SML

It seems that if you reblog a post, and post nsfw content in the reblog caption, tumblr doesn’t remove it.

What Submission is Not (to me)

I’ll get to that in a minute. First, read something along with me:

In his book Turning Pro, Steven Pressfield says, “The dictionary defines ‘icon’ as an article (a relic, say, that once belonged to a saint or a holy man) that serves as an object of worship.

A person can be an icon.

When we make someone into an icon, we give away our power. We say to ourselves (unconsciously), ‘This person possesses qualities I wish I possessed. Therefore I will worship this person in the hope that that quality will wear off on me, or I will acquire that quality by virtue of my proximity to this mentor/sensei/lover/teacher/hero.’”

I adore Roman. I admire his many excellent qualities, some of which I wish I possessed. I submit to him sometimes willingly, and other times with a great deal of internal (and then external) resistance.

But what he is not to me is an icon. I believe that my submission is to a construct, a relationship structure, a unique mathematical equation that works for us, so that 1 + 1 is greater than the expected sum of 2.

Here’s where it gets complicated though. It’s not an intellectual decision, and the statement above makes it sound like it is. First I realized that I was incredibly aroused by his dominance (little though did I want to admit it, for years), that something both physical and emotional in me needed to be taken over his knee and spanked, that his very masculinity triggered a corresponding gentleness and willingness to be a more feminine version of myself. 

That’s innate.

The intellectualization of the whole process came as we started moving in the D/s direction, and I realized what it was doing for us as a couple. 

So he’s not my sensei. He’s not my teacher. He’s not my icon.

But when he puts me on my knees, or pulls me across his, he is more than my husband, more than my partner, more than the Mr. to my Mrs. He is That Which I Surrender To, the hands, the eyes, the arms that move me not only to a different position, but to a different self. That is the surrender, which remains a mystery to me, no matter how many times it happens. 

Sometimes my surrender is urgent; sometimes it is graceless. Occasionally, it becomes a genuflection, a sacred bowing to a force greater and stronger than my own, a pull of gravity so strong that I feel it ignite in my belly, then fire licks quick down my thighs.

When he holds both my hands above my head with one of his (pretty much effortlessly), I am not fooled by my lack of physical strength, even as the very rightness of the moment causes my eyes to close, my lips to part, my hips to rise.

Because even then. Even then.

I know where my power lies.