Life Lessons and Retrospection

Seeing the life issues some of my friends and family are having to go through right now has made me rather introspective about my own past, good and bad. I've made big mistakes. I've been hurt horribly, and I know at times I've hurt others just as horribly both intentionally and on accident. I've taken some big risks, some of which paid off big for me and some not. I've made some great friends who have stuck around through thick and thin, and I've watched as people I thought were friends drifted out of my life without a backward glance.

Looking back on all those moments, I realize so much could have been avoided or at least the pain could have been lessened if I’d just learned to love and trust myself much earlier than I did. I was always looking for something that would make me better, make me into someone who people liked/loved, make me prettier, make me more successful, make me smarter. I was always looking for that something or someone on the outside, when I should have been looking within.

I had everything in me that I needed, but I’d been told so many times to the contrary that I never saw it. You’re ugly … you’re fat … you’re stupid … you’re never going to make anything of yourself. I let those voices become so loud and so insidious that I had no doubt they were telling the truth. They weren't even close to the truth. The people who said those things, they didn't even know me. Most of the people I didn't even like or want to know myself. On good days, I could tell myself that if they really knew me, they wouldn't say such hurtful words. The people who said those things to me who were close to me in my mind validated all the others though.

I’ve learned to be who makes me happy and not worry about anyone else. I don’t want to be a person anyone/everyone will love. I want to be who I’m meant to be. There are people in this world who I have been lucky enough to meet (and some I haven’t met yet I’m sure) who do or will love me just the way I am, because of who I am. If I had just learned that sooner, what unhappiness I could have spared myself and others. But then some of those hard times and trials have helped make me who I am, and right now I wouldn't want to be anyone else for all the world.

If I could share one thing with the people I love, it’s to love yourself, blemishes and flaws included, to learn from your mistakes and strive always to be someone you would be proud to know. Laugh, love, close your eyes and take that leap of faith from time to time. Maybe that’s all any of us can ask for in life … to be comfortable enough in our own skin to love ourselves and strong enough to trust we won’t be hurt when letting others in.

Sexy Poetry

The Colour of Love

Cold blade

Warm blood

Slice

Pain

Blood flows like water

Do you feel weak

It's almost like good sex

I feel released

Cut again

Cut deep

Cut harder

Please, God, let me stop screaming

Once, twice, more

Then I can sleep



Cacaphony

Clank, jingle …
Hisssss …
Slide.
POP,
Chuckle.
SLAP, moan.
Sigh.
SLAP … SMACK!
Yelp, whimper.
Arch, purr.
Grunt, WHAP.
Drag … shudder.
Caress, pinch.
SLAM, SLAP, SMACK!!
Moan …
Sob …
Beg.
WHAP, SLAP, Pat, Flick.
Scream ...
Caress, CUM!
Slither, jingle
Jangle, slide.
Smile.
Mine



Desire

Desire.
It speaks volumes without words.
It's in the curve of a hip,
the fullness of a breast,
the sweet softness of her lips.
It's in the indention of her navel,
the arch of her foot,
the feel of her black hair,
and the look in her eyes as she looks at me.
There's sensuality in every move she makes.
Even the way she breathes...
is sexy.
She is Sex.
Slow and steamy.
Fast and fierce.
Sweat-slicked skin
and silken folds.
Breathless sighs and honeyed words,
sleepless nights and dreamy eyes.
Desire.



Desire II

Score
Cut
Flow
Rip
Smear
Tear
Drip
Bleed

Feel

Laugh
Moan
Plead
Whimper
Sigh
Beg
Whisper
Scream

Hear

Arch
Flex
Thrust
Knead
Scratch
Grasp
Pull
Push

Take



Until I Bleed

Sometimes I want to scream my need.
My skin aches to be bruised,
trembles to be bitten,
burns to be used.

It's an uncontrolled fire,
raging to consume me,
that only pain can dampen.
It never goes out.
I'm always at the mercy of its flames.

Rage, claw, bite.
Don't hold anything back with me.
Mark me, beat me, fuck me ...
Don't stop until I bleed.

Sanguine Obsession

Let's talk ... Blood Fetishes. Who has one? I'm sure it is not just me. What is it about blood and blood letting that is so fascinating?

I first fell in love with the look of it and the symbolism behind it. I grew up watching vampire movies of all varieties. I loved the dance they portrayed. Some seduced and some simply took what they wanted. Some wanted love, and some simply craved the blood. I loved the sight of fangs penetrating flesh, blood dripping down the side of a neck or wrist, flowing out the corners of a vampire's mouth. I loved the sounds that they made while feeding and being fed on. I loved the inherent sexuality and power, the ferocity and the gentle sensuality. Watching vampire movies was my first love affair with the power exchange.

