Chapter Twelve

What Have I Learned?

I read a blog post once in which a woman called her submission to her Master learned helplessness. It is not that at all. I have a family member who has learned helplessness because his mother rescued him and bailed him out of trouble every time he made a mistake. When we never learn to put our big-girl panties on and deal with life’s issues on our own—because someone else always solves our problems for us—that is learned helplessness. We never get to develop our capabilities in this regard if we never employ our own efforts. How can one strengthen a skill that is never used?

We all know that in a perfect world of submission, we simply obey without hesitation. There is no in-depth processing and over-thinking— as I too often allow myself to fall prone. There is such a lightness and sensation of freedom as I see myself begin to trust Him enough to allow myself to let this trait of mine go. Yes, a bearable lightness of being. I’m finding my vision clearer and a sensation that the key to my happiness in my life is, in fact, knowable. A calm simplicity and contentment have fallen over all my days. For years I struggled with a nagging sensation that something was missing, but I never could put my finger on what it was. Even when I met this wonderful man who became my Master, and I experienced happiness I never thought possible, I lived with a quiet but persistent voice inside me, a voice that was trying to tell me something, it seemed, but I couldn’t discern the message.

Now, as I find myself more, I lose myself more. As I learn to allow fears to surface, I fear them less. I must turn my fears over to Master, who, to my delight, has a way of blowing them out of the water, so to speak. I am strengthened by the fearless way in which he lives his life. I marvel at how he jumps out of bed every morning with the attitude that it’s going to be a great day: we’re going to be happy, we’re going to be productive, he’s going to be particularly successful in his job (he calls it “being a money-magnet”), and I’m going to finish writing a book that’s going to be a best-seller, he says. And even when things don’t go as well as planned, well, tomorrow is another day, and he and I will just achieve the entire list of goals tomorrow, surely. He takes chances in life; life is a fun ride to be enjoyed. Failure teaches us more than doing nothing, he says. I now plan to wake up every day and tell myself that it is another golden opportunity to deepen my surrender to Him. I am finally at peace with myself, and that nagging voice is silent now. I know where I am meant to be. I know what I am meant to be. I am a submissive whose devotion to her Master will hopefully grow to such an extent that we are seemingly One. I am a surrendered woman. A determined, but still rather inexperienced, surrendered woman.

And so I hope the roadblocks I constructed and crashed into by my own doing have taught me a great deal. I can honestly say that never before have I felt such a commitment to Master, a man who is my Leader, my Mentor, my Protector, my Lover, my Best Friend, and the Guiding Force in my life. As such, I now know, too, that it is not my place to judge Him. He has faults, as I do, and judging Him wouldn’t feel any better to his Being than it would to mine. I told Him the other night, “I had trouble trusting before. But I know with all certainty that you are the Master for me.” If I truly believe that, my actions will display that belief to Him always.

I started this book a year ago. I now look back at what I initially wrote and I see a comical, naive me. Sure, we’re all wannabes at most things in our lives when we first start out, until time and getting bashed around a bit give us the experience and knowledge we need to do something competently. I was a wannabe beekeeper, but now I am one. I was a wannabe ballerina in my youth, and fourteen years of training gave me the right to call myself a rather accomplished one. I wanted to be a writer, but it sure as heck wasn’t going to happen until I started putting my butt into this chair and actually getting the words out. It’s fine for me to laugh at my numerous submission-to-Master screw-ups, but I want to chalk those up to someone who just didn’t understand what this path would demand of her. I didn’t yet grasp the extent of the commitment I would need to succeed at this. And it takes two. I have a Master who is committed to excellence in all areas of his life, and I know this translates into wanting to grow in his role in guiding this beautiful pact between us. We both have much to learn.

I have to let go of perceived outcomes and my self-serving need to manipulate results. The Buddhists call this “grasping”, and it is defined as trying to control anything and everything by trying to pin it down, so to speak, and, conversely, running away from things is also a perceived means of control. And why do I need to control, but to keep myself from getting out of my comfort zone? Or maybe I can convince myself I am controlling things enough so I don’t have to confront deep-seated fears. I pledged, after all, to ride along with Master; he’s the one in the driver’s seat. Calling out orders to him about where to turn and which route to take does not a pleasant, grateful, trusting or obedient passenger make. I’m not supposed to tell him what to do, but it is my responsibility to provide him with information so that he can make informed decisions. To use the driving example again, why would I not call out, “Look out! That car just ran a red light!” Sometimes it can’t be helped. We want to protect those we love.

My Great Uncle always drove the car when he and my Great Aunt went anywhere. But a joke developed in our family: “Well, Uncle Bill really only holds the steering wheel.” He had his hands on the wheel, and he was in the front seat, on the correct side of the car, but Aunt Bea was the one really doing the driving. Perhaps her need to guide came from a feeling of too much vulnerability. Or maybe she didn’t trust that Uncle Bill was competent enough for the job without her guidance.

So, when Master comes home at night and tells me to meet him in the bedroom immediately because he wishes to use my body, I must at times tell him I will not disobey him, but I do ask if I may come into the bedroom in fifteen minutes, not immediately, after the oven timer goes off. If I don’t provide him the information he may need to make a decision, how will he feel about a dinner burned past recognition, or a small kitchen fire? If I have information that can help Him, I present it. What he does with the information is up to Him and I must abide by His decision.

