded that my siblings are all really smart (they are, don’t get me wrong), and their failure in school was because they didn’t do well with the structure (this may be true as well). They are the ones who are talented (they are), and I’m just “good at school.”

Denial, part 3:

Strangely enough, my mother also denies that we were abused as kids. She will admit that we were hit, but she doesn’t consider it abuse.

I will grant this much. I don’t think anyone had bones broken. We weren’t starved. We weren’t burned often, and burns were generally on the lines of collateral damage.

But we regularly ended up with welts and bruises. We were hit with hands, with belts, with switches, with whatever happened to be handy when someone in charge got angry. We were yelled at, belittled, demeaned. And even though some of the apparent neglect was because, despite her best efforts, my mother couldn’t afford to meet all of our needs… some of the neglect was because she chose not to respond to our needs or to admit that we needed to have attention and care, and that we weren’t mature enough to carry the burdens she laid on us.

Denial, part 4:

Why, then, would it surprise me that no one in our family would even hint that at least we girls were sexually abused?

I struggle with my own disbelief. I can intellectualize it: I know that I, and each of my three sisters have between us virtually all of the signs of having been sexually abused as children. I know that when I first had consensual sex, it caused almost intolerable panic attacks (because consensual sex requires you to actually be in your body during sex, which is terrifying). And I can realize that there’s really no benefit whatsoever to me in making up a history of abuse.

But even in my own mind, I find it nearly impossible to actually believe that I was sexually abused. I dismiss the visual aspects of my panic attacks, assuming that it’s marginally possible that I’m making things up or misinterpreting what I see. I ignore the content of the “nightmares” I have when I need to relax my mind enough to fall asleep, because I have no evidence that they are memories rather than products of my imagination.

Denial, part 5:

When I say something to someone that indicates I was abused, I feel almost intolerably guilty. I am assaulted with voices in the back of my head that shout that I am a liar, that it isn’t true, that I am being manipulative. Despite the fact that I know I’m a rotten liar, I feel every moment that I am deceiving people when I talk about abuse.

I am baffled by the way that my mind tries to bury any evidence of abuse, and to minimize the things I remember. Intellectually, I know that it makes sense. This is a defense mechanism. I kept myself as safe and as whole as possible when I was a child by blocking out things that no child should have to cope with. Even though I know how much these defenses are hurting me now, it is so hard to let them go.

Because it does feel safer not to remember.

I can feel the rage and terror welling up behind those walls. I thought I had come to a degree of acceptance, to an ability to connect with my family on my own terms. And I’m so afraid of losing what little love they give me, if I were to admit even to myself that they hurt me over and over again when I was small. To admit that they probably recognize that the things they say to me now can only work to erode any confidence and pride I feel in my accomplishments.

I don’t want to be angry, I don’t want to feel the fear. And yet, I’m getting to a point when I can no longer tolerate the weight of my defenses.

The Relief of Bottoming

We had a busy weekend, pretty much as usual. W.’s younger sisters came for a visit, and we went to see their cousin in a play on Saturday. After dinner with the extended family, we came back home, and then ended up driving her sisters back towards their own home (about an hour and a half from where we live). On the way back, W. asked whether I wanted a spanking on Sunday. Of course, I said yes.

I’ve been stressed out and edgy lately, and I really needed to bottom. On the way home from doing the weekend’s shopping yesterday, I checked in about W.’s energy levels, and mentioned that I really needed to bottom.

We got home, had some dinner, and did our usual early-evening things. Then, about an hour before bedtime, W. announced that it was time. She told me to choose music with a beat, which I did. She instructed me to kneel on the bed, facing the wall (we have no corners that aren’t filled with stuff, so this was perhaps the only way to do “corner time” in our bedroom).

I knelt and stared at the wall. I alternated between contemplating the fact that I was about to get a spanking and figuring out exactly how far-sighted my eyes have gotten (I absolutely cannot focus on something that is less than a foot from my face). W. finished reading the chapter she was on, and then went out of the room to do something else for a while. Then she came back, and rummaged through our toy cupboard. She arranged me for the spanking, and began.

And here is where I feel kind of guilty. She did a nice warm-up, and even had me over her lap, but it was… unsatisfying. I really, desperately needed to bottom, and I just wasn’t getting that last night. The spanking felt, I don’t know, perfunctory. And the sex afterwards also really felt like we were failing to communicate, or failing to get what we wanted.

