So what happens after the fat lady sings?
I’ve been stealing Sharon’s stuff lately (with permission, of course). At one time, she was a constant source of amazing material on slavery, bdsm, the works. Oh, she still is an amazing source, but for awhile she went quiet.
Or maybe, more accurately, I avoided reading. She was dealing with something that none of us ever want to face. Her relationship with her Master had ended.
Reading about break-ups isn’t necessarily uncommon, but when it’s someone who was in deep, it kinda rocks your boat. I didn’t like my boat being rocked. It’s easy to tell yourself “gee, that sucks for her and I feel terrible, but that will never happen to us!” We like to think we’re immune to those tragedies.
He will never leave me, he will not fall in love with someone else, he will not grow tired of this thing we do, and, above all, he will never die. He can’t! … except…
What if?
She details some of the long and painful road she’s been on.
Ex-slavery.
We never talk about that dammit.
We never make people aware of what kind of hell they are gonna face.
We never have safety nets out there for them when they cannot think for themselves and won’t leave the house and are afraid to go out alone and don’t know how to take off the collar in their head.Its going to be one of my ongoing themes this time around.
i haven’t been able to write at ALL for the last year (go ahead, look at the drivel more than a week old posted here and elsewhere— what crap!).
i used to write essays the way most people breathe.i haven’t been able to write this one out because it is still in me, daily. i am walking some long path and there are no fucking maps. One friend suggested that i talk to the gay mens groups– they have more experience with released slaves (serious slaves– there’s nothing we need to do about the velcro collar girl that showed up in scene Monday, got a collar Thursday, and dumped him by the next month. She needs roller skates for that revolving door, not sympathy) and the horrors that we go through.
Yes, i know, my Owner went through them too. But He, like most men, did it alone, compartmentalized the whole affair, and moved forward like a shark in a small tank with blinders on. Men do that shit.
Us? We drown.
We scream, and cry, and commit suicide and homicide and pull away and leave the life and hate ourselves and make fast bad decisions to cover up the intensity of our losses.
We have *no where* to go… and ya know what’s worse? We have no place to learn!
When *i* had to create our uncollaring ceremony, do you know how many things about that i found on line?ONE!!!!! Fifty fucking million pages about the joys of collars and rose ceremonies and burnings and cuttings and all kinds of hot shit. Want to know how to end something? Tough titty.
So that’s on my list as well, to write about the ceremony and what it was and why.
Some might ask, “what the hell are you writing all this for?”
i write for me. i write for the next- the LAST- Owner i will ever have, when He comes here to find out what kinds of tics i have going. i write for the next lost woman who howls for days on end until her vocal chords bleed and she can’t get out of bed and spends nights driving up and down the coast trying not to take a 90 degree turn into the waves and sleeps with the toy bag for 6 months and carries the whip in her purse and feels unable to take off the collar or the other tokens.i write to make everyone else think about what they have, and what the hell they better have in place in case it gets lost— stolen— dies— before they are ready.
Because we all should know more than just the fun parts.
I did not come into this relationship with a safety net. I don’t have a squirreled away bank account, or friends on speed dial, ready to rescue me should I call. I gave him everything that I had, everything that I am, and trusted that he’d do right by me.
He has. He is. Every day. I’m one of the lucky ones.
So far.
I believed then, and I still believe, that if you plan for the end, you’re securing the end. Though I no longer kid myself into thinking that a tragedy cannot strike us, I am still not preparing a safety net to fall back on. And I won’t. I think doing so would demonstrate an extreme lack of faith. I think doing so would be the beginning of the end.
What does it really say?
I trust You… but not enough.
I have faith in You.. but not enough.
I pledge myself to You.. but not completely.
How can that possibly have a good outcome?
And of course, if you don’t have that plan, you are exactly where Sharon is. And that’s a suck-ass place to be, filled with a pain that I cannot even fathom. A place no one wants to hear about or look at.
Or experience.
But it exists.
