I got Master a ball gag for Christmas. He’d pointed me to a web site when giving me His wish list, and said, “Anything from here.”

It was quite the experience shopping for toys for Him…knowing full well that I am the recipient of any selected toy. Picking your own torture device is quite the head trip! I told Him I didn’t think I was brave enough to purchases the most extreme toys, yet I found myself fascinated by them and wondering what they would indeed feel like.

I’d “wrapped” the gag with an undershirt I’d also purchased for Him. (He opened the undershirt gift first, then I asked Him to take the undershirt out of the box where He found the ball gag.) Interestingly, I was infinitely more comfortable shopping in the adult toy store asking, “Where are the ball gags?” than I was asking, “Where is the men’s underwear?” in the high-end department store.

He said He got hard just looking at it! He was a bit surprised this is what I got. I’ve always expressed an aversion to breath play, and early on in our relationship I shared how uncomfortable looking ball gags looked. I worried that I would panic and not be able to breathe.

That aversion has definitely been subsiding, though. I love burying my face into Master’s chest while He’s fucking me and feeling that moment of suffocation. I’ve grown more fascinated with ball gags while watching kink.com videos. I’d started fantasizing and longing for knowing what being fucked while wearing one felt like.

I went to the bathroom before He fucked me that day. As I wiped, I realized I was already sopping wet. He was hard, and I was wet…obviously we were both turned on by the thought of me being gagged!

I wondered how I would ask to cum while being gagged. Turns out, mumbling in the context of being gagged is quite understandable.

He warmed me up with some nipple play. He slapped my breasts hard, and I almost came just from that! I begged Him to let me cum, and He withheld permission momentarily. I wonder if I would have been punished for cumming just from having my breasts slapped. It took all of my energy to wait for permission.

With the gag on, I was surprised how quickly my level of surrender deepened. I felt myself open up to Him in a way and to a level I have not felt yet. I had the wherewithal to ask permission to cum as required but wave after wave of orgasm came over me. Instead of fearing being out of control, I relished the shift – where His movements and His commands controlled my body.

Interestingly enough, I have now been working out with a personal trainer for six months now. In the past couple of weeks, I noticed that I passed a milestone I didn’t even I know I’d hit, and that is I feel so much more in control of my body. I notice it when I walk, when I go to sit down and even when Master is fucking me. My strength to hold positions has greatly improved.

What’s even more interesting and curious to me is that just as I feel more in control of my body, I have a deeper experience of surrendering to Him.

“Are you crying?” He asks. We’re on the phone, so He only has the sound of my voice to go on.

“No,” I swallow. Obviously not very good at hiding.

Sometimes my feelings can turn in an instant. It scares me actually. Probably scares Him, too…or at the very least catches Him off guard.

I feel like I’m in an emotional fun house where everywhere I turn there is some distortion or illusion to play tricks on my mind. I’m trying to keep my bearings and distinguish between what is in the present and what is the past intruding on the present. But sometimes I really can’t tell the difference.

I feel like I’m doing the right things: going to therapy, taking my medication, journaling, etc. Nothing, though, seems to be the right tool to extract this pain.

Master has known at a high level what has been going on – or an inkling I should say. Old habits of minimizing a pain I’ve lived with for as long as I can remember kick in. I share a little, but I haven’t shared more (until recently) for several reasons.

One is that I’m embarrassed. That might seem like an odd reason – to be embarrassed by my pain. There are many nuances that contribute to that embarrassment, but they all add up to embarrassment.

Another reason is that I’m angry. I feel like if I let it out that I will go psycho bitch on everyone around me. Years and years of anger are built up behind an arrow, and I’m afraid of letting go of the bow and forcing that pain on others.

The last reason is that I just feel hopeless. I’ve let this pain out before only to have nothing really change. What’s the use? It’s better just to keep it inside and try to figure out how to cope.

He inadvertently steps on these landmines. Present day events taking the energetic shape and form of my past. Here I am in the fun house. I can see the pattern. I’m aware enough to know what from my past is coming up. But that’s as far as I can separate the two. The feelings come up, the panic sets in and I want to run, hide, escape…anything to not be in pain.

I feel him pull back. He’s probably trying to give me the space to deal. I’m pulling away, but I want him near so when he pulls back the panic gets worse. I want him to take control of the situation, to pull me out of my corner and just not let me push him away. Don’t let me get away with it. Don’t let my petulance rule. Don’t let my distorted view win. Tell me what is real and what is not. Help me understand the difference.  In the absence of this, I’m left trying to interpret what is going on in your head and the situation that brought us here. In the vacuum of silence, I conclude that it is me who is broken and that however I reacted drove you away. I watch you move on, creating a life that doesn’t include me. I’m never out of the picture but always in the background. The pain hardens into beliefs that I’m not worthy, that I’m not lovable, that I’m not good enough. Throughout the years, I beg to find evidence to the contrary. My vision is blurred, however, and I see everything through the lens of this pain.

