The journey towards myself has been a journey of equal measure away from others.  Away from The Neighbor, away from my exhusband, away from my mother and father.  What do I need?  What do I want?  Who am I within those constructs??

As a woman I have been raised to acquiesce, to be demure, dainty, and gentle.  Imagine the struggle I had as a loud, bossy, effervescent, creative little girl who could never be pushed high enough on the swing or spun fast enough in a hug.  I always wanted more than I got and I wished every night to be like the little girls in my class with the perfect pigtails and clean dresses and neat handwriting, to be soft and quiet. But I was an athletic girl and competitive, driven to surprise people who thought my bright blonde hair and love of dresses meant I was afraid to get dirty.

That spirit saved me.  I loved being strong, fast, and impressing everyone — especially the boys — with my skills versus my sweetness, but still I figured out early on that I was a square peg and the world wanted a round one.  Despite abandoning the outward appearance of what was expected of me, I still fell prey to how I was expected to feel.

I was afraid to be angry, to demand to be treated in certain ways, to stand up for myself.  Those were not only unattractive traits, but completely unacceptable in both my world and family, and so I created a life for myself where on the one hand I was big and bold, but on the other meek and passive.  The life of the party and unafraid, yet a complete push-over who would accept any kind of treatment because she so badly didn’t want to be abandoned.

My parents rejected my pleas to be heard, my exhusband was incapable of mistakes, and my last love always had one foot out the door at the first hint of dissatisfaction.  But it was with him, The Neighbor, that the bold inner-side of me began to grow: he wanted me to dominate him.

TN and I never had an open discussion about his needs or wants regarding domination and submission.  From my perspective, one day he started agreeing to my outrageous demands to vacuum while in my panties.  I was confused and turned on all at once as I watched this densely muscled, hung young man push my vacuum cleaner around in my lace underwear.  He was acquiescent, boyish, happy and utterly exquisite.  It thrilled me.

Eventually we semi-formalized the exchange and I would tie a little black velvet ribbon around his neck and he’d kneel with his hands behind his back and wait for me to come home.  In the candle light I’d draw on his pale skin and finger fuck his tight little asshole while he was bound spread eagle to the bed.  His nipples were conduits to his cock and I’d eagerly pluck and suck on them until he writhed and begged me to stop and when I’d worked us both up into frothy messes I’d set him loose on me and cry big, fat tears of  release.  It was darkly beautiful, our little secret, and felt like I’d slipped into my real skin for the first time in my life.  He got me.

But then it went sideways.

He asked for tasks and wouldn’t do them.  He’d pick and choose when he would submit and for how long.  He’d create online profiles on D/s sites and keep them hidden from me.  I took aftercare seriously, but he would reject my advances to care for him.  He didn’t need me.  His submission seemed to be a limit to his sexuality, not a condition of it.  Submission was just a kink, not a state of mind.

I felt off-balance, weak, and used.

To assert demands which I had been taught my entire life were repulsive meant I crossed into treacherous territory, a landscape of power which was completely foreign to me, and he never joined me there.  He stayed on the sidelines and kept the gift of submission, his presence with me, to himself.  And it gutted me.

Standing in that spot alone, the only thing that could replace the energy lost to get there would have been his compliance, his submission.  Instead I was the asshole with my dick in my hand and he got to laugh all the way to wherever it was he wanted to go.  Without me.

Domination and submission are a symbiosis of energies, one does not exist without the other.  We can throw as many tricks into the ring as we want, but unless someone is there to witness them, to value them and hold them close, they’re useless and invisible and our energy is completely wasted.

That was me: a fool in the spotlight all alone. 

Our relationship failed for many reasons, least of which was his shadyness, but I didn’t limp away empty-handed.  As I’ve left my parents, my husband, and then TN, I have stood taller and understood better what it means to insist on something and through D/s I was given a glimpse — though a very tiny one — of how that could feel in real life.

It’s not enough to just be bold in life outside the walls of my home, I must be bold within them, as well.  If I don’t respond appropriately to bad behavior then I only have myself to blame and if the person behaving badly doesn’t have a reaction I like then that’s the correction point.  That’s the moment to assert myself.

Until recently I’d only dabbled in D/s much like a non-runner might commit to running at dawn each morning.  In other words: half-heartedly and not at all consistently.

I let my lovers toss me around and pull my hair and I tied up a lover, but I had’t invested myself in dominating anyone; it was far too demanding.  Men in general are scary, untrustworthy and dangerous.  It’s why I keep them safely on a shelf with just their hard cocks lined up like so many sausages on a conveyor belt.