I don’t know which is the right way to go. I don’t know if Sharon would have done it differently if she had known what the outcome was going to be. Would you have gone so deeply? Trusted so hard? Would you have prepared that safety net?
I guess the simple question is this: Do you have regrets?
We just never know what the right answer is going in to this life of serious slavery. It’s all balanced on so much trust and faith, very little to actually see and touch, nothing to hold on to as proof, no guarantees.
Maybe it has to be. Maybe anything else cheapens it, even knowing that sometimes – it crumbles.
~cunt
Tags: links, M/s rambles
Uncategorized | kaya | 
Friday April 18th, 2008 3:32pm
I just don’t believe that there is a way to reduce the risks that it all might go “poof.” If you do this seriously, with intent, and with integrity, then you have to understand and accept that you have no guarantees and that you could lose. BIG. That is, and ought to be, scary as hell. If you are not prepared, at least intellectually, for the potential that you could be left behind without any power to change it, and without any sense of the direction to go (should that occur), then you have no business making the first step onto the path. Short of that, short of the acceptance of that reality, there is a shred (or maybe more than a shred) of control that is clutched in our hands. This is the paradox: to do THIS, you must trust enough to give it all up. If you do that, you set yourself up for potential disaster. That’s it. We roll the dice. Once. Win or lose, that is the whole game.
swan
A very good friend of mine went through a break up almost 2 years ago. And when she did it rocked me in ways I didn’t like looking at. They had been together for almost 9 years when her Master released her. I believe she is better off now but it still upset me so much. I did take it and turn it into a me moment – where I looked at as what would happen if this was me. As you did with your Owner….I gave everything to Master. I gave my car away shortly after moving here. I don’t have money coming into the house that is just mine. I don’t do anything without him. We don’t have long distance on our landline as we use His cell phone for long distant calls and it is His so with him so I have to ask him to make a call. I really don’t have anyone locally I could call. Add on top of that all the emotional/mental aspects of being a slave and I do get scared when I think about it. So frankly I try not to think about it too much which probably isn’t very realistic of me. I know my friend although deeply enslaved doesn’t regret it and she is now in a really good place in her life….so I can only hope that if it were to happen to me I could bounce back like she did.
Agreeing with everything that has been expressed, it is the crux of the dynamic….complete giving of all and trust. We all take risks everyday. Stepping off the curb is a risk. But if we don’t do it…
My father taught me as I grew up to never have regrets. EVER Of course we all would do things differently if we knew the outcome. Manipulating the situation to our benefit in the end. But that is not real. Always, take all the tools you have, and all the knowledge you posess, and make the best decision you can. Enjoy. If it turns out to be the wrong decision, know you did the best you could with all of the tools you had at the time.
just my pennies worth!!
~m
There are no quarantees in life let alone relationships. It’s horriable to think about, but people die and you find yourself suddenly going it alone. It’s devestating, but you find a way somehow. Marriage is suppose to be forever, but more than half end in divorce. You loved and it was intense and now it’s gone. It sucks and it’s painful, but you go because you have to – the heart is still beating. I don’t have an exit plan. When I said forever, I meant it and he did too,however,if Daddy changed his mind and left me or changed his mind about our relationship – I would be devestated, hurt and pissed off. I would be up shit creek without a paddle too because I don’t have a job and depend completely on him, but I would find a way to survive. As for loving and trusting someone again – of course it’s possible. You shouldn’t let one relationhip that’s ended hold you back from getting what you need and want – when the time is right and you are ready.
Kaya,
I don’t want to belittle the devestation that Sharon’s going through, not the worry and confusion that you are experiencing. But, what Sharon’s going through is nearly what EVERY woman who married risked when they married 75 or more years ago. It used to be that when a woman married, she became her husband’s wife, not herself. If he died, she had nothing but what was left to her. If he divorced her, she had only what the courts would grant her. The key difference is that there WAS and IS a mechanism for supporting the spouse that was left behind, both societaly and on the smaller scale. Divorce laws recognised that then, a woman was totally dependant on her husband for support and would be helpless when that support was suddenly pulled away (I’m talking about what society believed, not nessassarily what was true).
