Bad Feeling Checklist

Daddy has asked me for this week to write down a checklist for me to refer to if I'm feeling low.

• Have I eaten?
• Have I eaten enough healthy food?
• Have I had enough water?
• Have I missed my dose recently?
• Have I had enough sleep?
• Have I had too much sleep?
• Have I exercised recently?
• Have I had cuddle time?
• Have I read anything about sexual assault recently?
• Has my schedule been out of whack for several days in a row?
• Have I socialised with people recently?
• Have I had a bad last call at work?
• Have I been criticised by someone?

Psych Propwash

My recent visit to the psych has stirred up a few feelings, today I'm writing them down for posterity, and to commit them to mind for next visit.

I talked about how I'm trying to become more present by cutting out activities that I use to dissociate, the current one I'm on is computer games. He brought up an interesting point that I've had this conversation with him plenty of times, and everytime it's been on a different activity. There's no use restricting a behaviour if I'm just going to find another one to dissociate.

What I need to do is identify the reasons behind the dissociation, but somewhat ironically, my constant search for Time Out keeps interfering with me delving deeper into my motivations. I check out so often and so constantly that I never give myself time to think at all.

I even suspect part of service to Daddy is me trying to keep myself busy, not giving myself a moment to just sit down and be alone with my thoughts. Even when I am sitting doing nothing, I often suppress thought - I try not to think at all, just stare into space.

The plan is to try and dedicate 10 minutes a day to sitting down, meditating, and actually engaging with my thoughts. I'm also going to try and use blogging to think through some of these issues, mostly because I think I'm much better at thinking when there's a springboard, and I suspect reading my own words might be springboard enough, and I'm terrible at talking to Daddy about these sorts of things. For what reason? Still not sure. Perhaps something to talk about tomorrow?

Starting from scratch

This week, me and Daddy have officially decided that I'm to start from scratch again as a Leather Boy. I've written before that I've not really been much a part of the Leather community, and I often feel like I've kinda ridden on my Daddy's coattails, so now I get the chance to earn my leathers, for real this time.

So, that means giving up the leathers I have for the time being. My pants, my harness, my boots, leather collar and my belt, everything, and I won't be getting them back until I've earnt them again.

I have to admit, I'm actually terrified as hell to be starting this. I've stated previously that I have a serious issue with actually getting involved in stuff, this is really a first foray into actually committing to Leather. I had a cry to Daddy about how scared I am that I'm going to mess up everything and that I'm a terrible Leather boy, and I'm not sure I can live up to HILT, etc etc.

But, scared as I am, I am doing this. The tenets of Leather are something that I genuinely want for myself. I want to be more open, trusting, honest with the world. Leather might actually help me get these things. Daddy is sometimes worried I'm just doing this for him, that I don't actually want to do Leather for myself. But I'm doing this because I want to be a better boy, and I think Leather can do that for me.

Romanticising Suffering

Todays Psych session was oddly relevant today, to my BDSM stuff.

We were talking about my Daddy's breakup, and while I thought I'd have some serious conflicts about it, it turns out that my emotions are actually nice and straightforward - I'm sad that my Daddy is sad, and I'm sad that I likely won't be seeing a person I liked very often from this point. But that's about it, really - I have no real conflicts about the whole kibosh.

But it brought up a more interesting question - why I thought there would be more complex emotions involved. He pointed out to me an odd phenomenon which comes up a lot in my mind - the fact that I almost strive for suffering, like it's a good thing.

Now, don't get me wrong - to suffer at the hands of your dominant is not necessarily a bad thing. But I have this view in my head that I must suffer - that I always take the hard road, always do things by the least efficient method, that I don't feel I've accomplished anything if I didn't suffer through it. Really, I've put this romantic spin on suffering, and I think part of that is that the suffering that I've been through in life has lead me to the person I am now, with all it's kindness, compassion, and willingness to listen.

But the fact is, I don't need suffering to learn things. I don't need to suffer through everyday life to learn things in life, I can just, you know, learn stuff by looking around. There's no need to complicate things by pushing myself to inflict pain and woe upon me just because it builds character.

Touch

I am a beast of touch.

Touch rules my life in a lot of different ways. I have noted several times that I'm a big sensation slut, but it goes further than that, I think.

I'm generally an anxious person, and many of the ways that I deal with my anxiety is by engaging my sense of touch. Either by poking a bruise, by biting the inside of my cheek, by licking my teeth, by feeling underneath my fingernails, by hugging myself, etc. When I'm really anxious, all it takes is a hug from my Daddy to start calming me down. When I see someone in emotional distress, my first instinct is to hug them, to place a hand on their shoulder, etc. The language of my intimacy is in my sense of touch, much to my Daddy's displeasure, as it often means that I talk far less than he'd like.