I’m still too edgy to really be able to talk about it with her. I’m not sure how to describe what it is that I need, and I feel badly about wanting something that she isn’t giving, and about not being happy with what I’ve got. I could tell that she was being gentle and loving—but it’s like I was watching a television with the sound off, and although I could tell what was going on, it wasn’t coming through very clearly. It feels really selfish to say, “I know you gave me what you thought I needed, and I could tell you were making efforts, but it really didn’t meet my needs.” It’s like how I feel when I know someone spent a lot of time or money on a gift for me, but it’s not what I want. So I find myself grateful for the thought and love behind the gift, but also kind of resentful that they spent so much effort on something that I don’t like or want.

Maybe that means I should try to articulate what it is that I do want. I guess what I need is to not be in control, but that’s the usual situation. It’s not just about not being in control of the situation in general, though. I need to not have to be in control of myself.

I guess it’s a side effect of being responsible about so many things lately—I’ve been doing my work like I’m supposed to. I paid the bills instead of spending our money just on fun stuff. I spent my extra day off on Friday doing the laundry and grocery shopping, instead of hanging out doing something just fun.

Part of my frustration comes from my usual conflict. W. wasn’t into spanking before she met me, and so I feel like I should try to avoid asking for much from her in that area. And I feel like I should be grateful for what I get, even if it isn’t what I need. But what good is that? I don’t know if she enjoyed giving me the spanking, but for me, it was the equivalent of a finger just barely brushing my clit during sex—it’s nice in moderation, but it just increased the need for a different kind of stimulation.

But it’s not just that. On some levels, I see the spanking as where we can make other aspects of our relationship balance out. I feel a lot of the time like I have to be the “grown-up.” I make sure that bills get paid and groceries get bought and money gets managed. I’m the one who remembers to pick up the mail, and take out the trash, and all of those kinds of things. Honestly, none of this is precisely a problem. I don’t mind doing most of this, most of this is stuff it wouldn’t occur to me not to do, and it often makes better sense for just one of us to be in charge, you know? It’s not even like W. doesn’t do one of the most important grown-up things in our household: she goes to work every day, and brings home the paycheck that provides the bulk of our financial support while I work on my dissertation.

But I still need a space in my life where someone else takes charge, and for me, that tends to be during a spanking (and, to a lesser extent, during sex). I suppose it would be healthier if I could let her be in charge of other areas of our life, but it’s still a lot of work for me to let go in most areas. And there are times when I need the relief of bottoming.

I need a space where I can let go, where someone else is in charge of what happens. I crave the opportunity to know that I have no say (aside from safewords, because, well, those also make me feel safe). I want to be able to squirm without the spanking stopping. I want to have W. take charge like she means it.

The funny thing is, I could have ended up with something very like that sensation today. W. called on her way home from school to ask how my work had gone today. It hadn’t gone well, but that wasn’t because I didn’t spend the day in front of the computer typing and trying to get work done. When she asked, I was kind of vague about how the work had gone (who wants to admit that they typed and retyped the same six or seven paragraphs all day, getting absolutely nothing?). Besides, I couldn’t honestly say I had been productive, because I had no product to show for my work. She simply said, “Okay, we’ll deal with that when I get home.” And she made a point of checking in with me about my work, and about how I had spent the day. We agreed that I didn’t deserve a punishment, because I had worked, I just hadn’t had a good workday. And some days are like that (even in Australia).

It was clear that if I hadn’t been working, though, that I would have gotten a punishment spanking. And that made me feel good, and cared for. I made sure to thank her for checking in, and holding me accountable, because it makes it easier for me to hold myself accountable.

What I need right now is not really a punishment spanking, exactly. I need something a little bit firm, perhaps disciplinary, but not as a punishment. The words that come into my head as I think about it are that I need to be held together for a little bit, just to ease the strain of doing it myself. I need a structure around me, and I need the release of the spanking. I need to feel like there are boundaries, and like I’m not the one in charge of maintaining them. But I really don’t know how to find our way to a compromise on this, since it’s not something I think W. wants.

Yes, it might make more sense to just talk to her about it. But right now, I’m so needy that I can’t get to a place where I can talk about anything like a reasonable human being, let alone having a conversation where I have to force myself to be vulnerable and take risks.