I spiral downward and land in the next, present moment. I have moments of lucidity. It’s in those moments that I decide to clam up. It’s not fair that He has to deal with all of this. I try to focus on us and the light He brings into my life. I try to use it as a beacon, something to get my bearings and stay focused in the right direction. The fog rolls in, though, and everything gets blurry again.

I had a dream last night that Master was lying on the bed with His legs open. I went straight to suck on His dick then realized that I didn’t ask permission to suck it. I stopped and asked, and He told me to proceed. I was sucking when He told me that I needed to get Him off three times with just my mouth. I was sucking when I dozed off. Master wasn’t happy, and I was wondering if He was going to punish me for that. I think that dream was just emphasizing how tired I am at the moment from working long hours. I did think it was interesting, however, that I was worried about displeasing Master even in my sleep.

I shared this dream with Master this morning. He replied that He wouldn’t be unhappy with me for falling asleep if I was truly that tired. His response itself didn’t surprise me, but the contrast of my feeling in the dream and His response did.

Master can push me and expect a lot from me, but He always has my best interest at heart. He would not demand something of me that would be for His pleasure at the expense to my true needs (like sleep). Even if He pushed me beyond those needs for a moment in time, it would be with a greater purpose in mind. The feeling I had in the dream is not one that comes from Master but from myself. I am the one that pushes myself to serve others at the expense of my own needs.

I worry so much about not living up to people’s standards and expectations of me. One mistake – in my mind – wipes out anything I’ve done well. I often find myself trying to guess what will please someone because if asking what they would like would be failing to anticipate what they need. It seems silly even typing this out (nobody is a mind reader!), but it is what is going on in my head often times. Even the logic that nobody is a mind reader sways me from this deep-seated need to please and be perfect.

When I first started exploring my submissiveness, I was very confused about this need to please and my submissiveness. Was I being submissive in all situations? Was it a misplaced, and I needed to discern when/where to be submissive? Or was it just my nature to serve and I couldn’t help but act this way? In essence, was it all one in the same?

It’s clear to me now that they are not the same. One is surrendering to serve someone you trust, who has your best interest at heart. The other is borne out of a belief that you are not enough and struggling to fill a hole inside of yourself.

The difference is clearer to me, although filling that hole is difficult. Maybe it is not a matter of filling the hole but dissolving the belief and changing the premise of being good enough. The one thing that is true is that another – not even a Master – can fill it.

“You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.” ~Jim Rohn

I’ve been intending to write a year in review blog…well…since the end of the year. I hadn’t done so because as I looked back on all the changes I’ve made in the past year and how different my life looks now, I wasn’t sure how I could summarize it in a blog post that wasn’t a mile long. Pretty soon, it is not going to be a year in review blog entry, so here it goes…

A year in review you’d think would start with January, but I actually consider that my year started with my collaring a year ago November. In the days before it happened (when the collar was in my possession but not yet locked), I wasn’t sure I was ready. I wanted to be collared so bad, but in those last moments I truly wondered if I could surrender. I wrote to Master an e-mail titled, “break my will” where I thought the only way I could cross to the other side would be to have Him take (what I thought was) the last bit of resistance by force. He did lock the collar (and not by force)…and the journey to break my will began.

The collar not only symbolizes us taking one step closer to His complete ownership over me, but personally I took it as making a commitment to be who I am – to express my authenticity more fully. In the days before He locked it, I truly wondered if I was worthy to wear His collar. I knew there were still so many ways of being that were my way of hiding – and as much as I’ve longed to come out of hiding – that part of me that is ever vigilant about whether it is safe or not often kept me scared enough to let it be a dream and not to act on it.

I saw my collaring as a marker of the beginning of internal changes now manifesting on the outside. For example, at the same time that Master collared me, I told Him I was thinking of re-doing my living room (selling all the old and buying new). He just chuckled at my sudden urge to make changes. I thought it was a leap to correlate the changes, but in hindsight, the urge to have my physical surroundings change makes perfect sense.

I set out to make other physical changes but quickly ran into roadblocks. As is usual for me, I’d step out and encounter something that set off my internal safety alarms. I’d then run back and hide in an attempt to control my world. I look back on the e-mails and some of the journal entries about conversations with Master in the first half of last year, and all of it was an exercise in stepping out in trust. I look back at the individual conversations and see the theme of what was going on inside. I started to reveal to Master what I thought were the ugly parts of me…things that I thought would surely somehow prove I’m not worthy to be His (and even times when I pushed to prove how worthy I was). It was a wall I’d built and chipped away at, but I’d not been doing all the things I needed to do to tear the wall down. I finally figured out that Master wasn’t going to be able to tear down the wall. I had to dismantle it. I had to let Him in.

