We’d actually met before

Near the street where I lived, which bore his name …

All those years ago. 

On the Sacred Green 

He imparted his wisdom, words I passed along and never forgot.

In The City By The Water 

did we – by chance – meet again.  

A shared birthday, special song revealed.  

Yes, if you asked me to have coffee with you today I would.  

The park was quiet that Friday afternoon, and even more beautiful than I had remembered it being.  

For a long time I wished I had felt guilt for my deception – all I felt was a kind of acceptance that defied any sort of otherwise appropriate remorse.  

And I don’t recall anyone else being there … 

Just the Lovers; us.  

We were quite alone.  

But I no longer was.  

In the world of BDSM and D/s there is a lot of talk of Limits.  Hard Limits, Boundaries, Parameters … no matter what word we use to describe our own Line In The Sand, we are all conveying to our Top the same thing: Do not go beyond this point … and we use Safewords to let our Top know we are nearing or have reached our Limit. 

Simple enough, yes?  

No.  

Safewords NEVER made sense to me … 

And my Limits … Are OUR limits and they

Are for my Top to decide;

His Love and Respect keep me safe, emotionally and physically …

We talk, a lot.  He knows me and I trust that He would never cause me harm; to tell Him He cannot do something would only belie the trust we have placed in each other – He knows when I can take no more and He often saves me from myself because I would go on forever just to please Him.  

It is a lot more complicated, beautiful and wonderful than Limits will allow …

And the sweet girl in the painting above, also looks like this:

In that place in time,

The moments of your life make sense …

And clarity, once so elusive, is something you can hold in your hand.

Its a personality-type characterization of a specific kind of masochist, my kind.

I was a very sheltered and over-protected child in many ways.  I traveled frequently and had cultural and educational opportunities most will never know, but it was always under tightly controlled and orchestrated circumstances.  This isn’t to be critical of my father, what good parent doesn’t protect his child?

But, the thing is, I had very little exposure to popular culture – so when I did experience it, it had a lot of impact … and my impressions were almost always formed by a misrepresentation of fact and/or reality.  

Case in point, masochism.  I thought a masochist was defined as she was by the punk-rock culture of the late 70s and early 80s … and that certainly didn’t have anything to do with me!  I was nothing like *Those People* 

In truth I wasn’t, but they weren’t masochists, particularly my kind [per se] either!  

I was on a shopping trip with my mother in NYC when I was about twelve, and for some reason that escapes me now we found ourselves in The Village.  There we saw a young couple – both were dressed in dark leather clothing and had a very unkept look about them.  She wore a collar and they didn’t walk arm-in-arm like the couples in my world did; he walked with his hand in the middle of her back *pushing* her along.  

I, of course, could not take my eyes off of them.  I was intrigued beyond measure by everything about them.  My mother, aghast, said: “Elizabeth, well brought up young ladies do wear collars, nor do they stare at those who do.”  

This memory is 30+ years old and it is still so vivid it could have occurred yesterday!  My mother’s reprimand had an enormous impact on me … 

I knew that I was somehow like the young couple in The Village, and I also knew  this was unacceptable to my mother.

My neurotic self injuring behaviour that up ’til then had been very mild, became an enormous part of my unconscious coping mechanism after that shopping trip and it continued for decades completely unchecked.  

Almost three years ago, when I was ready for admissions and disclosures, my mother was accepting, kind and truly wonderful … and that means all the world to me now.  

A Psychiatrist herself, she helped me in ways my therapist could not …

Just because she finally understood me, her daughter, the little girl who had been too much for her to handle … 

I finally made sense to her … and neither of us, turns out, failed the other.  

Much had happened between us, things I haven’t addressed here, and I was fearful and distant as we sat on the beach in Positano, neither of us knowing what to say.  

There was guilt and shame on both sides by this point – we’d done unspeakable things to each other.  I will admit now, at the time, ALL I wanted was out.  Paul was nowhere near ready for that.  

It was another year plus a few weeks before he asked me for a divorce and by then, miraculously, we’d forgiven each other.  

I will never regret staying in my marriage until Paul was ready to let me go …

But I also know it was over long before it ended …

Because sitting on the beach in Positano it occurred to me:  

It never really began.  

I would vomit.  Over and over again …  

Even this seemed irrelevant.

Because I thought I was hiding from everyone else.    

Perhaps if I had been more typical I’d have recognized what I am, a masochist, without the years of anguish and repression.  Maybe if I had seen behaviours such as running until I collapsed from dehydration, and playing the piano, violently, until it was out of tune and I was sweaty and exhausted, or tearing at my fingernails and cuticles until they bled and rubbing layers and layers of skin away from the inside of my thighs as self injuring I’d have understood my reality. 

I saw those behaviours, the behaviours I now know to be a form of self-injury, as a way to relieve stress and anxiety only, they had no further meaning.  Rather I assigned them no further meaning.  They had plenty  …

I didn’t make the connection, then, between my sexuality and my methods of relieving emotional pain or stress … and I didn’t understand that the repression of my sexuality was the root cause of much of my anxiety.  I didn’t know denying a part of myself was impossible to do in a healthy way or that the battle that raged inside of me, the battle between repression and recognition, was one I could not win.  It boggles my mind, now, to consider the vast stores of emotional resources I allocated to managing that internal juggernaut …

The thing is, in my case, understanding what I am sooner would not have mattered.  Sure, I’d have had a label but it would have made no difference.  

I needed Him to help me understand that being a masochist is OK …

That it doesn’t mean I am flawed …

Or that all I have accomplished is in spite of the deficit caused by a deviant sexuality …

No man other than my counterpart could have given me that.  No.  Other.  Man.  

I am not ordinary, that I have always known.  My needs cannot be satisfied by invented frameworks and rules and a fallacious relationship construct … 

It goes far deeper than that for me.

Our therapist once said to Paul, “Would you expect to be able to satisfy Libby if you were a heterosexual man and she were a lesbian?”

That was a light bulb moment for Paul.  

For some of us, sexuality is that complicated … and that simple.  

She would be easy to label, masochist.  

Most of us, thankfully, don’t look like this.  

“What is love? As far as I can tell, it is passion, admiration and respect. If you have two, you have enough. If you have all three, you don’t have to die to go to heaven.”  William Wharton 

There was a time in my life when I may have agreed, having two is enough.

Now I think all three are necessary … 

If not for the well-being of the relationship itself,

then for the contentment and delight of the one soul shared by both individuals in the relationship.  

And of Respect and Love:

I asked him once which was more important, respect or love …

He answered, “In a committed life affirming relationship between man and woman both are crucial and neither is dispensable; I could not choose between them or live without either one…”  

We think alike … 

The view from Heaven is indescribable.