soul-baring

The truth will set you free.

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I haven’t been completely honest with you, tumblr. It’s not that I’ve lied. It’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s just that I haven’t told you the whole truth.

The major dip in personal posts is not because I completely went off the radar for months at a time. I was seeing people. I was having fun. I had some crazy experiences. I’ve really seen myself change and evolve and let go. It was honestly inspired.

But, there was someone reading my tumblr who I was previously involved with. Someone who then showed it to a girl who was submitting to him. I felt terribly exposed, so I kind of closed up shop. I considered completely deleting my tumblr. I considered changing the name. I was just panicked and worried that if I were to upset him in some way that this would turn into horrible blackmail. I want to be anonymous, he was unashamed. It wasn’t a good mix.

Also, he was still very attached, while I had moved on completely. It hurt to see him that way. I felt bad. And, with the knowledge that he still looked at my tumblr, no matter how many times I told him not to, I was upset and concerned about breaking him down with the fact that I was now seeing other people. He was, for some reason, and without even asking, under the impression that I wasn’t. 

However, we recently have, for other reasons, closed down most communication. And I’m just full of these stories. And I want to trust you all. I want to trust that this stays between us. And I know that’s silly to say, with hundreds of followers, a bunch of anons, and apparently this girl he was involved with all on tumblr and watching me here. 

I had so much trouble keeping a journal all my life. But, for some reason, tumblr keeps me motivated. I guess it’s because of the love and the positivity. And so I want to try to be honest here. I want to recount what happened in these many months past. I want to tell you the sexy and the funny and the downright awkward. I want to tell you the sad.

I want to say that I would be able to own up to my tumblr if it were used against me, but I’d rather never have to think that would happen. I do not resent my ex for what he has done, though I hope that, if he is reading this message (even after saying he had completely stopped looking at my tumblr), he will be able to look upon this with respect and not contempt. 

You all have been so wonderful, so supportive. And I hope this continues. I’m trusting you here.

<3,

Ivy

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On the topic of sharing:

I go back and forth on whether or not to get too personal on this tumblr. Sometimes, I do. I share silly things I’ve experienced with friends, sexual forays I’ve taken part in, and even sometimes when something is bothering me. Sometimes, I share stuff without being too overt about the fact that it pertains to me. Others, I just put it all out on the table.

It’s weird for me to sit and try to pinpoint why I started this tumblr or what I even use it for. I could get into the deeper discussion on why people even write in the first place, but frankly I don’t want to bore any of you with this already boring post by getting into the even duller and more repetitive, circular discussion of why we read/write. 

Rather, what I’m trying to get at here is I’m not totally sure what a) you all are really expecting and b) I’m supposed to set as a boundary for sharing. To tackle the latter first, there’s definitely a degree of privacy I’d like to uphold. But part of me likes the ability to be cathartic here.

Which brings me to the second point. I don’t want anyone to feel like I put too much here. My posts that are just pervy prose about the pictures get as much positivity as my personal ones as my ones that are just excerpts from books and songs. So, maybe I’ve struck the right balance. I don’t know. 

In the earlier days of having this tumblr, I shared a lot more stuff than I do now. This is partially because I was, while abroad and while at home for the tiny sliver left of my summer, not getting any. And, also, I just get concerned I’ll be recognized or I’ll upset someone by sharing stuff about them. 

So, not totally sure what this post was about. But, yes, I get torn about sharing sometimes. And it’s hard for me to say well, okay, this blog is for me. Because there’s a possibility I could be found. And that would be just plain awkward.

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Cheesy, Sappy Confession: I’ve choked up from reading The Giving Tree. 

I give way too much of myself to people. I get so deep into people that I feel like the only way to express it is that I feel like I have to break off little bits of myself to give away. No, not like van Gogh cutting off his ear for a prostitute or whatever the story was. No, not like letting someone cut off my torso to make a boat. I’m not Shel Silverstein’s pushover fantasy tree. (I draw the line somewhere).

But I readily, though it is sometimes regrettable and usually a little bit foolish, give of myself to the ones who I allow to get close to me. I’m sure it’s a condition or something. Van-Munchen-Tree’s Syndrome, what have you. I guess I have too much love to give, too many feelings. I’m too expressive. I don’t know. 

Often, it’s an incredibly redemptive thing. I give up things, I emerge a different person, I’ve shed some skin and lightened the load. But, it’s always a thing I do. I just have this urge to give.

mynameismaster:

And that boy was so very lucky to have her love.

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The word passion comes from the Latin stem pati, which means to suffer and to endure. This was, of course, grounded in a very deep suffering on a religious level, but I don’t want to get into that right now.