So, I took even more steps. Once I’d decided that it was all up to me, I took them one by one. I’d been taking tiny steps all along, but these were bigger steps. The initial, big steps were hard. I cried with each one – only because doubt surfaced, and I asked myself if I had it in me to really do this. By July, I’d put all the pieces in place and now it was time to just put one foot in from of the other.

The last half of the year seemed to fly by. Once I had momentum, all the moving parts started to work in harmony. I’ve been taking better care of health; I’m losing weight; my business is flourishing, and I’m finding my sweet spot with work projects that make work less drudgery. I’m being more open and transparent with Master, and – in turn – with others in my life. I’m feeling more comfortable and at peace with myself, and the urge to hide is fading away.

I knew I was opening up – even blossoming – but little did I know how far down the path toward slavery I’d come. This past year I’ve also been on the path to giving up control over my sexuality. It felt like fun games to be on restriction, to only cum in ways He told me to (like when playing with my nipples). I’d have days on restriction and days off restriction. Then one day in October, He told me to “Cum,” and I did – my body responded automatically to His command. It was quite a shock to me at first, and now – months later and having to ask permission for every single orgasm, I feel peace.

Having Master control my sexuality in this way feels like the most natural thing in the world, and I feel more myself now with this and all the other changes in my life than I did a year ago. Within His control, I feel the most free I’ve ever felt.

Just as I’d say my year began with my collaring, I feel like it ends here in mid-February. Two years ago this month, Master reclaimed me as His. We’ve both known through the years that at some level I am His. We’ve had lots of ups and downs over the years, but two years ago we both decided to dive in again. Little did I know two years ago that I’d be where I am now.

This year has been pretty incredible, and yet – I feel the best is yet to come.

The day after I wrote “breaking my will” to Master, He came over. We spent the afternoon together…having sex interlaced with a deep discussion of how I felt lost and stuck.

“You still can control; you just don’t want to,” He tells me. I knew deep down what He was saying was true, but it was nothing like how I was feeling at this point in time.

I had a few orgasms asking for permission to cum each time and then He told me to cum. My body responded and came – seemingly bypassing my brain again. I started to cry and lamented out loud, “What is happening to me?”

He let me cry, providing that energetic shield of love and support to allow me to fully experience the feelings.

When I calmed down, He asked, “Do you feel damaged?”

“No…I wonder if I’m being brainwashed,” I replied. As much as I desire this, the part that worries and protects me from “being tricked” has been surfacing.

He laid on top of me as He has done so many times over the years. Not once has His weight on top of me been an issue…until that day. He was fucking me, and the weight of His body started to feel like it was crushing me. I couldn’t breathe and started hyperventilating. I felt like He was sinking into me. I was letting Him in at every level – physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually – and I panicked like I was suffocating. He got off me, and I’m crying loudly and trying to catch my breath. He caressed me, and I slowly calmed down. When I’ve finally caught my breath, and I’m breathing as normally as possible, He tells me how hard my crying made Him. Hearing that comforted me because I realized I wasn’t falling apart; I was falling right into Him.

“I feel like I’m dying,” I say.

“Do you feel like you’ll go away?” He asks.

“No, I feel like a part of me is dying.” I answer.

“Is that a good thing?”

“Yes.”

“What will happen when that part dies?”

“Well, I don’t know if this fits your definition, but I’ll be your slave.”

He started fucking me again, and I started hyperventilating again. I asked Him not to get off me completely, although He did rise up enough not to be resting on my chest. I was trying not to push the panic away…to just let it be there.

After resting in each other’s arms for a while, we got up off the bed. He did say that once I’ve calmed down and accepted this, I’d be His slave. It was hard to believe I might be close. As much as I’ve wanted to rush the process in the past, I was getting the importance and significance of being in this moment, and my need to rush it had receded.

As He left, He told me I was now on masturbation restriction – that I would have to ask permission each and every time I wanted to masturbate. He explained how this would require forethought on my part to get permission – say before bedtime.

I smiled and for the first time in the weeks since cumming on command, I felt an inner calm.

This is an e-mail I sent to Master sharing with him my internal struggles about cumming on command…

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I shared that I had a tough time last weekend, and you asked me why it was so tough. It’s hard for me to pinpoint. I know that during the weekend my attitude was, “Fuck it!” and I just proceeded to do what I thought I wanted. Of course, I didn’t feel good at the end.

It seems cliche to say I was grabbing for control (although eating disorders have a lot to do with that). I have felt lost since cumming on command. Actually, I’ve felt schizophrenic. On one hand, I am calm and fine; on the other, I am panicking. At any one moment, I can be feeling one or the other. I feel like I’ve been teetering on the line of two worlds…with the question, “Which one am I going to choose?

