I was never very good with rules. Always in rebellion, it is as if I never really progressed beyond the years of being a teen, when I first took some of power and control of my life back from the mad authority figures who were my parents.
Blood they were, yes, but love me? Only Dad did that. My father loved me, yes, but he was beleaguered with visions of war gone wrong even when sleeping & some unnameable mental illness (he was never properly diagnosed, truly). He was known as an alcoholic who vomited up copious amounts of vodka nightly, a constant lifelong smoker, and prescription drug stealer (we could never leave painkillers, muscle relaxers or downers where he could find them). He was also one of the hardest workers I've ever known - being gone long periods of time and working long shifts in the mud and the cold and the heat. He didn't shrink from working on the house and yard. Despite his expensive vices, we always had a roof over our heads, clothing to wear, food to eat - the basic necessities and more. He put food on the table, especially during hunting season - and for Dad, every season was hunting season. I remember when every month with an "r" in it we could hunt rabbits. That changed with time, of course. He always said that not in his lifetime but in mine, I would see eventually that only the rich could hunt. Dad read stories to us every night that he was home. I grew up thinking every father did that. Boy was I wrong! And even when it put him in the doghouse with Mom, Dad stood on my side on several occasions when I couldn't tell him why I was acting a certain way.
For my mother I seemed a vessel of impurity wherein all her hatred could be poured. I've been told that perhaps I am not a product of my father's making, but that of someone else. Recently when I mentioned this, a thoughtful person told me that if that were indeed a possibility, that might explain mother's hatred toward me. For mother, perhaps I was the constant reminder of a dalliance wherein she was obviously unfaithful. Who knows. Too late now. They're both long since gone and there is no possibility of a DNA test. Not that I'd want to know. Really. Dad raised me as his own even if there may have been a possibility that I was not. He loved me completely and truly and I miss him. Mom on the other hand...
If he's not my father though, well... It wasn't the first time she lied to him. Or us as a family. She was the best and smoothest liar I've ever known and she enjoyed manipulating people just to see if she could. As a child, I watched this, drinking it all in, learning that lies must be told if one wanted to be safe. (And then the woman had the gall to be angry with me when I lied to her!) She used to tell me that I lied when the truth would sound better! I wasn't that bad of a liar at that time myself. She was furious when she read my diary, punishing me for things I'd done a whole year previously as if I'd just done them. I'm not so sure now if perhaps she was more angry at herself that I could lie so well she didn't catch it. But I learned from the best.
It surprised me when we found oodles of bottles of vodka hidden all over her room after her death. My mother was a closet alcoholic. Of course I'd known for years she was a prescription drug abuser, her preference being muscle relaxers (that she had to lock into a box away from Dad).
Yes, I learned to lie from the best. And I hated her rules. She wielded power and control over me with an iron fist, gloating at me that I could do nothing, say nothing, prove nothing. Her weapons were her words and she used them well, beating me down until there was little left but a mass of emotion covering a curled up little girl. Nobody saw her do it. She was well versed in keeping the people around her manipulated against me. I was the crazy one. I was the rebellious one. And years later when I had married, she was angry that I changed for him and had the gall to tell me that one of the things she respected about me was that I let no one rule me or control me, so why did I act different with him around? Control... and now we have control from beyond the grave in a way, but that's a story for another time.
Rebellion. The minute I had an inkling of it, it tickled my skin, made my face burn because I knew it was wrong, KNEW if I got caught I'd be in trouble deep. Oh I kept my grades up to A's & B's; I didn't skip school; I even bought my own car and held a job from the age of 16 on. (Not being allowed to work before age 16 SUCKED!) I had good friends, some of whom were going nowhere and I knew it, but I accepted them for who they were. Yet because of some of the people I chose as friends, my mother decided that she could somehow read my future. Suddenly I was condemned to be a highschool drop out, a drug addict, and pregnant before I ever reached 16.
In rebellion I finished high school and went straight to college because it was my only ticket outta that joint. I have an aversion to addiction that goes deeply into fear but am fascinated enough to try things anyway, just my gut telling me "time to stop" and I obey that, and I didn't get pregnant until I was 28. But those ghosts do haunt me. Those words. The hatred I felt growing up from the one person who SHOULD have shown me absolute love. I give this love to my son and I know he feels it. It is not spoiling a child, it is letting them know they are absolutely loved. Something I never had and knew I should have had.
Rebellion. It has directed so many of my actions. For when I reach a point where I look at my life and take stock of what is really going on, I've never stuck with "the norm" or what society bids females to do. "You make your bed and you sleep in it," they say, meaning that you make your choices, stick with them and take the consequences. So my mother stayed with my alcoholic father until she went crazy from despair and anger. Me? When my spouses acted like idiots I told them and I gave them a choice to stop. Every single one of them refused to believe me. They had all grown up with the same thing - women will stay no matter what because that's how we, as a society, have trained them. The look of surprise was priceless when I walked out.
Rebellion. It gets me in trouble even now. It isn't so much the "No I won't!" with a folded arms and stamping of foot and impetuous pout. No, it's more like, "Seriously? I gotta do SOMETHING here... what's one little thing gonna hurt?" That always ends up being a mess.
Sir, I thank you for the opportunity to learn this with you. You watch and wait and say nothing for months until you've gathered a full picture and then you direct me the way I need to go in order to attain and maintain peace within me. Forgive me that I do not always see the big picture. Always the impulsive one, I struggle to maintain the status quo when things are difficult for me and begin looking for a way to reduce the resulting stress from the struggle without battering the struggle within. I seem to cause more stress to my own self than the world does!
Good luck to you, Sir... the beings within are hard to tame and harder to hold. Some of them rear up at the last possible minute and do terrible things, haunting things, and sometimes beautiful things. When I can channel them into art, it is beautiful for everyone else, yet terrible for me to behold as it holds the key to a time when my head was not at rest but in chaos. Yet when I cannot channel those beings well for some reason, THAT is when they get me into trouble. Little rebellions become lies. For some reason, I have a very hard time lying to you though. I cannot keep a lie from you. "Oh what's one cookie?" becomes a blurted out "Sir I ate a cookie today" followed by grief that I have let you down and a deep shame.
Funny, isn't it? Submission has been embraced by me. Yet the inner beings have not reached the peace I seek. Peace I want desperately, aching for it. I stand on tiptoe on the edge of instability and stretch for inner peace with my whole being, reaching for it with grasping hands, arms stretched to the limit, body arced over the void of chaos just below, my face transformed by heart shattering longing, lips parted slightly, shaking with the full body tremor of the addicted. You've done this. I wait for you with that longing. I love you, my Master.
------- Later thoughts...
I know that lying is a choice. I also know that it isn't my parents fault if I lie now. They're dead. They have no input here. I only wanted to explain where I learned it and explain the resulting fucked up logic that somehow if it was okay for them to do it, why was it not okay for me? 43 years... Long time to figure that out. I won't make any blonde jokes here.
Rebellion. That is harder, but it is still a choice and it is still no one else's fault. I explained some of the past and perhaps you see why I chose to take back the control over myself. It has been a long hard battle to get to this point and know I am submissive, harder still to actually do it sometimes. I am very used to being "the one in charge."
I am learning. I just hope that in my learning process (often done "the hard way") I don't lose my Master. That's what I fear the most.
