Emotional Ownership

I was lucky enough to spend part of Christmas Eve soaking in a hot bath, reading. Book of choice, “The Ethical Slut”. It’s been an amazing, eye opening read. I went back tonight to read a section that’s been weighing on my mind. I had given it a lot of thought, and wanted the words to run fresh through my head so I could lay back and think about them. Christmas Eve brought me a lot of clarity.

I have always disliked it intensely when someone has apologized for “hurting me”. I’m speaking emotional hurt here, not physical. I could never pinpoint why, but it was always one of those phrases that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and something I brushed off quickly with a “Don’t worry about it.” response. I always previously thought that this was because I hate appearing vulnerable. I’m rethinking that now. Now I think I hate feeling powerless.
I own my emotions. More than just owning them, I am fiercely protective of my right to own them. The minute someone tries to take my ownership…that annoys me.

“I’m sorry I hurt you.”

That phrase takes all the power and all the ownership and gives it to the person saying it. It removes the power and ownership from the person that feels hurt. Yes, sometimes it might feel easier to blame someone else when you feel hurt. The reality is though, if you blame them, they own it. If they own it, they are the only ones who can fix it. I prefer to have the ownership in my own hands, and find a way to fix it. Own my experience, own my emotions and find out a way to fix them. That’s where power is for me.

Recently I was discussing an experience where I felt hurt with some friends. They were continually bringing the other person in the experience into the discussion. It pissed me off to no end. I kept saying, “This is not about THEM…this is about ME.” I explained it to them that it was no longer about anyone but me, and my processing of the experience, and how I now had the right to make changes so that I could repeat, or not repeat that experience. I think a better explanation now though is that I get to own my emotions, because that is what gives me the most power. (We all know how I like power right?)

Understanding my ownership of my emotions is a great thing. It helps me realize why phrases like “I’m sorry I hurt you” annoy me. It also means I can realize that sometimes I take my emotional ownership too far. I own them to the point of thinking that they are ONLY mine. Emotional ownership is fine, healthy even, but, I’ll admit I take it to the extreme. Everything is mine, mine, mine. Mine to own, to deal with, to reconcile, and to solve…usually alone. I’m also perfectly willing to try and own other people’s emotions, and frequently have been/should be told to mind my own business. I need to learn that owning my own emotions doesn’t mean I have to deal with them alone, and that emotional ownership needs to stop with my emotions…that other people get to mind their emotions and own them as well.
Harder than it sounds.

Our Love Grows....at a Munch...

We've been married for over 6 years, but I'm always amazed at the times and places when I get that awesome feeling in the pit of my stomach that reminds me how much I love the Hubby. Last night it was the crazy and a bit over whelming-ness that is this particular munch. It's huge. I can be a bit shy, so can Hubby. But even at this huge, intimidating munch, we did our own thing. I friggen LOVE that, and I love even more that it was his idea that we work this way. We each find people to hang out with and people who interest us to talk to and we're okay not hanging on each other every second at an event we go to together. So there we were, at opposite ends of this munch, and I get an e-mail about doing needles next week (YAY!) and I want to clear that he'll be home with the kids. But he's WAY over there. So I text him. Then secretly watch him till he gets it. I watch him read the simple, "May I do needles next Tuesday?" and watch him smile and share it with the people he's sitting with. I move back to my conversation about a group that does rope work like Flash Mob's work in NY...interesting stuff and I want to hear more. My phone beeps and I quickly check his response. "Sure!" I look up at him and catch his eye. Smile and do a goofy wave...he smiles and goofy waves back. That's love baby.

Later we've all settled at The Cheesecake Factory. We've found seats with separate people and are having separate conversation, but I'm trying to e-mail and my phone is totally winning the war for dominance. I hustle over to him and ask for tech support. The gentleman sitting next to him introduces himself to me and says this is his first time at this munch. I say it's my second, and he's surprised, because I seem so at ease with these people...I explain the man I just threw my phone at in frustration is actually my husband. We all chat for a few minutes and with my phone now under my semi-control, I head back to my chair. A little while later I get my own message from the Hubby. "Okay if I go rope on Monday?"

I turn toward him, even though his back at the other table is all I can see. It makes me smile anyway. I love that man. I love this life. I love doing this life, with that man...

Of course he can go rope on Monday.

Sometimes, things are hard. Sometimes things are hard, but I'm good at hiding it...

Today someone suggested I do some writing. The words for what was suggested just wouldn’t come, so this is what came out instead.