There is the power of the blood itself. Red, hot, gushing or sliding in small rivulets. Life and Death. Vitality in liquid form. Blood is life. Life is blood. Blood holds all the power, so if you can take or release the blood, you hold the power. That is fucking sexing.

And then there is the physicality of the blood. I love to see blood well on the surface of the skin. I love the smell of it and the taste of it. I love the feel of it as I dip my fingers in the pool and and swirl them outward in round graceful loops or sharp, heavy lines. I love the colors of fresh blood. I love the color of it once it has dried.

There's a primal urge to release the blood or to give it to one who deserves it. It's a gift. If they are strong enough to demand it and take it for themselves all the better. Sex and blood, fear and lust, power and submission ... it all blends together. Not a lot of people I know share my fascination, but there have been a few. Get the right people together, and the experience can be spectacular.

Maker Monday: Fast, Healthy, and Flavorful Breakfast Ideas - Protein Tubs

I saw the video below on Facebook showing how to use Greek yogurt and protein powder to make  breakfast bowls. I am not much on breakfast. I'm not awake enough most weekday mornings to appreciate a good breakfast, and if I am not going to have a good breakfast I'd rather skip it. And let's be honest, for a lot of us, the extra half hour of sleep we can exchange for the time it would take to prepare and eat breakfast is worth skipping the meal. I usually toss a protein bar or an apple or banana in my bag and head to work.


When I saw this video, I instantly thought it was a great idea. I have tried so many different brands and flavors of meal replacement shakes. Some of the pre-mixed ones are okay, but they are really expensive. The cost is lower if you just buy the powder and add your own liquid, but the consistency is just awful. No matter how thoroughly or long I mix the powder into the water or milk, it seems to be both watery and clump. The powder settles to the bottom so that occasionally you will get a big mushy clump of protein powder with barely flavored milk/water. It is not pleasant. I like the idea of an almost instant meal, but the texture inconsistencies get me every time.

So, when I saw that they mix the protein powder into plain Greek yogurt, I saw that this very well might solve my texture issue while helping me create a very fast, flavorful, healthy breakfast alternative. Last night I decided to put together a couple just to try. I already had some slim fast breakfast shake mix in my cupboard, and I picked up some fresh  yogurt on our grocery trip earlier in the day (I love plain yogurt on pretty much anything you would normally use sour cream or Miracle Whip).

Once the scoop of protein shake mix is added to a cup of Greek yogurt and mixed well, the yogurt has a very fluffy, whipped texture. It's almost like a dense chocolate mousse. I really like the extra tang that the yogurt adds to the flavor too. I have never liked any of the flavors of protein shakes other than chocolate for drinking, but I could see really enjoying vanilla, strawberry, or caramel as a yogurt/mousse flavor. I slice two to three strawberries to go with each serving and stored them in my Rubbermaid Takealong containers that have the removable trays to keep the fruit from getting soggy. I think I might try some almond slivers, granola, or maybe some dried fruit as mix-ins for some later in the week.

Maker Monday: Fast, Healthy, and Flavorful Breakfast Ideas - Nordic Stone Age Snack Bars

 

I really like the convenience of being able to grab a granola or protein bar, stash it in my purse, and go to work or to the park or wherever I am headed. Some are acceptable meal replacements, and some are very enjoyable snacks. Almost all of them have more sugar than I can for or are so dry and flavorless I might as well be eating cardboard. And so very many of them are peanut butter flavored. I like peanut butter a lot, but I do not care for peanut butter flavorings at all.

I have occasionally made my own granola, but I had never attempted to make my own snack bars. I saw a video cross my feed on Facebook describing a homemade bread loaf made from seeds and nuts. I watched the video (posted below) and thought it looked like a great idea for a lower sugar, flavorful alternative snack.




I did decide pretty quickly that I thought I would prefer this in a more easily portable bar or square format. So, instead of putting the whole mix in a loaf pan, I split it into two 8x8 stoneware dishes.

For my snack bars I included:

• 1/2 cup raw slivered almonds 
• 1 cup raw chopped walnuts
• 1/2 cup brown flax seeds
• 1/2 cup golden flax seeds
• 1 cup toasted sunflower seeds
• 1 Tbsp. clover honey
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 1 cup unsweetened coconut

• 1 cup raw pumpkin seeds
• 1/4 cup sesame seeds
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 olive oil
• 5 eggs
• 1 ½ teaspoons sea salt

Mix all of these ingredients in a bowl and then half between two 8x8 lightly greased baking dishes. I cooked my bars at 375 degrees for 40 minutes. They turned out crisp along the edges and chewy in the middle. I cut one pan into small granola bar size, and I cut the other pan into small squares like I would brownies.