I like massage, but massage to me is an intensely intimate experience. I have discovered that I can't go to shopping centre masseurs, because I feel extremely odd getting a massage from them. It seems that only my partners can use massage to help me relax.

When I see animals and pets, one of the first impulses is always to pat and touch them, and this is probably why I tend to get along with dogs and cats so often, because we both enjoy touch a lot.

Simply, my skin is my preferred method of contact with the world, especially doing so intimately. Hugs, pats, sensual touch, are all definitely my favourite things!

Why can't I just be automatically good?

In the last week or so, Daddy has decided that I'm going to be taught proper dinner table manners, as he feels that mine are somewhat inadequate. He's given me an etiquette book to read (which I have been, dutifully), but this week he's decided to actually make me practice my table manners. Of course, he's been doing this slowly, and he decided that this week he's focusing on a single thing - how I hold my fork.

Of course, the way I hold a fork is very similar to how you would hold a spoon, as I'm very much a shoveller. As a result, I'm entirely unfamiliar with how to hold a fork properly. For the last couple of times I've been eating I've been railing against it, almost angrily against this stupid "proper" way of holding a fork that seems entirely in appropriate for a how a fork is designed, and designed to entirely prevent you from actually eating anything that's even slightly squidgey. Last night it pretty much came to a head, when I was pretty much throwing my hands up in frustration at how stupid the whole thing seemed.

Daddy was looking at my slightly dumbfounded at exactly how badly I was taking this whole etiquette thing, and being slightly hurt at how vigorously I was attacking it. And even I had to admit, my reaction seemed wholly out of proportion to the entire thing.

And then, I realised why I was railing against it so much - I sucked at it.

Like so many gifted kids in school, the kind of praise that I was given was based on how well I did at things. So, in a perfectly obvious turn of events, if I didn't do well at something, I would stop doing it. After all, you don't get praise at something if you don't do well, so why bother doing it? In many ways, this has been part of a lot of my behaviours throughout my life - I don't get the idea of training yourself until you're good at it. It frustrates me to fail, and the idea of sucking a whole lot to get good at something is a horrible idea to me.

And the thing about the etiquette thing was that the discomfort of using the fork a different way, and Daddy constantly correcting me, were constant reminders of how bad I was at the task. I didn't have the option of giving up, since Daddy wouldn't let me, so obviously I started lashing out at the task. Venting my frustration became hating the task, thinking it was stupid, etc.

And this was just one little task! I can only imagine what my reaction would have been if Daddy (or someone else) had been deciding to train me in a big skillset entirely that I had no experience and no natural skill at. I could very well have exploded, and done a lot of damage.

I will need to start paying attention to this, methinks. If I'm to be a good boy, I need to start learning how not to be frustrated at my own shortcomings, and learn how to be a good student when I'm not already good at something.

Another Long Absence

So, things have been a bit... overwhelming recently. Stress, understandably, will exacerbate any little issues you might have, and I've been in the middle of looking at finding a new place to live, uncertainty over money, concern for my daddy, possible interstate trips... It's been a lot to handle, and it's been difficult to bring up any mental force to write here.

But I made a promise to my Daddy, and that's a promise I intend to keep. It's a lot of catching up, but I need to get this done. I'm just... not sure where to begin. To be frank, real life has taken over kink to such a large degree right now, there barely seems room for much, which is a terrible shame.

I've been doing a lot of hiding, a lot of running away, and unfortunately that's also included this blog. My favourite reaction in the world, apparently, is to flee the world, run away from my responsibilities, to bunker down. It's not a useful strategy though, it just means that I keep putting things off until I must deal with it right now, which of course builds up the stress.

Last night it all kind of exploded. My memory had failed me again, I had mistaken my appointment time with my psych, and I just devolved into a sobbing wreck of rage and frustration. It scared me, a lot. I hide my anger, even from myself, but last night I couldn't help but feel it, and there was no target for my anger but myself, so it kept roiling around inside me, screaming for some sort of release. I could get myself just under control to get out of my Daddy's arms, but not enough to feel stable.

My Daddy, god bless him, encouraged me to go to a park with him, and in the beauty of the park, I finally did manage to stabilise myself again. Today I'm taking the day off work, and I'm going to my doctor to talk to him about this stuff. My psych has thankfully given me an appointment on Thursday, so I'll get to see him (and my word will I have a lot to talk about).

I'm really worried about that roiling sea of rage in me. I haven't been in that sort of state for a very long time, and I know, at least on a rational level, that that's mostly due to me working really hard to suppress it. I'm under no illusions, it's still there, somewhere in my subconscious, and I'm concerned that at some point, it'll explode somewhere it's not safe to do so.