Willing slaves, on the other hand, especially those not married to their Masters, have no such protections. The law doesn’t recogonise the existance or legality of the relationship that has fallen apart. So what is a slave to do? Yes, you give a level of trust to your Masters/Mistresses that is down right terrifying when I truly look at it. Letting someone tie you up and whip you is peanuts compared to letting them have your life, your existance and your livelihood.
This is why I strongly disagree with the idea that planning for the end creates the ending, at least not if you keep in mind that the end can come unwillingly upon both of you. It doesn’t take abandonment/betrayal to end a Master/Slave relationship, it merely takes death. Pardon my morbidity, but every one of you slaves out there, your owner could be hit by a car and die tomorrow. That’s reality, folks. It’s not a sign of not trusting to want to be prepared in some way to deal with that possibility.
I can’t offer any advice on just what you do to prepare. I suspect that is very dependant on the dynamics of your individual relationships. On the emotional level, I’m not sure preparation is possible, other than to have people “out there” who can offer comfort and support in that horrible time, be it the death of a person or a relationship. Wanting those other contacts does NOT mean that you are any less a slave, it means you’re a human being.
On the more physical needs level, I can only speak from what I would do, if I were involved in a M/s relationship. I could never imagine being a submissive, so I’ll speak from a hypothetical Master’s point of view. Personally, and I know not all dominants are this way, I could not own someone I wasn’t passionately in love with. Given that, married or no, I would make sure there was a life insurance policy that she would benefit from in the event of my untimely death. I would want her to talk about after such a horrible thing. Would she want to be on her own again? Would she want to be “left” to another Master, even if such a thing was even possible (I have my doubts). Mind you, I only have fiction to draw from, so some of the things I might think of will be crass, to say the least, because, Sharon’s right, there’s not much out there to draw from.
I don’t know, I feel like I’m rambling here. There might not be any solution to this problem, if you can even call it a problem. But nothing will change without talking about it. This is something that slaves and their Masters need to talk about, understanding that talking about the elephant in the room is NOT giving it permission to be in the room. Slaves need to talk about it among themselves, to share insights and experiences, just as Sharon is doing. Masters need to talk about it themselves as well. maybe, ten years down the road, the “community will come to some kind of consensus on just how to deal with these kind of things (yeah, I know, the community can’t even agree on what a slave is, but one can hope). And maybe, someday, society will come to see the willing Master/slave relationship as legitimate so that there can be some kind of societal support for ex-slaves. Like I said, we can hope.
Dave
I agree. Planning for a possibility, however remote, is not showing a lack of faith, it’s showing prudence. For instance: you buy health insurance on the off chance that you’ll come down with some horrible disease that costs you a bomb. And aren’t I glad I did that? It saved my life and my finances when I got cancer a few years ago.
Then you also buy insurance of other types.. life, to protect your family if you die, house, to protect you if you’re burgled, or it burns down. Is that showing a lack of faith in life? No. It just says, sometimes shit happens, you don’t expect it to, but shit happens.
One slave on my flist had her master die recently. That happens. Actually it has to happen eventually, one or other of you will die at some point. And if (statistically, it usually is) it’s him first, then what?
I believe a good Master ensures that his slave is prepared to continue without him, that she has the resources and skills and confidence to do this. It’s irresponsible to do otherwise.
There is no support mechanism in society for her when he goes, no rituals, no payments, no procedures, in fact.. as you have done yourself.. the usual response to such a thing is to avoid even knowing or contacting the person, because it’s too threatening and scary. The bereaved/separated person is isolated and with little support.
So my advice would be: build a support road for yourself, even though you know you won’t need it.
And ask your Master how he’s planned for you to survive effectively should something happen to him.
i don’t know about planning for the end hastening the end. I do know one thing though. Unpleasant as it may be to consider, there’s also the spectre of death to consider – something that was brought home to us recently with the death of a dominant that we both knew, leaving his slave all alone. I don’t even know where i would start if this happened to me – in their case it was a sudden death, and he was fit and .. well. he was our age. completely unexpected. and i’m not even sure you *can* plan for it, except .. maybe .. having instructions to follow in the event of.. from beyond the grave, as it were, may help her to put one foot in front of the other.. until such time as she’s capable of doing it for herself.