I have so much work to do on myself that I’m starting to think when I have a really good day, it’s just a day I’ve been completely successful at hiding from myself. The good news is, I’m starting to embrace the emotional chaos. I think we’re taught early and often about the negative aspects of being even remotely complicated in an emotional way. We start young hiding our individual complications and emotions. The very things that make us each our own person, we’re taught to flatten, level and fit in a standard size box so they look like everyone else’s. Some of my shit isn’t box shaped though, so it’s just been crammed in there, all lumpy like and stuffy for years. I’m kind of in a love/hate relationship with watching it spread as I pull it out…like one of those expanding kids toys that you never can quite believe all fit in that little tiny pill before it went in the water. I’m fascinated by dumping buckets of water on my piles of “stuff” and seeing it swell to take up all the space that I thought was “well adjusted” but now realize was mainly just empty. What the hell is well adjusted? Is that like “normal”?

I think I’m at least moderately well aware of how far I have to go. Fairly realistic of the reasons I’m playfully called a Beautiful Train Wreck. I know I over think things, I know I worry too much about others and details I have no power over. I know I lack patience in many areas of my life and that I strive for control over…pretty much everything. I know I’m my own worst critic. I hope I actually am sane and not just one of the people who thinks they are sane. I’ll temper this paragraph with the statement that I also know I have many positive points. It wouldn’t be like me to list them here, but I AM aware of them. This isn’t an essay on self depreciation.

It seems I know plenty about myself, and could have a field day working on just that, rather than pulling up more, but somehow it seems like I’m looking for something I lost. Like something I packed away for a move at some point and want to find again. So at first I sort of started to half heartedly peek in the tops of some boxes and see what was there, but then I realized all the stuff I forgot about.

Not everything I’m finding is good. Searching through, looking for that point when I went from the young kiddo my parents describe who ran around naked constantly to the body conscious adult I’ve become. Did that happen over time? Was there an event? Can I blame that one on “society”? When did I become insecure? Did I always compensate for insecurity by appearing Type A? Nope, not in this box, let’s check another.

Sometimes I want to grab a box and stuff crap back in there to be dealt with at some later and unspecified time, but it seems like right now I’m more likely to make piles. You know when you organize a big mess by trying to make it a neater mess? Sort of like that. I’m not actually solving things yet, but I’m sort of moving about, making things look more presentable so I’ll be less intimated about going back and looking through the pile at some point. (Yeah, THAT needs to be looked at…later) But some of it doesn’t stack up neatly. It’s like that expanding kids toy…you never can be too sure what to do with it when you are done. It’s here, all big and sort of squishy, but what exactly do you do with a huge gelatinous dinosaur stuffed inside a bucket of water? What do I do with this…feeling? Keep it? Appreciate it, and then toss it? How much do emotions from years ago that I ignored matter now? Can you genuinely process and move on, or do you accept them as part of your life and somehow store them away in a healthier manner?

There is a certain part of this journey that makes me feel three years old again. It’s no longer enough for me to be so “strong” I can say, this is what I am, deal with it. Now I want to say why. Why am I like this…not just the challenging parts, but the parts I’m proud of too. Understand why. I love understanding. I should have been a scientist who could base everything on fact, thought honestly in some ways that would bore me. More fun is the answer to Why which can be picked over, studied. The answer to Why that can be debated and discussed, even if only within my own head.

I’m asking a lot of why’s lately. I’m talking in a lot circles but finding sometimes, a different way to say the same thing, seems to trigger another box in my mind to open. Some answers are more clear to me than they were even two weeks ago, but the questions are more complicated now than they were last week. Sometimes I find the answer to one Why at the bottom of a box full of questions, all the while I seem sure that answer to everything is in the box I can’t see or reach yet, that’s at the bottom of the pile. I know if I pull it out, just to get to the answer, that won’t work at all…but patience…patience isn’t my strong point, remember. So I try. I try to sit on the floor and sort things into piles, one box at a time. Some of the time I’m laughing, some of it I’m crying, sometimes I sit in complete disbelief that I forgot about THAT. Some of the boxes are full of more questions and some of them seen to have answers to things I can even express yet. What I want, who I am and how I want to get there. The questions and answers are here somewhere, if I can stop talking in circles long enough to get there…

Needles take TWO...

I am now just fully accepting I love needles. I love the process, I love the calm, I love the small unexpected stings when a mean needle comes out. I love the eww factor for many people. I love how it's starting to push me in a totally mental way.

