The cauterized heart.

I was nonplussed to find myself trailing along…again…trying to keep up with The  DominantGuy which is a challenge on a slow day and OMFG! WTF!! SMH… on a busy day. And I turned around and he’d vanished, again. And I’m standing there, feeling at loose ends. Waiting. Again.

 

Much of being in service is of course, waiting. For orders. For answers. For time. To be seen. To be praised. To be corrected. For calm. And I am much better about being patient than I was when I was first in service. But this time things are very, very different. Expectations are clearer, communication is better, I’m more present, and less fearful.

 

Except when I get the scent of abandonment. Then it becomes seriously problematic. I have what feels like very mild low-level panic attacks when gears shift faster than I am able to parse. If I am unable to keep up with him, and he goes about his business, I get fish out of water gasping floppy panicky and that is NOT ME! I am strong, I am invincible…I am…I am a mess.

And a bit of a mess I was as I turned around and couldn’t find him for a few minutes, then finally did and had no idea if he wanted me to wait until he was done with his business, or go away, or if we would have time together, or…or…or…

 

My wonk didn’t go unnoticed as I stood chatting with Greg, who kinda laughed at me as I mumbled something or other about having a bit of difficulty…that it was wobbly for me to feel like he was off to the races and I didn’t know what to do with myself…

 

“Ah, relax. He’s not going anywhere,” he said “and he’ll let you know when he needs you. Isn’t that what slaves are supposed to do? Wait until they’re needed?”

 

The comment was jovially framed; one of those “Lighten up! I’m-mostly-kidding. Mostly.” sort of things. However it twisted in my gut because I hate being shoved up hard against my own blind spots, against my own sore places, having a halogen lamp turned on my own narrowed eyes.

 

There have been a few instances where, due to varying circumstances, my interactions with The Dominant Guy have been riven with my panicky response to him shifting gears away from our connection in a way that feels very much to me like an abandonment. Regardless of how much I know it has nothing to do with me, regardless of whether or not I truly am focused on my service to him and his needs first, the kid inside gets panicky and threatens to go China Syndrome because someone has turned the lights out. How else can I explain it? The focus I give him is that huge for me. When it isn’t returned it can feel as though I’m plunged into darkness and I am gasping a bit, swimming back up to a surface and washing back ashore on the isolated isle that is me.

 

As I stood, watching him move into another interaction / conversation / engagement for the umpteenth time as some soundless panicked shout echoed in my chest (Oh Ganesha he is gone again gone…well, here, yes, sure but gone gone and that is how many fewer seconds you have with him and O he doesn’t even know how it pulls you apart to be near him and yet not be able to REALLY near him and and and…) and Greg teased me into thinking, again, about what it means to be in service and I remembered, with some resentment, that I DO believe in putting my needs behind those of the person I serve.

 

And then I sighed, because that isn’t always accomplished with grace and a smile. Sometimes, I am afraid. And that fear brings up so many complexities…and takes me right out of the present.

 

Later on I remembered that I had a choice I could make.

 

I could spend the next day or so in sadness about what I was not getting or I could focus on what I was getting. I remembered the choking panic I’d felt when I was bound in the former. So I decided to try the latter.  I took the opportunity to focus myself on him, entirely, pushing away all of the other people around. Letting myself scent his energy, feel how entirely safe I feel with him, think about how fortunate I am to have someone who sees me, and still thinks I’m pretty damn cool.

 

This more positive energy carried me through most of the rest of the next day, until I found myself staring balefully at a Tomtom GPS device as it counted us down to our destination and our goodbyes. I can’t explain to you the ache that was hammering my entire body, and it was shocking to me that I managed to make it through that last hour without totally breaking down. But I did, somehow. And I made it through goodbye (for now, of course yeah, but still) to Mrs. The Dominant Guy and then hiccuped my way to where I had to say goodbye to him and I felt the last edge of the mask of composure dissolve…a sugar-cube in the boiling cup of my heart. He let me cry, for a bit, and I tried to hold off the hysterical edge but it wasn’t working. I truly felt like I was going to rupture something if I didn’t scream my dismay and disappointment and dread at the soul’s nightfall that was the inevitable result of being away so long, yet again…

 

He held me, as I sobbed. Patted my hair, his hand on my face, my tears on his fingers, that smile that radiated from his eyes, lingering briefly on his mouth, his energy pushing through my blazing haze of panic. And he held me again, an oddly gentle and affectionate shake pulling my focus to him and he began speaking. And I listened, and I thought about him. First. I listened to his reminders, his admonitions, fuck, to just the rhythms and tones his voice, and the ache ebbed. A little. Not much, but enough for me to breathe. To say goodbye for now, and to carry myself away.

 

And the next morning I woke to find that I was…fine. I felt around my head for that awful ache I had KNOWN would tear me apart and it just…wasn’t there. I was shocked. I sat again with the facts: with the brevity of our time together, with the occasionally brutal emotional road-bumps that had jarred me, with the usual pain of loneliness, and it just…it wasn’t…I felt fine.

 

This freaked me out. Substantially. Its like going to sleep missing a leg and waking up with all limbs intact. I poked and prodded and shoved my emotional self around and…nothing. I couldn’t even feel sad, really. I felt wistful, but calm. And at peace. The emotional hæmorrhaging had just. Ceased. Seamlessly singed to silence.

 

I’m not sure how this emotional surgery happened. I’m not even certain that anything happened. But if it DID happen, if there exists a bond, a power to command so absolute that his very energetic “push” can erase a terrible ache and pull me back from the brink of a formidable drop and crash?

 

Well.

 

I’d ask him but I doubt I’d get a direct answer.

Bubbles, of course, wants to know why he is so motherfucking stingy with the healing energy if he has that much badass mojo.

 

“Why not just fix that shit? Why would he let you be so sad if he could do some mojojojo and just pull you out of it? Either he can’t and it is bullshit, or he’s just mean and emotionally sadistic and he won’t help you…”

 

“No. remember, back a while back when you actually asked him this? Asked him why he didn’t just order you to be happy?”

 

because as crazy as it sounds? That would actually work…

 

“…And he laughed. Because pain is part of the process and the process is the point.”

 

Yeah.

 

So here I sit, poking at the spots I KNOW should hurt and not flinching away.

 

I am missing the dynamic we have when I’m with him, but relishing the time we did have. Will have. Wondering about how it is that, when I AM focused, turns out? Greg was right. The Dominant Guy is not going anywhere. He is here, even when the idiot physics of time and distance interfere a bit with our connection. And I am his, and at his feet, even when I can only find that space in my slowly healing heart.