What I’m more interested is how we use it now. Crimes of passion. Passionate love. Passionate sex. We simply throw this term around without even realizing what we’re implying. Crimes of suffering. Suffering love. Suffering sex. 

I feel as if we don’t want to suffer. We don’t want to endure. And rather than seeing love as a means of suffering, we see it as an end to suffering. Which, in my opinion, it is not at all.

I don’t mean to say here that suffering is a bad thing. It’s not. Suffering is a human trait. It’s not necessarily being crucified or tortured or oppressed. It’s not even necessarily a bad feeling. It’s more of just this constant tug that drags us from room to room in life, the constant nagging that keeps humanity yearning, the innate tortured aspect of the human condition that allows us to feel so broken that we need someone or something to share and halve it. “You shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart,” says Auden. 

Love is suffering. Suffering is love. It seems we always talk about love as this very comfortable thing. And I mean love on all counts. Familial, religious, romantic, platonic, etc. Love is not benign. Love is not the solution. Love does not suddenly calm the storm, save the damsel, and feed the hungry. 

And I think that’s why we get so shocked when love is not so simple and when we can’t just be like, “well, we’re here” and then just sort of close the book on the whole thing. Love doesn’t want to handle us lightly, it would drop-kick us to our knees whenever it had the chance. Love is this wild and crazy creature that is this embodiment of our suffering. So, no wonder love is passionate. Sex, too. 

I think that’s part of the reason why I love BDSM so much. Aside from the trust, the control and the pleasure aspects of it, it’s an incredibly powerful physical manifestation of our passion, our suffering. The entire process is one of endurance. From enduring the suffering, you experience the pleasure. That’s a hell of a lost of passion there.

I’ll cut this little rant off right here before I just ramble on forever. But, God, language is mind-blowing. 

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At the concert the other night, the lead singer introduced one of the songs by explaining this person that kind of got him through one point of his life and into another. And then he thanked her by name.

It was odd for me, because I very closely associated the song with a woman who did something very similar to me. So, hearing another name come out of his mouth was very foreign to me. I was almost expecting him to say the woman from my life’s name. It’s crazy how much we personalize music to ourselves.

But, yes, thank you, dear. I can’t say I’d be producing this tumblr or doing much else in this realm without you. <3

prowlingman:

I wish I could hear the little girly sounds they make as they play…at least until an orgasm nears, and the inner sluts come roaring out.

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I want to be unrecognizable. I love how a relationship (I’ll just leave that right there for all of you to define how you like) can just completely drop like a bomb and leave everything scattered. I love that feeling of when we’ve gone our separate ways and realizing that suddenly I’m not the same person you were stepping into it. Anyone I’ve been intimate with in any way has left an imprint on me. I’ve been branded metaphorically with so many marks of who’s been here.

And I can reflect back and see exactly who’s done what. He made me like this. She made me get over this. They taught me this and that. Every time I open myself up, it seems those I’ve opened myself to take the opportunity to, if I may steal DYC’s perfect metaphor, rearrange the furniture to an arrangement that suits me better than that before. 

I just love that strange feeling of wandering around right after a storm. You can smell the rain and the air’s still electric. And everything just feels a little different. There’s this kind of freshness in the fallen branches and the leaves stuck to the windows of cars. It’s how I feel right now, entering this new phase of my life. He literally changed around so many things within me for the better. He was absolutely the thing I needed. And he’s put his mark on me just like everyone else, his certainly being one of the most prominent. 

I once read somewhere that if forest fires didn’t happen, the entire forest would just die from all the underbrush clinging to it. I don’t want to say that I was being stifled or anything. But, I do want to say that if I don’t let go, I’m bound to just wind up hurting myself. 

I’m trying to look at this whole thing from the positive spin of the fact that he and I really helped each other and changed each others’ lives. And, while sometimes it hurts to say that, for now, the buck stops here, it puts a little spring in my step to know that I am beginning an incredibly new phase of my life whilst changed so profoundly by him.

Sorry for being so cheesy. I promise, the regularly scheduled smut will resume momentarily.

drinkyourcunt:

I’m going to smudge the lines of your self-portrait.  I want to make the colors melt and bleed.  I’ll climb in your head and rearrange the furniture.  No one will recognize you when we’re done.

vrbw:

http://vrbw.tumblr.com/

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The little girl play I engage in is so beyond just the “taboo"ness of it, like most of the other practices I enjoy. (What’s the point of shock value in the privacy of your own room, even with the thin walls?)

