Knife banned; belly relieved.

The knife is off the table.
Left in the car, most likely.
Just to be sure.
Just to be safe.

We've been talking.
About the danger.
Or what passes as talking in our electronic world.
E-mails filled with cautious questions
and answers that clarify even as they disturb.

I am ready to see. I am ready to understand. I am ready to learn and arm myself and still, in the end, surrender, knowing that my safety is not guaranteed but that in his own self-centered, egotistical, amoral way he will do his best to protect me from the sadistic hungers that demand to be fed. I am worth too much to him to risk losing. I am his treasure. When you feel like breaking dishes, you don't throw fine crystal against the wall.

Two years ago, we came apart. He sent me a voice mail, and I completely misunderstood the message. It was only about 3 and a half months into our relationship. Everything was still so strange and new and often incomprehensible. When you speak in metaphors, as we both do, and are as economical with words as he often is, there are always dangers of misunderstandings.

The voice mail, which he had told me was coming, contained only 8 words.

Be careful what you wish for, my pet.

Eight words,
followed by around 3 minutes of tortured screams
from his tortured masochist slave.
It was horrible.
It made me nauseous.
It made me nauseous and angry
because I didn't understand why he had sent it.
What his purpose was.

I didn't understand.

Plus, like now, it was December and I was struggling to hold myself together. Struggling against the dark. Struggling against the dark and the SAD and the stress of my job and of not being able to escape to the Arizona sun. Add to this my tendency to think too fast. Meaning not that well. My brain races ahead - from the ADD, I suspect, as well as from being too smart so ultimately stupid. It races ahead and skips over things and makes assumptions and in the end really fucks up.

This was one of those times.
I really fucked up.

Of course, he did, too.

I sent a long, furious message which I think clearly indicated that I didn't understand what he was trying to say. (Although maybe it wasn't so clear. I'm afraid to look back at it. Afraid to see my own part in the mess. Afraid to relive the emotions of that awful time.)

He's a proud man, my Master.
He wanted to warn me.
Warn me of the danger.
He wanted me but he wanted to warn me
and he did something risky and extreme and it didn't work.
He could have saved it.
He could have written back and explained.
But he didn't.
Perhaps he took my reaction as a sign.
Perhaps it broke the spell.
In any case, it was over.

About a month later, he took me back. I won't go into how and why it happened, but it did. Extraordinarily for him, he took me back. And we've been struggling along ever since. I still infuriate him, raise his blood pressure, add to his grey hairs... and give him things he can get from no one else.

He is still warning me of the danger. More and more explicitly. And suddenly, this weekend, I remembered that voice mail and as if the sun were sending holy rays through a Cecil B. DeMille sky I suddenly saw it. I remembered and saw and suddenly knew what he had been trying to say.

I felt so bloody stupid.

So I e-mailed, with an apology for my denseness and he was kind enough not to berate me for my stupidity. We talked, back and forth and back and forth - about danger and risk and warnings and his attempts to protect me with no guarantees that he would succeed. We talked and it was clear now and on a few points he was more specific than usual, and on others, even with his obfuscating generalities, he gave me a view into things he hadn't discussed before.

I am not running away.
I know the danger and I am not running away.
I know the danger but I also know how hard
he is trying
to protect me.

And I know certain specifics.
Such as the banning of the knife.
And an assurance that I will be safe with anyone else who gets to enjoy me.

I am his pet.
I am his treasure.
He will take care of me.
And I will continue,
with a clear mind
and open eyes,
to surrender.