Community of Choice

A few weeks ago, I finally made a choice that I'd been trying not to make for the last year or so at least - I made a choice to join a community.

You'd think that community would be something that everyone would gravitate towards. Doesn't everyone want to belong somewhere? But of course, dear reader, you know of my history. To be part of a community is not just belonging somewhere. To be really part of a community, you need to give up a little piece of yourself to the group. You need to be willing to make sacrifices to the group, to be invested in it's fortunes. In short, you need to take an active role.

And while I've been attending the Melbourne Leather Alliance meetings, and I'm now going to a High Protocol Dinner, I have to admit that I haven't really been part of the community. I've deliberately held back, chosen to stay as an outsider. In a way, it was the best of both worlds, in that I could stay around the community, but never had to make any attempt at engaging.

Daddy had actually pointed this out to me quite some time ago, and had told me that at some point I had to make my choices as to what communities I would engage with, because my current state of not engaging with any community was simply not acceptable. But I was delaying that decision, because the idea of engaging with a community again, after everything, was a terrifying thought.

But the more I thought about it, the more that fear began to lose it's hold. Because it's silly, right? At so many points in my life, I've refused to allow fear to take hold of me. As much as fear and anxiety is a constant companion in my life, every time I've allowed those fears to inform my decisions, I've been left at the same place in my life, and I've felt horribly bound. And every time I choose to overcome my fear, I've always been rewarded with a better life.

That's why, I've finally made the decision that I'm going to embrace the Melbourne Leather Community. It's not worth letting my fear of not being good enough stop me from taking this chance to really be part of a community again. This is something I can do, and if I can't, so what? I've been part of and left plenty of other communities before. If it turns out I'm not cut out for Leather, then I can leave. My fears are not rational, and even if they are, I can overcome them. I can be a Leather Boy.

As of yet, Daddy hasn't arranged for any kind of ritual to mark the decision, and we're sorta still just going where we were going before. I'm not worried, since I know Daddy has been under a lot of stress, and these sorts of things do take a lot of brain to come up with a decent ritual. But I do look forward to it being marked properly. We don't know if my leathers are going to be taken away from me or not, whether I'll have to earn them again. I'm not sure if I'll be made to earn black leathers, rather than blue leathers. Really, the answer is we just don't know yet, that conversation really hasn't been made, and Daddy's not in a place to have that conversation right now.

But soon, I think. Soon it will all happen, and I look forward to it.