*goes to ask BP about this…* thanks, kaya. *huggggggggss*
keth
xx
One of the things that Sharon says has to do with the lack of a support network for slaves (etc.) whose relationships have ended. I believe this is more of a problem than the ‘lack of planning’ is, and it’s not even entirely our fault (as practitioners or whatever). Our relationships are often marginalized and what we choose to do with them certainly is, so our ‘community’ is limited and lots of people aren’t part of it. This means there’s often no community to which an ‘ex-slave’ could turn to for help and support while she recovers from the devastation and learns to live on her own – or with non-masters – again.
Being marginalized is a pretty poor excuse for not having some sort of community offering information and resources to help with people in this situation, though. The internet alone should help us make those connections. But to do so is a risk. Look at all of us posting semi-anonymously here!
On the upside, I was at an event once and overheard some of the long-time attendees talking about a slave whose master had passed away, and who was on rotation to cook for her this week, and how this person knew a counselor and this person’s a paralegal and they can all help, and so forth. The way they talked about it made it sound like they just intended to chip in with time and care to see to it that this woman was taken care of. I didn’t know these people well but I admired them instantly – and envied the group that had been able to create such a strong community in their area.
kaya….. i am sitting here in the very early morning sipping my coffee…… and reading your blog……and next i will read sharon’s….
i have been there you know… left behind in a mess, crying.. not able to function.. final bow .. world stopping stuff……..
and i had a dear dear friend (a switch – if it matters) who came and literally dragged me out of the house and installed me in her spare room.. and let me heal….AND it took a lawyer to save my ass.. cause i had nothing.. nada .. and i was bloody scared…….
Today i love my Sir with all my heart… with all my being.. but i will NEVER allow anyone to ever do that to me again…… i count too.. as a submissive.. as a slave.. as a mother and a teacher.. and no matter how immersed i am in slavery i will NOT ever let go of the bigger picture……….
cause ya know.. it happens… even when we close our eyes and minds and refuse to believe – it happens !
morningstar (owned by Warren)
Hello again Kaya
I am happy to hear things are going well for you… just wanted to pop in and say HI!
It happens, break ups like the one your friend Sharon went through. And they suck. Alost 2 years ago now my Master and I broke up and it’s been a struggle for me since, but I don’t regret a single moment of it. I have 3 beautiful children from our relationship and I have found that I am stronger than I ever thought I would be since we split. I moved on and am getting my life in a good place again. While I can’t say I will ever trust someone again to the level I did him, I still don’t regret a single moment. I learned a lot about myself and who my friends are.
*hugs*
oh give it up already. we all know your blog was one big lie.
Oops, didn’t realize I had posted anonymously. That was me, being catty.
And yes, I was being catty – at that particular moment I was really fed up with journal/live journal bullshit, and that comment just pushed all my bad buttons.
But that doesn’t change the fact people are pretty damn certain the journal was a fake – as sure as can be without an actually confession.
To what degree of fake, who knows. Maybe some of it was truth, or truth based … but the information I read (from a locked post, so forgive me for not citing my reference) was that Annissa herself admitted to someone that what she was posting was mostly fiction.
I do apologize – not so much for being catty, but doing it here, rather than in my own litter box.
thanks Blue. I did always wonder how someone could be whipped and in a cage for days and manage the culinary wizardry in the recipes she would post.
was the Annissa diary a fake?
I always wondered. It did seem real to me but I can be a bit naive
and I have been curious as to whether the relationship with the other woman survived- shy I think she was called
Master’s getting life insurance. I already have it. We don’t believe that because we want to provide for one another if one of us should die that we’re asking for it. We’re all going to die. We just never know when and if he dies while I’m with him, he loves me enough to make “making the rent” a non issue while I mourn the passing of the greatest love of my life.
