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| PhoenixAmber |
on Sat 31 Dec 11, 12:11 PM to PhoenixAmber's blog.
A friend mentioned to me that I should look sometime at power and control, words and traits that I mention often, and to look at them quite aside from anything else. I have been throwing that idea around in my head and it is a much more difficult thing to do than you would imagine. I also came to the conclusion that these cannot be mentioned or discussed without looking at two other words, trust and fear. I swear this blog could end up being in part one and part two but I'll try to be concise although it will be long,
This is personal, this isn't the way it is for all, just the way I experience it. My way, my understanding, my feelings, it is so tied up with who I am that it's impossible to separate the two. It is also complicated, like trying to explain snow to someone who lives in Africa; I can express in words so much of what I feel and understand the rest is just there, I know it but explaining it is a tough job. Hopefully it will become easier as I write.
I came back to this blog today because I realised my own reaction to not being in control. That line I walk between totally adoring the feeling, and utter frustration at my helplessness.
So lets start with control and power; look at these (choice selections of definition)
Dictionary.com: Control; to exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command. To hold in check; curb: to control one's emotions.
Lets look at wiki; Power is a measurement of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities.
I'm a control freak, totally and utterly and I cling to it for dear life. The level of safety that is required for me to give up my personal control and hand it to someone else is actually ridiculous. I am learning, and have done it, without a battle, but rarely, and out of an absolute desire to experience the thing that I gave it up for. When I look closely there is a certain ritual in my S&M, because we play with rope there is always physical restraint, and then begins the battle, I will lose my control, I will have it taken and there will always be a fight, even if that fight is me knowing that I cannot stop or change anything that will happen and mentally resisting (all consensually so no PC police please) that fight takes place, in my head and often I will fight against the rope, I'll test it, I will move and that is part of how we play – but it's a ritual that is part of how I accept loss of control. I don't want to fight, it is a natural reaction, it comes before I think about it. I can get out of the rope, but I don't, perhaps later it will become clear that it's a security thing.
The other side of that is that I can play without handing over that control; I can be restrained and having things 'done to me' but my emotions, my reactions are my own, I share them freely, but they are controlled by me; in that space I am a powerful masochist, playing with a powerful sadist, or a Dominant, with a flowing power exchange without a transfer of control. I can happily play without handing my control over and I don't believe that it's less fulfilling in a pure S&M scene to either party.
I do wish though, when it's appropriate, that I was one of those people who could just give up control to another, freely, easily, willingly but I can't; I have that inner battle, I have the fear, that I'll let go, and lose control, fall to pieces and that I won't be capable of picking them up, afterwards, in a state. I worry that trusting and handing over that control, the person I gave it to won't be strong enough to catch me if I fall. Worse still, at that point I am utterly defenceless, open, suggestible, and completely vulnerable – I know that in that space I am theirs, and my very being is open to and reliant upon them.
With me though, it's deeper than that. I believe that we all have a core being, our view of ourselves; your soul for want of a better word, which is truly and purely 'you' and it cannot be taken, that knowledge got me through a tough childhood, because you can be made to kneel, and to beg and to cry, you can be made to be subservient, but submission; you have to give submission. It cannot be taken by force. When you give that, you place your heart in someone's hands and say you have to power to break me, to crush me and to destroy, chose wisely. I survived my childhood knowing that I had something, I had a power that couldn't be taken, it was mine and it was untouchable, it was my inner calm, my knowledge of a better future and of being more than I was then, my fault as an adult is how much my pride is tied to that.
If power is measured by your ability to control then how does the submissive have a concept of power beyond the transfer of that control?
Lets go back, it seems like I'm repeating but I'm simply shifting gears;
I struggle to describe the desire to be controlled, its so complicated, power is a measure of the ability to control an environment or a person – yourself or others. So we all have power, over ourselves, over our effect on others, we all own ourselves to some degree. Giving that power, handing over control to another is a choice, to let someone else 'own' you for a while.
Let me try to paint a picture. Of my experience, of how my submission feels to me; it is like being held so tightly that you know that nothing can hurt you, like a child there is no need to protect yourself because you instinctively know that you are safe, and if you falter, those arms are there to remind you, and reassure you. Now hold that feeling and imagine a world within it where you can reach for a goal and miss, fall and fail but you are never wrong. In this place instead of starting from nothing you start from 'perfect' you are there because somebody sees inside of you something that is desirable, something that is you and even if you don't see it, that other person does. There is no fear of failing or screwing up because the biggest part of your task is to be totally and completely yourself. Within that space which you have been taken to because you are strong, strong enough to choose, you are everything that they want, and they are everything that you need.
Idealistic? Not with the people I play with; OK so if you don't do what is being asked of you then you are screwing up; but go back to the start – you chose this, its what you want, and with me my desire and goal is to please, to make that person happy and give them what they need, that makes me happy. The only thing that can stop me from following direction and gong where I'm led is fear. Fear of pain, fear of not being strong enough, of failure, because believe me that warm arms held thing seems distant when you are staring into a sadists eyes, who is feeding on your pain. Fear is the nemesis of submission.
So fear and trust;
I am a perpetual underachiever in my head, I often don't feel good enough, I always have a slither of doubt that I will not make the bar that has been put up in front of me, I am my own worst critic and I'm tough, I worry that people will bore of me. Does that sound neurotic? It's not. In the 'real' world outside of my head, I am a high flyer, I get what I want, I work my arse off for it, I focus, I commit because I am willing to prove myself worthy of it. I will give everything to something if it is what I want and I usually become very good at things in the process.
People call me fearless, in fact the opposite is true, I'm afraid of everything, as the above statements show, but I know I'm going to be afraid and I'm unwilling to let life pass me by, I would rather be afraid and doing than not even start, so I push through it, I enjoy it and that is why I'm an adrenalin junkie because I live in a constantly heightened state. – it stops when I space and it stops when I am a child; in those two spaces I have no fear.
The key to power, and we have worked out that power is all about control, is conquering the fear. The only way that I have found effective of doing that is to reach out and trust. To believe that however hungry the monster in the others eyes is, he will not devoir me completely; and so I trust, in their power, in their control; that somewhere the dance close to the lines of sanity will never cross it; that when I hit my high and will give you my very core, and allow you to do anything to me; you have the power, the control to stop yourself, to put me first when I can't.
I guess the final part of that is that I'm an adult; I've faced my fears, I've faced my father, and I've faced that little girl; the helpless, terrified, trapped girl who tries to be perfect. She was perfect, in a broken childhood. I live in the better future that I believed I could have and now, that core that I valued so much, has value to others.
On a much lighter note; I do a lot of things in my life 'because I can' and this is one of those things. I can be strong and powerful and control myself and my life, and eventually I'll figure out how to be strong and powerful giving control to someone else, completely, absolutely, beyond the fear and without it being prompted by pain and masochism. That can join in later!!!
added as an afterthought; I used to say that I couldn't submit to someone who I thought wasn't stronger than me, or equal to me in personal strength; I think people thought I was arrogant, somehow questioning if a Dominant was worthy, I smile at that now because the irony is that Dominants do that all of the time, judge whether your worthy, if you have anything that interests them. Its a far more equal relationship than many care to accept, equal and opposite, and honestly I don't think I'd want the responsibility of being the reciever of true submission. Thats a lot to take and protect.