Hopefully you'll see a few more posts from me the next couple of weeks, as I try to catch up and bring the blog back up to date.

Cock Hate

I'll admit, the title of this post is probably a little misleading, but for once I wanted a title with a bit of impact!

For quite some time now, I've had a very strong desire to get my cock circumcised. I've had these desires for a while, at least a couple of years, but a few days ago me and Daddy had a full-on discussion about it. He does not share my desire for circumcision, and was desperate to figure out why I wanted to do this. I had to be honest with him - a lot of it was simply gut feeling, that I wanted to do it and that "it would look better".

Daddy was entirely dissatisfied with that, and decided to keep pushing - was I willing to deal with the repercussions? Of the pain and breaking of stitches, of the reduction in sensitivity, etc etc. Was this really something I was willing to do just for something cosmetic? Of course, even with these perfectly good points, I've been wanting this for years, and I wasn't going to just give up there. But Daddy kept at me. "I'm not sure that you've entirely thought this through. You've never been entirely at peace with your body, especially your cock, in fact you've occasionally had quite violent thoughts against it. Is this you just bring out your general self-hatred on your body?"

I had to admit, I didn't have a good response to this. It's been a long time since I've actually confronted that part of my psyche. I've been focusing so much on the positive aspects of my life, on being happy with the direction my life is taking, that I've been completely neglecting the other side of the equation. Whether I'm happy with myself.

And I'm not, really. I'm a horribly insecure person, who believes, quite honestly, that I'm a terrible, horrible person, who spends most of his social effort putting out such a wonderful image of myself that no one could possibly see the horrible person I believe myself to be. So much of my mental time is spent papering over that particular truth.

And, now that I think about it, I think Daddy might well be right. I've never had the healthiest relationship with my cock, or my genitals in general. During the first stages of our relationship, I cursed them for not doing what I wanted them to do. During one particular night when I was performing at a sex party, I even said that I was so angry that I wanted to rip it off. And I think about a lot of fetishes that I'm interested in, like CBT, and chastity, and how so many of my mental fantasies seem to involve modifying my cock or causing pain to my cock, and yeah, it kinda all falls into place, really - I really do hate my cock, a lot, but I think that's just me forcing a lot of my general self-hatred into what seems to be a safe target.

So, after a whole lot more pain and talking, Daddy told me in no uncertain terms that he wants me to actually tackle this whole self-hatred thing. If, after working on loving myself more, and feeling safer and more secure in my body, I still want to get myself circumcised, then he'll support me 100%. But, simply, he doesn't want me doing something I'll regret later, and I can't disagree with that.

But it's brought up a lot of other stuff. Is so much of my kinks really an aspect of this self-hatred, and is that really healthy for me? Daddy seems to think that it's probably a safe way of dealing with it, but I dunno. Maybe I need to change the way I work with those kinks, perhaps? I honestly don't know where to go with this information from here. How do you know what's healthy and what isn't? I mean, I'm not sure I trust introspection for this sort of stuff, since clearly my thought processes are a bit warped at this point. I'm not sure I can come to a healthy conclusion about this.

I guess, really, I should see a psychologist about this, but I'm not sure if there's a psychologist that could deal with this in a friendly-enough manner. How, exactly, do you tell a psychologist that you're actively engaging in causing pain to your genitals because you hate yourself, and that you want to explore that self-hatred, without the psych getting entirely the wrong impression? Even for a kink-friendly psychologist that'd have to be a bit of a stretch.

Or maybe I'm just projecting my own fear there. Trying to worm my way out of getting help. It's a common trait of mine. If I had any idea how to help myself from here it wouldn't be such a problem, but I'll be honest - I don't think I can help myself from here, I think I need an external voice, and this is not something Daddy can really help me with, or really should be his responsibility to help with.

Argh. I feel like I'm travelling around in circles at this point so I think I'll just stop the post there.

Sparrows

Earlier this week I read a post of tumblr talking about how birds have become a common symbol of fragility and vulnerability in a few places (and how this apparently has spread to the rest of society), and it got me to thinking. While I'm not sure I really believe in totem animals, or spirit animals, sparrows definitely call to me, and the more I watched sparrows, the more I researched their behaviors and symbology, the more they called to me.

But symbols of fragility? Of vulnerability? Sure, sparrows are small and cute, and I don't deny that that's what attracted me to them in the first place, but having been an avid sparrow watcher for the last while, the last thing I think of when it comes to sparrows is vulnerability. The associations they have in my mind are very, very different.