They are chewy and crunchy at the same time, very flavorful, and filling. Next time I might try adding a touch of cinnamon or ginger to the mix just to punch the flavor a bit. I think oats would also be a nice addition. The original recipe did not call for the dried fruits or honey, but I wanted a hint of sweetness without adding too  much. The dried fruits also add some varied texture to the bars as well. I packaged them up into snack bags and popped them in the breadbox so that they will be easy to snag in the mornings on our way to work.

The Question of Consent

I have been blogging a lot about family things lately, which isn’t why I originally started keeping this blog/journal. Writing is my way of processing everything going on right now, so I needed the brief outlet. I would now like to get back to other topics, and that is what I am doing with this post.

Consent has been a topic of heated discussion in my local kink community (and in the greater community at large) over the past several months. I have seen many threads on various sites started to discuss it, and I have seen the topic come up as discussion points for local meetings. I cannot even count the number of Facebook and blog posts centered around consent, and on multiple occasions consent has been the topic of interest among friends in my home. As I have heard and read more, I have come to realize that what I would gauge a consent violation is very different than many others.

As I begin my definitions and discussion below, I want to make it clear that by doing so I am in no way saying that any differing definitions, opinions, experiences, etc. are less valid than my own. We all have to form our own perceptions and opinions based on our own experiences, and every single one of us will do that in a different manner with differing results. That’s what makes life, our community, and people in general so interesting. Please think about this before attacking me over my opinion. If you do not like or do not agree with the opinion I am about to express, I will be happy to discuss your reasons in a reasonable, adult fashion. Or, you can just ignore my post and move on. Please, once again, do not attack me or anyone else who chooses to share their thoughts here on my blog.

We as individuals and as community of people who participate in BDSM in all of its forms, by the very nature of what we do, have to take questions of consent very seriously. If we see or hear of consent violations happening, we have to do what we can to investigate the situation and make sure it doesn’t happen again for the safety, peace of mind, and reputation of everyone involved. If we do not take such accusations seriously, people will get hurt and possibly killed, people who are committing these violations will continue to do so, and then no one will be willing to interact with others in our community.

I have always participated in kink activities in a risk aware manner. Every time I say yes to participating in any type of exchange, there is a risk that things can go wrong through no fault of mine or my partner. Depending on what the activity is, there is a risk of minor up to very serious harm happening. Things can go wrong without us even realizing it sometimes. I'm very serious about discussing the potential for those mishaps occurring so that my partner and I can have a plan on how to deal with them if they occur. Negotiation and communication are so very important. Discuss every possibility you can think of during negotiation so there are as few question marks as possible. I realize there will almost always be possibilities that I haven't thought of. If one of those possibilities happen and I'm not cool with it, that's what I have a safe word for. 

I couldn’t describe a single truly satisfying exchange where something hasn’t happened that was outside the bounds of what prior negotiations covered. Did that mean that my partner violated my consent? No. It meant that neither of us thought of this particular possibility prior to the moment. Maybe it was a spur of the moment addition to a scene, or maybe it was a calculated turn that was meant to push my boundaries. If this new activity isn’t something I’m okay with, it’s my responsibility to put a halt to things either temporarily or permanently. I shouldn’t expect my partner to read my mind and know that I am not okay with what is happening. That’s putting an awful lot of responsibility on the other person for my participation. I do not think that is fair to either of us. If you are one of those people who falls into such a deep headspace that you do not feel you can say no beyond a certain point no matter what it is, you need to set safeguards for yourself. Perhaps you should have a spotter nearby you can trust to watch and make a decision for you. Whatever works for you. 

If you go through with an exchange to the end without voicing any sort of objections or concerns, two days later you can’t go back and say your consent was violated. If during the exchange I used my safeword and the person didn’t stop, my consent would have been violated. If I had pre-negotiated that I wasn’t willing to do something as a hard limit and my partner did it anyway without re-negotiating it with me, my consent would have been violated. Regret after the fact is not the same thing as consent violation. I hear stories involving this all the time. These are the sorts of stories that set my anger ablaze for various reasons.

There have been plenty of times where an activity was initiated in that gray area. It wasn’t previously addressed, so no one had said yes or no to it beforehand. The majority of time it has worked out positively for everyone involved. There have been a couple of times where one of us has called a stop because something wasn’t right about where the experience was going. There have been times where I have left at the end of the evening feeling okay but then later had second thoughts about doing whatever it was again. My reaction in that case was not to attack my partner and claim that I had been victimized. I talked with the person, explained my concerns and feelings about said activity, and either chose to try it again on a tentative basis or not at all. I am not a victim. I am responsible for my own actions and my own reactions. Being a submissive does not make me weak, does not make me easy to manipulate into doing something that I don't want to do, and does not make me someone who needs protection from my partner or from myself. Being a dominant does not make my partner a mind reader or give them perfect interpretation of body language every single time I react to something during a scene. If something goes wrong (or for that matter very right) discussion afterward is an extremely powerful too. The more you understand about each other and each scene you participate in, the stronger you become in your chosen role. 