And I still struggle with the question of “why spanking?” Why not something like playing with blocks, or coloring? Some of that is that I can separate even disciplinary spankings from age play, and when I’m this vulnerable, ageplay is the last thing I want. Some of it is that bottoming meets some need I haven’t yet figured out how to articulate. It allows me to let go of control, it holds me together, it allows me the space to release emotions I can’t seem to stop bottling up. And it makes me feel really good.

I really wish, sometimes, that something else gave me those feelings, or that W. got equally good feelings from topping.

Being In Total Control of Herself

Being In Total Control of Herself

The phrase was meant to reclaim the word for which it is an acronym and make it positive. But the truth is, the acronym is a description of what happens when one is in total control of oneself for too long. I should know (and those around me probably know even better). I’m not always successful with it, but my natural mode is to be in total control of myself at all times. It’s not easy, of course. It takes constant vigilance. But I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, and most likely long before that.

I’ve been talking with my wife about how I’ve longed for disciplinary spankings for most of my life, and how that connects to the spankings I received (or didn’t receive) when I was a kid. There was a lot of spanking in our house, but I didn’t come in for much of it. I can remember, offhand, perhaps half a dozen times I was spanked or hit by someone older than I was. My siblings and my mother don’t even remember that many times. And this is just a little strange, given that people were being hit constantly.

So how was I avoiding it? Because I was in utter and total control of myself. I did not allow myself to mess up. And, what’s more, when I did make a mistake, I was pretty much certain to beat myself up over it (figuratively, not literally). So a scolding was more than enough to make me change my behavior, and I only got hit if I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—i.e., within reach of an authority figure when they blew their top. Or else, when I made mistakes at the wrong time.

Punishments (or rewards, come to consider) were nothing like consistent when I was growing up. Sometimes a little mistake (say, taking too long to find my siblings before dinner) would result in a huge eruption. And other times you could mess up pretty badly, and nothing would happen at all.

Psychologists say that random reinforcement is the most effective kind. For my siblings, this meant that the randomness of the punishments rewarded their misbehavior. For me, it just cemented that if I was perfect, absolutely responsible and reliable, I could avoid having that anger come crashing down on me. But it came from making changes in myself that are exacting a high cost, now that I’m an adult.

I still beat myself up about little mistakes.

I still strive to separate myself from any negative emotions.

I still have that filter in my brain that will not physically allow me to talk about the bad parts of growing up—at least not directly.

Even while I was growing up, I craved a consistent type of discipline. I wrote stories in which the characters got spanked, but in which it came from a loving and protective impulse from their parents. For years, I explained this to myself as a way of trying to reconcile my love of my family with a way that I could understand what they were doing. But that’s a stretch. Those stories make much better sense if I read them as a way of me trying to work out why I wanted spankings, even if I hated the way they happened in my house. In fact, when I was ten or eleven, I remember telling my older sister that it wasn’t the spankings I minded, but the way they happened. She pointed out, “You cry just the same.” And I couldn’t explain the difference to her (or to myself, really).

There is a world of difference between the disciplinary spankings I need and how I was hit as a child. When I was a kid, and someone hit me, it arose from frustration. As I’ve gotten older, I have managed at least to comprehend the unhappiness, despair, frustration, and anger that would make people need to hit something. I don’t quite get how they were able to hit small children, but I do understand the desire to hit. Hitting came from a loss of control. It was unpredictable, and it wasn’t safe. The person being hit might have been a catalyst, but it wasn’t really about us.

The thing is, either because of how I’m internally wired, or because of how I was raised, punishment works better for me than rewards. It’s probably a part of why I was hit so much less often than my siblings—because I would do anything to avoid punishment. (Well, not anything, because the only time I ever successfully lied my way out of a punishment was when I was nearly given a speeding ticket when I was 25.) You know how they say that kids prefer negative attention to no attention at all? Not true for everyone. I far preferred being ignored to punishment.

Rewards were nice, but they came at a cost. Or else they seem somehow insincere—I got a lot of positive reinforcement at school, but it really didn’t overwrite the messages I received at home. The only reason my teachers liked me, I reasoned, was that they didn’t know what I was like inside. Because if my family didn’t love me, then how on earth could anyone else care for real? What’s more, the only reason my teachers liked me was that I was so practiced at being good that I rarely slipped up in the simple environment of school. Things were so predictable at school that my success at reading my teacher’s minds was no challenge at all. I failed more often than I could bear to at home, where it counted.

I’ve been working my way through all of these issues ever since I left home. I’ve chipped away at it, but so much of me is still inclined to strive to be in total control of myself (oh, yeah, and everyone else around me). And there are times when it makes me a real bitch.