Saturday night I was lucky enough to end up at a party that 'S' was also at. She carved out sometime toward the end of a busy night for her to do some needles on me. I had brought beads filled with glue to cap the ends of the needles that she used for an arm corset, and that came out lovely...a few hiccups in the logistics, but a learning process so that at some point we could do that and I could leave them in and walk around for a party I think. Very cool. Then I laid flat and she started between my shoulders and did a line right down my spine of alternating 20 and 22 gauge needles. Just over 30 of them. She figured out pretty quick she could play that like a needle xylophone and it made me giggle. It made me laugh. It made my entire body shaky and feel like it was vibrating. I was pretty floaty I think.

We were set up in a fairly public spot and my guess is people passed back and forth most of the time she was doing them. I have no memory of many of the details, except one. I floated up briefly and was slightly more lucid...not sure if she had asked me something, or had just played the xylophone or what, but I was slightly with it, and I looked over to a row of 4 chairs set up about 5 feet from us. In each chair was an observer, calmly watching our needle scene...eating. Totally weird-ed me out. I had to flip my head the other way so I couldn't see them.

So she gets as many needles in as she can handle (it's hard on the back, leaning over to put in needles) and asks if I want to lay there and enjoy the needles for a while. I must have indicated in some way that I did...I sort of remember that part. But only vaguely remember her either mentioning she was going to go get the sjambok, or perhaps asking if she should, and I encouraged it for some reason, which wouldn't surprise me. Either way, she ended up letting me lay there with the needles in while she practiced more with the sjambok. She can be an intense hitter. Slightly more rapid fire than I've experienced before. There was no time between swats for the endorphins to hit, so they would all slam into me at once when she paused. Sometimes she would pause and then lean over and play the needle xylophone, which left me sounding like a lunatic, and her not sure if I was sobbing or laughing. She would pause, the endorphins would hit, then she would play the xylophone and that would make my whole body all shivery. It was like that point while being tickled where you are positive there are three outcomes; you will either die, burst into flames or pee everywhere. Totally overwhelming. Not something I think could ever be recreated. Being beaten with the needles down my spin was really interesting. I was coming from such a floaty place to start with, there was no "gear up" to the pain. No mental preparation at all. I think it left my pain tolerances much lower than normal cause I wasn't really actively processing at all, I was just kind of laying their drooling, sound like an injured hyena.

Good Times.

Talented Tops

I just cannot tell this story enough…it cracks me up.

Last night I found myself bent over a pool table full of Mr. T's beautifully crafted paddles and floggers on the business end of a shiny new sjambok. I was all too happy to put my butt on the line in the name of learning and let 'S' practice her sjambok technique on me. Love those things! Details always escape me after the fact, but at some point I recall Mr. T offering up this mammoth paddle that was lying right in front of me. Having bought a paddle from him earlier, I found myself thinking, “Nothing on this table intimidated me, expect THAT.” That giant, ass covering paddle. He assures me over my protests; it’s not as bad as it looks. The paddle quickly changes hands and begins to thud off my bottom, and he says, “Not too bad right?”, and I reluctantly agree…it’s actually not that bad. Then, slowly it starts to become pretty much as good/bad (you know exactly what I mean there!) as I was thinking it would be. We’re a few minutes into the give and receive of this beautiful paddle and I sort of glance by my left hip, checking positioning of all those moving around me. 'S' is on my left. Now when you think about someone behind you, topping you from your left side, swinging a paddle, the feet should be facing my right side, or maybe potentially toward me…RIGHT? Wrong. They are facing directly left, away from me. That stops me dead in my pain processing tracks and I have to think, why the heck are her feet facing that way? I finally can’t stand not knowing and pop up just far enough to glance back and see her stance before I’m assisted back to my position leaning over the pool table. Answer? This is a BIG paddle, about 3’ long. Being a Top on the small side, she compensated by adjusting how she used it. She was holding the handle with her left hand, and supporting the back of the paddle with the right and then using her whole body as weight behind the paddle so she could almost swing it “threw” my ass and thighs. By rotating her pivot point, it meant she was able to put much more behind the paddle than just swinging it would have. I don’t know if 'S' stopped and thought about that, or just did it…and I’m not sure which would be scarier either.

Friggen smart Tops. That change in position meant it was (I would think) easier for her to handle the paddle, while at the same time decidedly NOT easier on me. Win/win (…or something like that). It was a moment where I had a love/hate/laugh reaction to the fact that when we choose smart people to beat us, they will apparently quickly adapt to a new toy, and we sometimes end up with more (of the paddle) than we bargained for.

(FYI: Both ends of a sjambok can apparently be the business end)