I see that I will gain more by letting go of more. I would love to be stripped of ego and pretense, fear and manipulation, and become a soft, obedient, pleasing service creature whose motives are transparent and pure. It takes a great deal of strength to willingly put yourself at someone else’s feet, and I want that very much for myself and for Him. And I hope for a day when I can be His adoring servant in public and not worry about my “slips” in addressing him as Sir or Master in front of strangers, for example. I imagine this is much like the LGBQT dilemma—the feeling that the true self must be constantly hidden from others whose ignorance or lack of empathy prevent understanding a different lifestyle or way of being. I hope for a day of acceptance for all of us. What I have had to hide pales in comparison to what others have had to endure in hiding their true selves from society.

I recall when I was in the process of getting a divorce from my first husband, a divorce process that lasted almost a year. Master and I were in a committed relationship and were inseparable in our free time. Since I was still in negotiations with my soon-to-be-ex, I kept my behavior and emotions very much in check when I was in public with Master. I remember hiding on the other side of a bookstore when I spotted a coworker of my soon-to-be-ex waiting in the check-out line. I was very careful about holding hands across the table for fear someone would see me and report back to him, because any time I was spotted, I would get an e-mail message to the effect of, “So and so said he saw you and your new boyfriend at the video store” or wherever we’d been seen. I don’t know why people seemed to take such delight in telling him of my activities, as hearing about me with another man must have torn his heart out. He didn’t know how to love me or treat me as something precious, but he must have hated to see someone else getting it right. But I was concerned about riling him, especially when it seemed that the final divorce decree was within reach.

And so I know about hiding, but I only had to do this for several months, not most of my life like many of you out there. My heart goes out to you. I now join you, however, in that I feel I must hide my true self and the extent of my service, devotion and obedience to Master. I have only told one other person on Earth about this—a friend of mine who writes BDSM erotica. He says he doesn’t entirely understand 24/7 submission, but at least he doesn’t judge it.

One of my closest friends is lesbian. Even more than a decade ago, she dared to endure the stares of people, and she walked with her partner’s hand in hers in public. I once danced with her in a crowded restaurant and noticed the frozen expressions of people waiting to be seated. “Yes,” they seemed to say through gritted-teeth smiles, “I’ll pretend this is okay with me, but it sure as fuck makes me uncomfortable to watch.” My lesbian friend has always had more courage than I have, and it is people like her who help to change society’s perceptions, certainly much more than I do.

She always told me, “It’s not about sex; it’s about who you love.” A clearer understanding of her statement is seeping into my brain. There is a tremendous amount of sex involved in my relationship with Master, but it is not what caused me to want to give myself entirely to Him. And who am I really hurting in submitting to him, letting him make the decisions, and calling him Master or Sir? If others learn of this or hear me address him in such a way, do I offend society because I was given the right to “be my own woman” and live my life no longer needing a man? Do I slap female-society in the face by throwing their gift back at them? I’m all for equal pay for women and equal rights in every area, but my rights must surely include the right to live as I feel compelled, as long as I am hurting no one else. Would knowing of my slavish devotion to a man cause the majority of women to feel I was destroying what they had worked so long to accomplish for all of us? Am I essentially spitting on their efforts?

One of my favorite comments was made by a Congressman whose name I cannot recall. He said, “You do NOT have the right to go through life and expect to never be offended.” I am so tired of the media telling me what I need to think, what is proper for me to say, and what I am and am not supposed to be offended by in the actions of others. I will admit that I was so, so, so open to learning political correctness many years ago, but now my brain is so saturated with overkill in this regard that I no longer care to listen. And, oh my gosh, the way people twist the words of others and take their statements out of context so they can seemingly enjoy being offended. Ah, doesn’t righteous indignation feel wonderful! I’m not going to hurt anyone in my surrender to Master, and I bet five bucks your path isn’t hurting anyone either.

In another conversation, my girlfriend asked, “Would you want society telling you what you can and can’t do in the bedroom?” That the government has tried to legislate any part of our sex lives is absolutely ludicrous. A picture just flashed in my mind of a drug dealer sitting in an interrogation room with detectives. The drugs and the paraphernalia are on display in front of him. Then the pointed and hard-hitting questions begin.

I see myself in an interrogation room with Master’s and my sex toys on display.

“Did you or did you not, Ms. Sterling, have this giant butt plug rammed up your ass?”

I would infer that he’s a real idiot for thinking anything that big could possibly fit past my little sphincter. (Or maybe I call the detective a little sphincter. I’m obviously just typing this vision out to you on the fly, okay?)

The detective would then hand the butt plug to an officer and say, “Send this to the lab. Do it! Now!”

“Don’t play games with us, Ms. Sterling, you… you… you pervert. If we check the boxes in the garage, will we find more toys? Tell us where you keep the rest of your nasty stash!!!”

Before I could answer, he would add, “And what are all these collars for? And don’t tell me ‘my dogs’!”

“Well,” I’d reply, “We do have nine dogs.”

“Bullshit! No one in their right mind has nine dogs!”

Like smoking pot but not inhaling, I suppose I could claim I just have the toys because I like to look at them. Sort of like subscribing to Playboy only because of the articles, right? Oh, wait… the toys aren’t mine, Officer. I’m just keeping them for a friend.

It’s just so eyebrow-raising when people learn that I not only write about sex, I write about hard-core BDSM. I became tired of people asking, “Do you and your husband actually do that stuff?” There’s a lot of non-consensual in my books, and my female characters receive frequent, severe spankings while in bondage from which they could never escape, in positions that force every hole to be entirely available to the hunky, muscular and entirely dominant man in authority over them. Ah, what a beautiful world.

And so I write erotica under a pen name, and I have only revealed what I write to a select few in my life. My mother doesn’t even know, and I plan to keep it that way. I will probably slip up at some point when she or my mother-in-law is visiting and call my husband Master or Sir. I see myself giggling and making a joke about it.

Maintaining any kind of charade is so tiring.