Thank you for saving my life.

“Why?” is a question I ask often. I was a really annoying kid, I’m sure, for this reason. And I have a phalanx of brainhamsters I employ to run these querulous subroutines when I find myself doing shit that I don’t quite understand.

 

Sometimes the answer is less than satisfactory in light of my higher mind’s ideal view of me.

 

I find myself in a situation where I’m tempted to behave in ways that would be satisfying to me, but aren’t necessarily morally shiny. I don’t really care about the shiny morality though. What I care about is the fact it may or may not bug me down the line that I did this thing. So, I refrain, even though I really really wanna.

 

The eventual outcome? I suppose I feel better and that’s a plus.

 

Then I have some things that feel more slippery. Like peer pressure.

I have to acknowledge some stuff that is hard for me to say aloud without me feeling like I’m slinking arrogantly around the swamp of self-aggrandizement. But whatever.  After 16+ in the public BDSM community, some folks know who I am. People listen to what I have to say, and some people even are impacted by my actions. Occasionally, I get these insanely humbling e-mails out of nowhere, or someone I don’t know will come up to me at an event and say some shit like “You don’t know me, but you said something that changed my life.”

 

I think we ALL have these moments…and I think we all impact people in ways we can’t ever fully understand.

 

Anyway.

 

Being a public figure in the Leather / Kink / BDSM world…having that niche-fame…means that I’m in the headlights sometimes. And for better or worse, it has kept me in line on some shit.

 

For example

 

man, this is dumb to say but, whatever.

 

There have been some things I have NOT done because I was afraid of what people would say. Afraid I’d let down my friends, the people who dig what I have to say. There are days peer pressure rules me.

 

And it has kept me alive.

 

This might sound lame, but let me clarify, because this glaring light of the public eye is saving my life and salvaging my dignity.

 

I have some days where I don’t care much about myself. Where I wonder what difference it would make if I just put all this down and walked away, got a desk job, got married, had a “normal” life because I’m just not sure the payoff of struggling to make a life in this way is worth it. Days I wonder if the pain of feeling my feelings is worth sobriety. Days I wonder if I’m doing any goddamned good for myself or anyone else talking about kinky sex, because who cares, really?

 

Then I see that people still go, every week, to Safeword, the 12-step meeting for kinky folks that I started 5 years ago. I read an email from someone who is 6 months sober and glad to hear it is possible to stay that way. Or I meet someone who says me talking about fucked up shit helped them feel less alone. Or a submissive who says she didn’t realize you could be a feminist and a slave, too.

 

And I feel worthy. And it helps. Yes, it would be awesome if I felt worthy all the time on my own but it is humbling to have that external validation.

 

Not long after I realized my relationship with The Dominant Guy was circling the drain and there wasn’t anything more I could do to fix it, I had a really bad week. I wanted to call him and say “You know what? I’m sorry. You’re right. This should be only on your terms, I’m asking too much, I need you, please have me, I don’t care what it takes.” Because the pain of not even having a nominal relationship, of severing that very living bond, was too great. I was paralyzed. I would have done ANYTHING, I thought, to ease that hurt.

 

But then I thought of the people who said “You know, Mollena, your strength, your refusal to compromise, is so brave.” And I though what a shitty hypocrite I’d be to fold in the initial pain of that loneliness and give up a piece of myself like that. How could I ever stand in front of people and talk about what it means to be a strong submissive if I couldn’t even handle my own shit?

 

So that first few weeks where I cried myself to sleep every. Fucking, Night? I thought about you. The people who message me, the folks I barely know, the people who send nice notes. And until I had my feet back under me? You helped me to stay strong.

 

I’m a terribly shy person saddled with an extroverted need for attention. I’m a human with low self-esteem who has to act like I believe in myself to do the work I am here to do. I’m an addict who has the hubris to stand down my demon every day, and walk alongside her, and have compassion for the part of me that needs SO BADLY it would destroy us in total to have that need met, even for a moment.

 

I’m… I guess I’m going somewhere with all of this. And I guess it is just to say thank you. For keeping me alive today. For now, and for loving me when I can’t love myself and for being here even when you aren’t aware how present you are in my heart.

 

Love

 

Mollena