It’s the feeling of being nurtured that accompanies it that draws me in. For a masochist/submissive, I tend to freak out if I am not able to hold the reigns on my life and completely know what’s going on and what the outcomes of things will be. The unknown doesn’t scare me so much as the surrender of control of things which I realize are so completely out of my control.

While I certainly experience this release of control while submitting generally, there is something about being a "little girl” that gives an even greater release. I feel little. I feel dependent. I feel this overwhelming surrender to the powers that be and an amazing sense of letting go without incurring the sort of consequences that I am afraid of coming across were I to become less disciplined and control-oriented in other areas of my life. 

In the role of the “little girl”, I’m forced to let go in a different, maybe even deeper way, than when I simply submit. I’m cared for, I lose my control, I no longer have responsibilities. It’s an incredibly relaxing experience. 

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It was one of the first things he said to me when he met me. Once he was really deeply into the lifestyle, I made him sit down with me and watch Secretary. When this part rolled around, I got chills. 

Fuck. I miss him.

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We just had a pretty frank conversation with each other. I know I talk way too much about us, but I’m at this awful tipping point and I just don’t know what’s happening. We miss each other. We love each other. And that really, really sucks. Seriously. 

Because, facts upon facts, we can’t make it work right now. And it would easier to be like “oh, blah, you weren’t worth my time”. But it’s hard to shake the fact that I feel like maybe it was worth some more effort. 

And he’s saying stuff like “I’ll probably always regret ending this” and he keeps blaming himself for all this and I really don’t know what to do with myself. Because I can’t let go of people. I can’t. It’s like a clinical sickness that we’ve failed to place in the DSM IV. 

I’m sorry I’ve strayed away from the sexiness and playfulness that I was trying to achieve with this tumblr. But, ugh, this all came about and I just can’t figure out what I want to do with myself. Part of me is like “oh, goodie, freedom” and part of me is having such a huge problem with figuring out what the hell to do with myself.

I know I’ve been very light about the whole situation in the past. Even when I mentioned the negative about it, I tried to stay positive. But, God, it’s getting so difficult and neither of us are handling it very well at all.

Sorry for the rambling. Seriously. Feel free to skip this sucker over. 

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Secretary is, was, and will always be one of my favorite movies. I remember first hearing Whoopi Goldberg talking about it when she hosted the Academy Awards the year it was released. She discussed the outrage that many felt when seeing a film about a woman being forced to carry manilla folders between her teeth while crawling around on the floor like a dog.

Then, I was this ear-reddening, tingle-inspiring feeling that my eleven or twelve year old self couldn’t properly interpret as aroused and intrigued. 

Now, I’m outraged. Because this is not what the movie is about. That’s like saying Citizen Kane is about a sled or Reservoir Dogs is about a cop getting his ear cut off. These are incidental things that happen in relation to what the film is really about. 

Secretary is not a movie about a woman who willingly carries manilla folders between her teeth (the gal wasn’t forced) or crawls around on her knees. Secretary is a movie with these things. What Secretary is about is trust, love, self-discovery and suffering. It tackles the fragile balance of these concepts vis-a-vis a sadomasochistic relationship. 

I can understand why, to people not open to this sort of lifestyle, Secretary can be an incredibly disturbing movie. At first glance, it appears to be anti-feminist in the way that Lee depends so whole-heartedly on Mr. Grey, even to the point of starving herself to prove her devotion. Surely no self-respecting modern woman would do something like that. Right?

Wrong. What people tend to ignore is that Lee did not do these things because Mr. Grey forced her. She acted out of her own volition. She behaved in a way that satisfied her. She put herself on the line in such a way because it met a need that panged around inside her, a need to serve. We even see her backing out of other, similar situations because she did not enjoy the sort of behavior that was being asked of her. She was in control of when she surrendered her control, making her powerful. 

She realized the depth of her trust for Mr. Grey and knew the fruit that came of giving it over. She understood the human quality of suffering and knew that to suffer for someone, with someone, who was suffering, too, was better than to “suffer” alone. This degree of trust and suffering brought her happiness. It was what she wanted. She had the power to quit her job. She had the power to stop the other situations. She had the power to end a relationship that wasn’t serving her. And she had the power, in her final test, to stand up, leave the office, change out of her wedding dress, take a long shower, and move on with life. And by the same token, she had the power to endure what she was given.

And in the end, there was love. There was tenderness. And it’s just really screaming in the photo. It’s not all about suffering. It’s about care. It’s about security. It’s about seeing what putting your trust in someone else can do.

So, I’d say there’s really nothing degrading or disgusting about the film. In fact, it’s almost empowering. It certainly empowered me to stop being so ashamed about certain desires and to pursue what made me happy.

I’ll get off my soapbox now. Thanks for listening.