Thursday, July 31, 2008

Know thyself, know thy place

I've been a bad kitten - a bad sub - and now I'm being punished for it. Master and I got into a few arguments (about really stupid things, and I don't know why I got so impassioned about them), and he said that it wasn't that I argued that bothered him - "If I wanted to be with someone who never stated their opinion, there are plenty of vapid twats out there," he said - but that I argued so belligerently and got so defensive.

It made him question whether I really wanted to be his pet.

If I could, I'd shout, "Yes, yes, a thousand times - yes!" so loudly that he'd be able to hear me two states over. My relationship with Master has been deeper, richer, and more fulfilling than any other I've had in my life, and I have no doubt that this is greatly due to the amount of trust, openness, discipline, and intimacy that D/s has brought into our relationship.

But sometimes it's hard. I am not a submissive person; I am submissive to Master and Master alone because there is something about him that brings out that aspect of me - that holds me, entranced, at his feet. When we're hundreds of miles apart, though, and all I can communicate with is words on a screen or a disembodied voice on a phone... it's more difficult for me to stay in the mindset of his pet.

I guess you could say that I was starting to go feral.

This doesn't excuse me, of course. After mulling it over yesterday, I decided that I needed to punish myself - to make up for the lack of discipline. So I slept on the floor, or tried to. After a few hours my hips hurt too badly for me to sleep, so I moved back up to the bed. I wish I could say it's the thought that counts, but that feels like a cop-out.

When I finally spoke to Master tonight, he said, "The only time you really think about your transgression is when I withdraw from you." He's right - I was frantically trying to contact him today, even bursting into tears because I knew we needed to talk and the longer we went without the worse it seemed to get. I think it has something to do with how our relationship came to be. Last summer, we weren't officially "together." We loved each other - we were incredibly in love, just like we are now - but we weren't supposed to be, for myriad reasons. So Master tried to suppress our budding relationship; I, my reason addled by emotions, clawed desperately to keep it up. I managed to restrain my phone calls to one per week, but if I wasn't able to talk to Master for over seven days I would grow increasingly frantic, fearing that perhaps he'd finally grown tired of me.

I think that is why I was nearly panicking when I couldn't get ahold of Master for an entire day. It was just like the bad old days, when he tried to avoid me because he wanted to deny how we felt for each other. It's one thing when we can't speak for an extended period of time due to extenuating circumstances: one of us is on vacation, work keeps us busy, whatever. It's another entirely when there's no reason for Master not to pick up and I have the terrible suspicion that he can hear the phone and just chooses not to answer - chooses to ignore me. I guess you could say it's a form of seperation anxiety or something.

But Master doesn't want to simply cut me off, however temporarily, whenever I need to be punished. It's as hard on him as it is on me. I told him how I slept on the floor last night, and he said I'm going to do it again tonight - only this time I'm not to move to the bed, no matter what. I'll just lie on my stomach; that should be most comfortable.

"And tomorrow," he said after telling me to sleep on the floor, "for breakfast, you're going to get your dish and fill it with water. And that's all you'll have until five o'clock."

My eyes teared up when I heard that. "No lunch?"

"No."

"Can I have my tea in the morning?" I always bring a mug of tea to work with me; the caffeine keeps me from falling asleep at my desk.

"No."

"...Okay."

Then Master asked me if I would rather go without food until 5 pm tomorrow or go without speaking to him until 5 pm. I paused, since I wasn't sure whether this was a trick question or not. "Well, I'd rather go without speaking to you until five, but that's because I normally don't get home until around five anyway - so that's not really a punishment."

"That's good. I wanted to make sure your lunch was more important than speaking to me."

"Yeah, my lunch is more important to me."

"Okay. I'm going to hang up the phone now. I'll talk to you at five."

Though I'm glad I get to eat food tomorrow, part of me feels like I should fast anyway. Whenever Master does this - threatens to implement a particularly draconian punishment in order to scare me, then ultimately settles for something milder - I feel... almost cheated. Well no, not cheated, but like I'm cheating. What have I done to deserve him going easy on me? Far be it from me to feel ungrateful; to the contrary, I feel undeserving of such generosity.

Well, I'm still sleeping on the floor. I suppose that's punishment enough.

I just wish we were back at school together. I feel like all of this would have been avoided if I were just able to sit beside his chair with my head in his lap.

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