First and foremost in my mind, sparrows survive. Wherever sparrows have been introduced, they have not only survived, but thrived. They're not picky about what they eat, they'll eat seeds and fruit, or they'll stalk your local mcdonalds, waiting for you to leave your scraps (or in one case, wait until your attention is elsewhere, and steal a French fry). On the Australian east coast, they are a pest, a pest so pervasive and so skilled as surviving in our conditions that we've basically given up the idea of controlling them.

Sparrows are also vicious. See, while we look at sparrows and see them as these shy birds flying away at the first sign of human attention, when it comes to other birds, sparrows are incredibly aggressive. They will attack other birds and steal their nests. In their gangs, they'll flock around another intruding bird and chase them away from the human and their lunch. Sparrows will burn down your house. They are, really, the teenage gangs of the bird world.

Sparrows to me, also represent Urbanity. While they live everywhere, my strongest memories of sparrows are within the city of Melbourne, and within my own back yard. And I am definitely an Urban boy. While I can appreciate the beauty of nature, the beauty of the city speaks to my heart. My heart quickens when I see the giant cranes of the Melbourne docks lit up when I'm traveling home, or watch the flow of traffic from a highrise building, or when I travel to high lookouts, and get to see the city grid lit up at night. To me, Sparrows are part of that Urban beauty. Where humans are, you'll find sparrows in pretty quick order, they are a quintessential part of the cityscape, and the cityscape is a quintessential part of me.

Sparrows also represent family. Sparrows on their own don't often survive long. They tend to hang around in groups of 5-6, because there's always safety in numbers. 5 sparrows can see something 1 sparrow might miss. If you see one sparrow, there's likely to be another few hanging back, waiting until it's safe to come down. Sparrows always remind me that, no matter how hard I try, I will never achieve as much on my own as I will with people around me, supporting me to be my best.

And, most of all, they represent freedom. You have to work pretty hard to trap a sparrow, they're skittish and small, and are quick to fly at the first sign of danger. We have often projected this onto birds, but the ability to fly away, to wherever you want? It's a glorious gift, one that I envy, at times. These days, of course, I spend a lot less time trying to run away from my life, but old feelings sometimes die hard.

But don't call a sparrow vulnerable - they can bloody well take care of themselves!

Hideaway Boy

In the past few months I have been working to complete a BDSM checklist for my Daddy. Yes, you heard me, the past few months. It's been a long and difficult process for me.

A big reason is the fact that filling out a BDSM checklist takes a lot of introspection. You have to be able to look at yourself honestly, and fill out the form on a variety of activities. It's effectively a big inventory of yourself. And that is something I am so very not good at.

Also, as a submissive of any stripe, it can be very easy to just go with the flow, and try to align what you want with what your dominant wants. After all, your Dominant's in charge, right? So what you want is what your dom wants! Easy. Except it doesn't really work that way except in cheesy porn stories. We're simply not that malleable. Still, it's very hard to resist the temptation to put your self in your dominant's hands, for the simple reason that it means that you no longer have to deal with it. As hard as that temptation is to resist though, to give in is supremely unfair to everyone involved. Believe it or not, it is not actually your dominant's responsibility to decide what you like.

In a previous relationship, my partner had this particular tendency, a tendency to not be able to say no to anything. I became aware of this fairly early on in the relationship, and because I loved them, I began to assume responsibility for checking her consent. I would always be subconsciously looking at their behaviour, watching them to make sure that nothing was going wrong, that they hadn't suddenly dropped out of the act, because I couldn't trust that they would tell me if something had happened. When that relationship ended, I came to the conclusion that actually, this was horribly unfair. Why was it that I had to be responsible for both my consent and theirs? They never checked my consent. It wasn't that we kept each other in check, it was all on me, and I had never asked for that.

Of course, it's been some time since I've realised that I do exactly the same thing to my Daddy. It's not a nice thing to realise, and I try really hard not to, but of course this is a learning process, and I fail more often than I succeed. It takes a lot of effort to speak up, to be willing to interrupt. But to not try is not acceptable to me. It's not fair to deposit the burden of my consent onto my Daddy, or anyone for that matter. The person who should have control over my consent should be none other than myself, and I strive to reach that point.

And this is why this checklist is important to me, and simultaneously why it's so damn difficult. It's an opportunity for me to actually push the envelope in accepting my consent, to actually gain some insight into what I like and don't like, and present it to my Daddy, so that, for once, he doesn't have to guess, doesn't have to watch my body language, doesn't have to wonder whether I'm going to be able to accept something. It'll all be there in black and white.

Now, this is not to say that when the events come up there won't be negotiation and such. I still have to actively consent to things, a checklist doesn't change that. But at least this list will push me into thinking about these things for a change, and I might just have an answer when it comes to it.