And yes, I do have a bank account in my name. It’s the inheritance my father left me. Master wouldn’t touch it if I gave it to him. We don’t think of it as starting over money. Life is unpredictable and dependent women are vulnerable. No matter how he comes to leave, I can’t think that a man who loves a woman or loved her at any time wants her to come to a bad end.
I just don’t agree that preparing for something makes it more likely to happen. There are plenty of people who have no fire insurance who’s houses still burn down. The wiring in their house would have been just as faulty even if they’d had fire insurance. The difference I guess is that they wouldn’t be in a homeless shelter or living out of their car.
Kitten
Loosing a Master is the most painful experence one can face…i know from experence. IT hurts like hell. Nothing can help you prepare for it even if you do have an ‘exit’ plan even if your Master set up that exit plan…it does NOT help.
There are days for me where its still hard…and it still hurts…and i still get into screaming matches with the powers that be.
Then i made things worse by making lots of stupid decisions…which made me angry at Him for affecting my ability to make thoose decsions…you dont hand over decion making to someone else and then be suddenly able to make them for yourself agian…
Its a nightmare…and a scarey possiblity that all slaves have to live with…and im not sure there is anything that can make it less scarey…there is no one to even talk to…i mean you can talk but they wont understand…they cant unless they are feelow lifestlye people who have gone through it…and even then its only a general understanding. i wish this woman the best…i hope her post has some kind of impact.
Thanks for posting this… I wish I knew why it got me thinking so much… perhaps I’ll discover it with enough pondering.
It always appeared to me that D/s relationships are definitely more intense than others. I had one and while it wasn’t the longest, it sure was the more intense. I guess what I’m trying to say if that I can relate to the feeling of lost one might experience in that case, when it’s over.
I wasn’t in as deep as many of the women who commented are. I wasn’t in as deep as you are. But that doesn’t mean I was in the shallow water either. And it fucked me up – I’ll never be the same in some ways from it, I’ll never forget the first year having to realize that I could, and HAD to make decisions that were beneficial to me and not to him. It was only three years, but god knows that those years shaped me to an extent that I’ll never completely understand.
Honestly I don’t regret it, but I don’t believe that I will ever do it again, because it was that ugly for me. I don’t think many people, if any, do choose to do an intense power exchange relationship again to the same level of depth(because honestly, I’ve never read, never known any account of an intense BDSM M/s, tpe, 24/7 whatever you wanna call it, actually lasting if it was the submissives second intense relationship like that. The only ones that seem to work out, just from what I’ve seen, are the ones where it’s the submissive’s first mentally intense kinky relationship- I know there are probably exceptions out there, but it seems insanely rare).
I will never give up my life, my thought processes, again. I don’t want to, if only because I’ve found out that there are a lot of things to love about my independence. Six months ago, I think I thought that I could go back to the slavery mindset, but I can’t. I can’t trust that someone else can take care of me at the same level that I can take care of myself in certain ways, even if I believed that it was possible before.
Now, the issue is trying to find out if I can still be in a relationship (and not a fuck-and-run deal) without giving too much of myself to someone, if I can submit without sacrificing everything that I have.
Also, I think it’s clear, but there’s a big difference between fiscal responsibility and emotional. I think everyone should have life insurance and health insurance and “stuff” insurance. If they don’t, that’s their own stupidity – and I’m sure it adds to the horror of a relationship ending but that would be, and could be bad with just about any relationship. The way that D/s weaves into your mindset is what kills you when the relationship ends – although not perfectly controlled, I always described it as knowing that there was this huge robot control panel on my back, and that he ran it. He rewired it, changed all of the buttons to suit his needs, and when he left, I had no instruction manual on how to run myself. You eventually relearn, but it’s an ugly process.
i know it’s sharon’s words and not yours. but i once read that statistically women after a break-up attempt suicide whereas men commit suicide. this is just for the “moved forward like a shark in a small tank with blinders on. Men do that shit”.