Secondary to personal growth and understanding is another very important detail to keep in mind when making the statement that your consent was violated during a scene: Reputation. You only get one reputation as a person, as a submissive, as a dominant. We interact in very close knit  communities in the BDSM world. We all know each other. We go to the same events, group munches, and meetings. We serve as references for each other, and we all (at least I hope all) try our best to protect one another as best we can. It's our responsibility as a community to identify any predatory activity and remove the perpetrators from our active circles. Overall, I think we are very good at doing that. The grapevine is fast and vicious when it comes to violence or consent violations occurring within our safe havens because we want to keep those places and event safe for everyone. For these reasons, reputation is everything. One wrong comment insinuating a partner has violated consent even if retracted later can ruin a person's reputation within the community forever. It may seem harmless to sit around with friends a week after a scene and rehash all the details, how you decided three days after the fact that a particular action by your partner or instance during the scene made you feel violated and that it never should have happened. But then those people go tell three other people each and those people and those people, and before long your partner who didn't know they did anything wrong at all is suddenly banned from community groups and events that they had been participating in for years. Even if later you go back and say it was all a misunderstanding, that you've talked it over and worked out what went wrong ... the damage is done. Some people will accept that it was all a miscommunication, but to others that person will always be a predator who cannot be trusted. 

Do consent violations happen? Do predatory actions happen where people are hurt emotionally, physically, psychologically? Should reports of these violations be taken seriously and acted upon to make sure they do not happen again? Absolutely yes to all of these. If it was something criminal like rape or the use of drugs, the situation should be turned over to the police to handle. If it's one of those gray areas, investigation into the matter should happen right away. Thorough discussion should happen with all parties involved. What were the details of the scene? How did each individual feel about it at the time? Did those feelings change afterward at some point? How so? Perhaps both partners were feeling the same way about what happened but they didn't know how to discuss it with one another. Maybe the other person misread a cue. Maybe something else outside of the scene happened three days later that made that person's reaction to the scene change. Maybe something in their past flared up to cause negative feelings that no one had anticipated beforehand or during the scene. There are so many factors to be discussed in these sorts of situations before jumping to the conclusion that the dominant is a horrible person to engage in play and can never be trusted again. At the end of all of that, if you still feel the same way about them, choose not to play with them again and add a few more things to the list to include in your next negotiations. If they truly violated your consent in any way, make it known loudly so that it doesn't happen to you or anyone else again. If they didn't actually do that, don't ruin their chance of interacting with and continuing to be accepted in the BDSM community they call home.

Dream Lover

Maybe it's the moon or that Mercury was in retrograde last month or that I saw a friend become a lovely bleeding pincushion this past weekend. Maybe my hormones are out of whack, or maybe I'm just legitimately horny as hell. Who knows why, but wow the dreams I have been having lately have been of the oh, my god steamy variety.

Hands wrapped around my throat, lips so close to my ear I could feel every exhale and every movement of their lips as they spoke, back pressed against the chest of someone I couldn't see, fingers ... forceful and deep, demanding, gentle and punishing all at once. It's heady to feel that vulnerable and safe all at once. Asking to stop when my thighs are slick and my body trembles ... being told no because they know I need more.

Dreaming of knives glinting in the light as they trace intricate patterns across my torso with surgical precision and an artistic eye. Gloved fingers rubbing and pulling, opening the tiny incisions further so that the blood flows down my sides and across my stomach. The burning, stinging madness of it makes me squirm, which makes me realize my arms are bound and a latex clad groin is pressed into mine. Latex gloved hands smear the blood everywhere. It paints my nipples a dark red, stains my lips. The salty metallic flavor fills my mouth as fingers delve inside. Bright red menstrual blood pools and drips from my pussy as a shiny, latex clad cock pushes deep and hard. The air smells like blood and rubber and the sounds of slick latex slapping against wet skin, groans and pants and whimpers and growls fill the air.

I could go on ... the dreams have just been flowing lately. I'm not horribly prone to wet variety of dreams, but I have been blessed/cursed with quite a few lately. I know I am in desperate need of some heavy S&M play. And admittedly, my sex drive has been in overdrive lately.Definitely some food for thought that makes me want to recruit a few friends who like playing in blood as much as I do to make some of those thoughts a reality.