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.

Long time no post

So, I've definitely been breaking the 1 post a week thing. I think a lot of that has been depression, with a big dose of doing way too much. So, I haven't really had a lot of brain for writing. But I'm not going to abandon this blog (besides, Daddy would kill me if I did).

This is mostly just a post to let people know that I am actually back. While I've been gone, I've been talking to a psychologist, about my depression, and I've gone on antidepressants (in fact, I've recently upped my dose). I'm hoping that the drugs'll work their magic again soon, and I can get back to being more writey. Talking with my psychologist has been helping too, in particular, we've been trying to get me to think past my more childish thought processes (Oh, did you think I was just playing a boy? Oh no...). It's been a lot of hard work, but I am forever optimistic.

Mostly because I do feel like I'm starting to grow up now. A lot of people say that they feel like they're not adults, that they're just pretending, and they're afraid that people will come in at any moment and notice. I've often thought that about myself, but I think I'm actually starting to feel like an adult. Now, this doesn't make me less of a boy, and I will always hold onto that boyish perspective in my head. But I feel more like I can move past that perspective in my everyday life when I need to.

And that leads me into my next post, because as I'm growing up, I want to follow in my Daddy's footsteps, and go through an explicit coming of age rite. Like my Daddy, I'm a big believer in rituals (although not always for the same reasons), and I think a proper, full ritual will help me hold onto this feeling of adultness. I'm going to talk to my psychologist today about what kind of trials such a ritual might hold. I'm a bit nervous, truth be told, because I'm not sure he's going to completely understand what I'm asking for. Still, I want the input, and if you can't ask your psychologist, who can you ask?

More tonight, I think.

Taking Care of your Daddy.

In the last week me and Daddy took a roadtrip to see his family, and coming back, I noticed a few things that I needed to get around to doing with his car.

This is interesting for a few reasons. I am not a car-minded person, as might be shown with my car, and how little attention I pay to it. But Daddy's car? I'm all up on how that car runs. I see every little indicator, I know exactly what needs doing, I have even been seen under the hood, replacing fuels and checking things.

And I only realised recently how differently I treat my car and Daddy's car. I will learn things and do things that I never would have bothered to do for my car. I keep fluids topped up, check tyre pressures. All the things you're supposed to check on your car, I do for Daddy's car.

When I think about it, it's a very obvious analogy to my relationship with my Daddy. So often, I won't do something unless I can make it in service to my Daddy. Chores? I'll do them in service to my Daddy, but never in service to myself. Taking care of myself is couched in terms of how it makes my Daddy's life better. And of course, I'm more attentive to my Daddy's car because keeping his car running is an essential part of making sure his life is running well.

I'm sure I'm being more than a little selfish in this regard. But in a way it kindof works. I take care of my Daddy's needs, and in return he makes sure my needs are being met. We can be each other's guardians, make sure that each of us have what we need, where we'd often ignore the important bits if we were left to ourselves. We can give each other permission to break rules, to be slack if we have to, to take breaks, or to push ourselves hard when we have to. Daddy does it by ordering me around, I do it by making sure my Daddy has my fullest support when he needs it, and has my advice at all times.

Sometimes I wonder if I need my Daddy more than he needs me. Certainly, I seem to have gained a lot more in terms to self-power than he has. Or perhaps we need each other just as much, in just enough.

Isolation and Vulnerability

I've posted previously about how I've kept myself distant from things around me, and recently I've been doing a bit more work into trying to break that down. In particular, I've started seeing my old psych again, and tried to pick up where we left off.

He pointed out a really interesting thing that I hadn't really thought about, when we were talking about whether to engage or stay distant. He pointed out that really, the question was striking a balance between isolation (which is safe, but lonely) and vulnerability (which is dangerous, but rewarding).

He noted that I've had a lot of bad cases of becoming vulnerable to someone, and then that person betraying my trust. Which means that, over time, I've become a whole lot less willing to be vulnerable around people. Oh sure, I can happily chat to people, talk to them about me, but I'm never investing my vulnerability on those conversations. Instead, I'm keeping solid distance, throwing out "safe" parts of myself. But it means that I have very few real, genuine friends, because I won't let down that isolation barrier, and engage in real, vulnerable interaction.

Me and Daddy had a talk last night about what my isolation means in our relationship, especially seeing how long-term it is. And really, what it's doing is choking his desire to engage in anything meaningful with me. After all, I always have the shields up, I don't engage with anything he'd plan, so what's the point? I'm only caring about what I'm getting out of kink, I'm not really engaging with him on the level he's looking for. Worse, it's making it hard for him to take those sorts of interactions from others - I'm basically rubbing off on him.

As much as he's not saying this to make me feel bad, it does make me feel a bit guilty. Even if it's not exactly my fault, it's still my problem to fix. I have to learn this engagement stuff, but frankly I'm not sure where to start. Well, okay, I know exactly where to start, and I've already done it - I'm seeking professional help. But as of yet, I have no game plan, how I get this fixed.

