"This is not a game"

That is what he said, when he accepted me into his service. That it was not a game to him and that he believed I felt the same way.

He was right.
I do feel the same way.

For many people, it is a game, and that's fine. We are all free to define - to live - our relationships in our own ways. In whatever way is meaningful for the people involved. But for me, it has never been a game.

The philosopher used to speak of the game. And maybe that was one of the many problems we had. To him it was a game, and then a game that became too easy an escape from the thesis, and then a game that became too demanding. because to me it was not a game. I'm too suggestible, too susceptible, and too potentially submissive not to fall headlong down the rabbit hole.

I never was very good at watching where I was going.

To me, saying that it isn't a game means that it isn't something that can be turned on and off. It is always there. It is always there when I am relating to my Master in any way, and it is always there inside me.

Always.

It's not that I don't stop thinking about him, the way one doesn't stop thinking about a new lover. It's that I always feel his control over my life. He doesn't tell me how many peas I may have with my dinner, but he might just as well. I breathe him in with the air that fills my lungs, even when we are not together. He has taken me and changed me and encouraged me and praised me and pushed me and defined me because he owns me in some deep psychological way that enriches us both.

I am not his slave. But when I begged to serve him, and agreed to his terms, at that point the decision was made. There is no negotiation. There is no safe word. The only choices are yes to everything or good-bye.

I cannot live with good-bye.

So it is all in his hands. And as I am his treasure, he works very hard at taking me where he wants to go, making me into what he wants me to be, and making me want what he has wanted all along, without sending me running. I am his pet. I am his creation. I am his Galatea, and his ongoing project is to slowly, carefully, mold me according to the blueprint he has been designing and redesigning for nearly 2 years.

All this is as an introduction to a comment I made on DiscerningDom's post Who's in Charge? It's not that I disagree with him. Rather, my Master and I are living a different sort of life. Obviously, it suits the sadist, who set the rules. As it turns out, it is also what I have spent my life looking for. Except I didn't know it.

Interesting. I like to think - I tell myself - that at any time I can say "No." That at any time I can stand up and say "No. Enough. You've gone too far."

But I find I can't. I truly can't. A switch flicked in my head. I will always kneel, I will always yield, I will always obey, I will always accept.

I think that is why, for us, this is not a game. It is a relationship. Where the delicate dance comes is in his own delicate control of the situation. For yes, he truly is in control. But he is like a sailor, reading the wind, trying to push his boat to go as fast as possible in the most dangerous weather without wrecking on the rocks. He knows that the boat will go where he sends it, but that if he miscalculates the boat will be destroyed. He has patched it up before, but doesn't want to risk being left with nothing but memories and broken bits of wood.

I am now that boat.