Three

"What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveller may never reach the end of it."
The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula Le Guin

The Sunday

The body as metaphor for soul.

This is not what happened.

Some secrets I. Keep. Still.

I listen, drenched in submission. I choose the wrong route, but I don't regret.

I fall down on the path and hurt myself I am covered in dirt from the muddy earth, I dig my fingers into it, claw frantically, scoop up palmfuls of it, smear it over me, drink it down, splash my lips and face, with fractured bones I crawl at snail's pace. Running is a distant dream and I'm good at forgetting, erase the knowledge I have ever played in the mud and danced in the dirt. The path seems too hard, my limbs too sore, I hurt, I hurt. I hurt, I hurt.

I call for you please come and help me, I can't stand by myself. You can't see the fracture, the bones aren't sticking out. I hush myself, rock quietly back and forth, my voice is steady. You call out to me the best path, point the way, tell me I'm ready. I am in pain and I cannot follow you.

I retreat, but you follow me. See, aghast, my hurts. You pick me up, take me home, bathe and splint my broken bones. You take my pain away and replace it with yours. You clean the dirt from me and replace it with your own, then make me brand new again with your softness, your love, your possession. You carry my burdens for a little while so I can begin to walk again. Months of healing condensed into hours of fucking. You force new joie de vivre inside me with your hands, with your cock.

A Saturday

A victorian, cast-iron bed. Suede lining, dark purple, in patent black leather cuffs. They hold my wrists against the metal, black-painted. Matching ankle cuffs and a spreader bar, lashed with his old and fraying belt, to the foot of the bedstead.

The rain pours down outside. He would toss me into a pit of muddy, rain washed broken glass and fuck me, uncaring of my pain or discomfort. The knowledge of this is my heart's balm, bringing me peace.

He beats me and I scream. I scream the way animals scream - unselfconscious, desperate, terrified. A gurgling sound travelling the spectrum of pitch and tone.

He climbs between my stretched wrists, and fucks my mouth. I hear the rain, and a roaring sound that is inside my own head. I'll be sick, I know I will be sick. My head is tilted back, at this angle I don't know what will happen. Will I breathe it in, will I choke? Could I die from this? My fear is stronger than my submission, I close my mouth, pull away. He forces my mouth open with his fingers, fucks me anyway.

I am grateful.

He beats me again. Defeated, broken, I sob and swear at him. I know how pitiful I am. He makes me feel ashamed, dirty. Again, I am grateful.

The rain has become a thunderstorm, I can hear thunder, see bright flashes of light, but I don't know if they're outside the window, or inside. He makes me sorry for the screaming and the insults. I am warned not to make a sound, or move. I'm terrified. He works me over until I'm screaming more and more and again in my head, but I'm too afraid, far too afraid. Tiny, hushed sobs escape my lips, I feel saliva pour from my mouth, but I can't speak. He parts my legs, I don't resist. He fucks me until he releases a flood of cum deep inside my cunt.

He uncuffs my wrists, removes the bar, rubs my skin, draws me close, tenderly. He whispers words of love to me, cherishes me. I look at him with glassy eyes, touch my lips tentatively. He understands. "Yes baby, you can speak now, and move".

I am grateful.


A Friday

It isn't until late at night, that we eat. Food, drink, sleep, basic needs, all ignored while he slakes his thirst in me. And I, equally thirsty, drink down his lust.

Each and every day I have had him in my life, I have become...more. More confident, more at peace, more creative, more balanced. I have the confidence now to make a special effort with my dress and appearance to please him - and to tell him so. Months in the making, I am now someone who can do this without fear - fear of trying but failing, to please.

Tiny pieces of my soul, healed, flowering. Withered, forgotten, parched - parts of me I thought had died, parts of me I never knew existed; thriving now in the abundance of care and love, lavished on me. Learning to trust in this plentitude, learning not to fear that it is a finite amount to be used up, or that it will soon be taken away.

Waking, finding him not in the bed with me - hating it. As he walks in the door again my heart binds to his. He is part of me, without him, there is something missing from my own soul.

Finding the confidence to truly understand - he never does anything he doesn't want to do. I can ask - I have permission to ask, to request, to state a desire - and I can believe, trust in him to always take exactly what he wants from me, regardless.

Asking gives him more power, not less. Gives him the power to grant my desire, or not. I ask on this day - ask for the cane - and he grants it.

Different, but equal. Our pain play before has taken a different shape. This time I moaned, thrust my hips against the ground, begged for more. Sometimes, overcome, he had to stop to fuck me. Sometimes he built up the pain and took me further than I would have chosen. He fucked me until I was exhausted and dry, and then as I whimpered little tiny hopeless pain noises for him, he blew his load inside me. I am always, always, so very grateful, so very astonished, to find myself His.

Three times he fucked my cunt, came inside me.

Three times he made me his.

Body, heart and soul, I belong to him.

And I am grateful.

Learning to say "No"

This week, I have learned to say, "No".

I have learned to say, "No, it was not my fault".

For the first decade together, my husband and I struggled to cope with the fits he had, caused by diabetic hypoglycaemia. There was then a gap of 5 glorious fit-free years before he began having semi-regular seizures again.

I wrote about it at the time, here

and here

The very first time he had a convulsion, I blamed myself. I hadn't spotted the signs of hypoglycaemia in time, even though I knew he was diabetic, and I didn't take the correct action. I even got angry with him because he was acting so strangely.

I was told by a doctor at one stage that a first fit often paves the way for others. I felt that if only I could have stopped this first fit from happening, then he never would have had any. If only I had noticed in time, been more intuitive, been less suspicious, been more alert, been a better person...

But that's bullshit. Even if it hadn't happened sooner or later, I didn't cause his fits, because I didn't cause his diabetes. I did the best I could at the time.

Neither was it my fault that he continued to have them, and continued to not manage his diabetes as well as he could have. I wasn't a failure as a wife, it wasn't because I was a bad person, and not loving enough, supportive enough, caring enough. It was, and is, his own responsibility to manage his condition. I've always poured out my love, my support, my care, onto him. That's got nothing to do with why he has seizures. It is HIS job to take care of himself, first and foremost.

When he began having fits again, I was away over in Hastings with my partners of the time. I felt guilty for not being present when it happened, and I believed I might have prevented it if I had been. One of the partners in question was angry with me, unreasonably, on a matter unrelated to my husband's illness. She cut off communication with me for a while, and this compounded the feeling that I'd done something terrible and wrong, which I was being punished for. Somewhere along the line I connected the two things and deep in my heart, I felt I had caused my husband's fits to re-occur.

But that's bullshit. It was not, and is not, my fault. I had done nothing wrong, now or then.

I knew all this intellectually, but on sunday night I woke up at 4am, knowing it, unquestionably to be true, in my heart.

And so in such small ways are we healed.

The last year of my life.