It’s tiring to always be in control. It makes me feel resentful that other people don’t take up the slack. But I can’t tell them that I need this, and I have the devil of a time accepting when help is offered. Help is a dangerous a thing.

It’s so hard to change my way of interacting with the world. More importantly in this situation, it’s nigh impossible to change my way of interacting as it affects my wife. It’s incredibly frightening to just tell her what I need, to speak honestly about how I feel.

Yet, I have started to learn that I can actually avoid a long bout of depression if I actually face the issues that are giving me feelings that I don’t want to have. I don’t want to need someone else (one wonders why I got married—well, I do have some good sense, buried somewhere in my brain!). I don’t want to acknowledge that I’m imperfect, that I make mistakes, that I need attention and nurturing. And for even more reasons than I can express, I really don’t want to acknowledge how much I need for someone safe to take some control in my life.

So now we’re grappling with what it means for her to take up some of the control in our relationship.

My wife commented yesterday about how much she loves being the passenger. She meant it to be a thank-you to me, for being there, and being in charge of that particular part of decision making in our lives. I was shocked at the resentment that burst inside me. It’s not that I don’t want to be the literal driver, because I do like doing the driving. But often, it feels like I’m always the “driver” in our relationship.

I crave someone else to take charge somewhere.

I’ve been working on understanding that my wife is that separate, real-life individual, with feelings and issues of her own. So often, not talking about things, my brain will build up this sense that it would be easy for her to just give me the spanking, easy for her to just take more charge in our lives. It’s especially hard, because in so many ways, she is very like the fantasy I had built up about my ideal partner. And then she turns out to be this human being who has needs of her own, who can’t read my mind. Our relationship turns out not to be this simple thing, where we always want exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

I was reading Pink Bottomed Girls, and Pink and Brat each made insightful posts this weekend on this very topic. What Brat wrote resonated with me because it’s so much what I’m feeling right now. Pink’s post really helped me to empathize with my wife. Pink said that there are times when

… the last thing on my mind is disciplining someone else. I can’t even discipline myself. I am feeling the need for externally compelled discipline and self -discipline, for order, for giving up control, for someone to take me over their lap and show me how much I am loved even though I haven’t done the dishes or put away the laundry, either. I do think that part of the problem with our situation is that we don’t have clearly defined roles (gender or otherwise) in our relationship; we share every responsibility with no delineations. How can I punish her for something that I could have/should have done? I procrastinate, I’m messy, I’m lazy too. How can I punish her for faults I share? And who will discipline me in return?

My wife may not want or need to be spanked, but, like Pink, she does want someone to help her get organized, to stop procrastinating, to become more consistent in doing the things that she needs to get done. She needs the knowledge that I love her unconditionally. Much of the time, I provide that for her (or I hope that I do). But when we both need it, it’s difficult for either of us to have our needs met.

In our house, we do have suprisingly well-defined roles much of the time. From the beginning, we recognized that we each were strong where the other was… less so. And most of the things that need to get done can be divided along the lines of our strengths. I’m the one who is supposed to be type-A, responsible, reliable, dependable. I’m the one who is supposed to take charge in so many of these details.

Much of the time, this is easy and natural for me. I have taken charge most of my life—I took charge of my younger siblings when I was growing up; I took charge of my own life so that I could go to college; and I have continued to take charge ever since then. Sure, there’s the side-effect that I can be very controlling. Yes, sometimes it means that I sulk when things don’t go exactly my way. It also means that I roll right over less, um, pushy personalities. But most of the time, things do get taken care of.

In some ways, I worry that my wife resents me when I need her to take control. I feel guilty, because I know that it isn’t easy for her to take charge, to tell me what to do. And it’s even harder, because I find myself resisting, even when I know that it’s exactly what I need. Something inside me struggles against easing her way. I do this with so many of the things that I need—comfort as much as spankings, encouragement as much as criticism. It’s as though I want her to prove that she cares enough to fight her way through the barbs and challenges I throw up against her. If this is hard with things that come naturally to her, how much harder must it be with something like spankings?

Tomorrow is Labor Day, one of my traditional “New Year’s Days.” It’s time for a fresh start, time for a clean slate. So I will make two resolutions. First, I will strive to be a little less of a “Being In Total Control of Herself.” And second, of course, I will strive to procrastinate less and to be in control of the things that depend on my control. We’ll see how it works out.