Oh well. Baby steps.

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.

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.

Something Sweet

I have a lot of demons in my life. Breakups that went terribly wrong, Sexual Assault, Addictions, they all haunt me to some degree, and the thing about those demons is that often they can stop you from living your life to the fullest. You spend so much time battling those demons, (or sometimes just the shadows they left behind), that you just don't have the energy to grow in the right directions.

I'm not sure what my subconscious is telling me, but last night, I dreamt that I confronted my ex-girlfriend. While she was telling lies about me to people around me, in my own dream house, I snapped. I got up, I got angry, and I confronted her about what she was saying, told her in no uncertain terms that I was not going to let her words infect my friends and my life.

And it worked! Oh, she started to fight back, but I stood firm, and told her that what she was saying was untrue, that what she implied had always been untrue, and that she was to leave my house, and not come back. She fell silent, and walked out the door.

There was a feeling in me that I couldn't really describe. Elation, Accomplishment, Relief, Victory, all of these and probably more. It was a beautiful feeling, so beautiful that I woke up. I really didn't want to wake up, but I was there with a smile on my face. I held onto that feeling for dear life, I was determined to take that feeling into sleep, have it by the time I woke up properly. It didn't survive the next few dreams, but I know what I'd accomplished.

Dreams aren't reality of course. But thoughts are, and feelings are. They're real, and cause real changes to the world. I think this is one demon that I have robbed of it's power over me. If it threatens me again, I'll remember this victory, and I can warn it that I can smack it down any time I like.

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.

Desire and Play

So, a couple of days ago, Daddy was talking to me about an issue that he has with me - it never seems like I get excited about a lot of BDSM stuff. We don't often do a lot of scenes, and a lot of that is because Daddy doesn't seem me getting excited about a lot of things, and those things I am excited about, I'm either doing (like Service and Chastity), or we don't really have the money to make happen (like Violet Wands). I only seem to open up when Daddy tells me to - which is not the point of the endeavour. He wants me to be excited enough about things that I ask him to do them to me on my own accord.

I have to admit that he's on to something there. The lack of scene-type play is because a lot of the stuff I get excited about and like to do is kinda life-style, or very long-term things. Chastity is not really a scene-based kink, and service is something that could be scene-based, but in our case I make it a lifestyle.

Of course, as I was writing this blog post, I happen to see a very sexy picture on Fetlife, and decide to leave crumbs for Daddy to see. It's a picture of a man all tied up, his cock and balls being lifted by rope. The image itself is beautiful, but it totally got me turned on, and Daddy, clearly deciding this was a good thing, told me to strip and get his rope, and we did a slightly different, but still very fun enactment of the photo.

And then, he decided to put me in some predicament bondage, attaching the cock rope to my hair, and forcing it back. Which meant that I had to bend over quite dramatically in order to look down at all. I even decided to try stacking the dishwasher in that state, much to Daddy's amusement. This is all still in my cage, by the way, which by the end was hurting quite a bit, because I'm as hard as anything! Play session, while short, clearly a success!

So, the main thrust of this post is that I may be trawling for more sexy photos on Fetlife and Tumblr, and posting them around, because clearly it gets results! Also, if I had to be fair, It's a much more useful way for me to direct daddy to things I want done, since I often have such difficulty with words. Clearly I'll have to keep trying these things...

Other Hooked Up Thoughts

While I greatly enjoyed going to Hooked Up, I'm not going to lie - the fact that it was in a gay bar brought up a whole lot of feelings. Complicated, complicated feelings.

My teenage relationship with sex was really not a good one. As well as the Pornography Addiction, I've also had the tragic twink backstory of looking for love (well, in this case, sex) in all the wrong places. This was, by the by, before I was legal. It was the site of my first BDSM experience (which was entirely out of a porn story, meant that I never got to see the guy's face, and which left me crying in a toilet at the end because I couldn't deal), and in the end I walked away when I actually realised that I was going to sex lounges and wasn't enjoying it at all.

So, I haven't visited a sex-on-premises venue in years. After I was raped, it got even worse - even walking near a gay sex venue started to make me extremely uncomfortable. The thought of being hit on by other men became almost panic-inducing for a while. I've since started to get a little better than that, but that discomfort is still there.

And so, while I had an excellent time at Hooked Up, I still felt quite... uncomfortable for much of the time. I know that the place wasn't unsafe. It was an event where there were plenty of friends, both Daddy and the New Boy were there, but I just couldn't shake the associations of the place. I became so much happier when it was time to help Daddy with his work, because then I could focus on duty, for a change.

And as much as I understand that my past traumas are a part of myself, I'm not okay with it. I'm not okay with places having this kind of effect on me. I don't want to have issue with places I've never been, that I have no history at. I want to be able to go to a new place, and have a good time, be able to make good memories without that creeping feeling of unease.