Lately, though, a desire deep in my belly has grown to an incessant need: I need to dominate someone.  I need to use him to pleasure myself in an overt way, I want to own him and take care of him.  I want him to know what I’m doing and I want him to revel in it, to be my boy, my pet, mine.  More simply put, I want to state a need and have it met.  And so I have begun the search in earnest.

The wild little girl meets the woman who’s denied her inner self for most of her life and what I hope to happen is to find a partner who can meet me in that ring, to stand beside me and hold my hand even as he kneels beside me.  But this man has proven to be as elusive as any other unicorn.

Men in the D/s world who claim to be submissive, much like TN, seem to be more enthralled with the idea than the practice.  The low hoops I set for them to step through prove too much to bear and unlike the Hyacinth in the vanilla world, the Hyacinth in the D/s world does not allow for such mistakes or false claims.

Domme Hy asks that you reply to her messages in a timely manner.  If you don’t she politely reminds you of this requirement and gives you a chance to improve.  If you do not comply then she ends the connection, period.  She tells the man she has no time for games and is looking for someone who is serious about proving their submission even in small ways as they begin to get to know oneanother.

Domme Hy doesn’t accept ambiguous bullshit or bad behavior and the revelation that it’s not only ok to feel this way but also to to act upon it has stopped me cold in my tracks.  I hadn’t realized how hard I was still trying to fit into that round peg until I found a square hole.

And the light has been shed on all of my relationships.

Instead of telling others how I want to be treated and feeling as though my work is done I have come to understand to the fibers of my being that words really are meaningless.  As much as I love them, they’re literally worth the paper they’re printed on.

If I say I want to be treated a certain way and I am then treated in a different way the only reasonable response I have in the D/s world is to correct it and correct it immediately because that’s what a Domme does.  And what has become crushingly obvious to me over the summer is that’s what vanilla Hy needs to do, as well.

The veil of unattractiveness I have long associated with honesty regarding my feelings has been lifted and I am less afraid of someone abandoning me because I am displeased, angry, or unhappy.  Go, motherfucker.  Go.

Recently a beautiful submissive man hovered over me and sucked on my fingers.  His eyes were tightly shut and my free hand felt the muscles along his ribcage ripple.  “Cum for me, beautiful boy,” I said and his hand began to beat harder on his cock.  He moaned and jerked and I crooned to him, “My beautiful boy,” as hot globs of his subby jizz landed on my belly and breasts.

I pulled him down into my arms and stroked his temple until he fell asleep.  Our play had been very light, mostly vanilla by all rights, but I had bade him to spank my flank and fuck me and directed every candlelit movement.  He slept for a few hours and awoke stiff and awkward.  I released him to return home knowing something was wrong, but he was shut down.

The next afternoon I reached out and asked if he was ok.  He took many hours to respond and when he did he appeared still shut down.  I offered my support and told him he may be experiencing subdrop.  Three days later I still hadn’t heard from him so I asked for him to please let me know if he was ok.  He never responded.

Vanilla Hy would be mildly devastated, but Domme Hy recognizes with great clarity the limitations of her responsibility and energy required to resolve this.  I have done everything I can and he has gone to ground.  Whether that’s because it was the perfect night for him or the worst, I don’t know, but we had spoken for many hours about what we wanted and how we would proceed and as far as I was concerned I followed all of those rules.

If he ever reaches out to me again I will tell him I have no desire to interact with someone who is capable of mistreating someone like he mistreated me.  As Ferns has shared with me, many submissive males believe Dommes have no feelings and may be discarded like chewed gum.  Fantasy level: Achieved.  Next!  And it feels all too familiar.

It’s difficult to explain the long road to this place, the odd twists and turns I’ve experienced, but if I could shout to all the corners of the earth to everyone to be unafraid of their feelings and to express them freely and without fear I would every day for the rest of my life.  When you express a need, those worthy of you ask you how they may meet it.  Period.

Whether it’s a friend or parent, or a naked lover at my feet, the people I want to let into my life will accept me in my entirety or not at all and I can’t accept less than that.  I simply don’t need the inconvenience.  I deserve to be who I am — a woman with feelings and a woman with needs — and the people in my life deserve my honesty.

Fuck.

Fuck.

This is so important to who I want to be, I can feel it deep in my heart and I know it’s true because the tears in my eyes tell me so.  Ok, Hy.  You can do this.  Just be you.  It’s ok.