The part of me that panics is not worried about the idea of cumming on command, but the experience was totally different than what I expected. It was so…automatic. My brain was thinking, “I’m not ready yet,” and my body said differently. In some ways, it felt like I wasn’t even there…but it was me…and it just ends up being so confusing.

It’s easy to get caught up in the romantic notions of surrendering…”my will is His will.” Even in the vanilla world, mushy notions of being one with your partner is the stuff of wedding vows and Hallmark cards. Yet now – having had a taste of truly surrendering my will – I shake my head a bit that people (including me) don’t seem to understand the depth of what they are asking for when they say that. Don’t get me wrong, the idea is no less beautiful or no less desired – it is just one thing to think you want to be One with someone and another to experience it.

On other slave blogs or posts to groups on FetLife there is talk about ideas like, “Am I really a slave?” These conversations often center around the fact that in our society, a person cannot be legally owned by another. So really, if a slave decided, “This is it. I don’t want to play anymore” there is nothing legally binding a person to stay. What strikes me about these conversations is that it seems wonderful to create a world where your will becomes another’s but really…isn’t this just a world we create that is separate from reality?

I’ve been happily going down this path toward slavery, and I do so badly want my will to be broken. Yet, I realize now that I always thought that my choice would still be involved. I thought that breaking my will would involve me somehow aligning my choices with yours but – that as much as we could fantasize about me being owned by You – that as a human in a free society my brain would still have to make the conscious choice to do as You say or be as You want me to be. You could command me to do certain things, but – in the end – I would still have to make the choice to follow.

So when my body obeyed and my mind seemed to be bypassed, I was stunned. And then when I masturbated and couldn’t cum or just had weak orgasms, I really panicked. My brain is thinking one thing, and my body is doing another. It’s scary…and it’s nothing like how I thought breaking my will would look like.

I write a weekly update to Master summarizing my progress on certain, ongoing assignments. It is also a place where I can let him know how I am doing (good or not so good).

After I had trouble cumming at all on my own after cumming on command, I had an assignment to masturbate every day for one week. Orgasms weren’t required, just to enjoy the experience. This is an excerpt from an update on that assignment…

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Like I said on the phone, my masturbation Wednesday and Thursday didn’t yield any orgasms. My masturbation sessions were short the past two days. On Wednesday, I did pull out the vibrator. I got aroused immediately (very wet). I felt myself come up to the edge very quickly and then fizzled again. I know orgasm is not the goal of this assignment, but it is very frustrating to be so aroused so quickly and then have the climax be so anti-climatic. Thursday night, I really wasn’t in the mood to masturbate. I played with my nipples for about 5 minutes before falling asleep. It will probably be something similar tonight.

I’ve been journaling this week, but – kind of like masturbating and not climaxing – it doesn’t seem to bring me the relief I’d like. I kind of feel lifeless – neither upset or excited…just apathy. It’s actually hard to pinpoint any one feeling, which is frustrating unto itself. The best words I can come up with are stunned and disoriented. I honestly feel lost, and I’m not quite sure how to deal with this….

I posted to FetLife last night asking about others’ experiences/reactions to cumming on command.

I got so mad at one response where the guy liked it and wanted more “stories.” This is my life, dammit!…not some show for your entertainment.

I was getting dressed this morning and sat down on the bed for a moment. “What am I feeling?” I asked myself.

Stunned…and I feel turned around. I’ve fantasized about our wills becoming one, but I didn’t realize this is what it meant.

Nothing/emptiness – that empty feeling after He fucked me to more orgasms than I thought were possible. He’s touching that place that I’ve longed for Him to touch. I find myself feeling very passive…let Him reach that place. My job is to be open and to let Him in.

Being an object – part of me fears my brain is being bypassed. I know it is not in this case but this experience is making me rethink what it means to be an object. I guess there’s an implication with the word object that an object is inanimate. As His object, I am not inanimate at all…I am an extension of Him…an object as valuable to His being as His own soul. Object is sometimes used to mean lack of worth, and this is not the case at all. The sheer intimacy of it makes it valuable…to both of us.

I understand my will vs. His will and Master/slave in a totally different way after this experience. I didn’t expect Him to be in me like this. I’m not panicking that it happened; I’m just trying to orient myself. I always figured aligning our wills (more specifically mine to His) would always be about me making a choice to follow Him. The idea that my responses, my actions would be so automatic, so part of the very fabric of my being…didn’t occur to me.

…and now the fact that I’m having a hard time cumming on my own…it is just jarring to be on the other side of this and trying to orient myself to an idea I had no idea was the intended outcome.

Last Friday was the one year anniversary of Master collaring me.

I almost didn’t remember the date. I was browsing through some older blog entries this past week, and that’s when I realized the anniversary was approaching.

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year.

I never did blog (or even journal privately) about being collared. I wanted (and intended) to, but it was difficult because I was embarrassed about the way I acted that night.

Two nights before Master collared me, I wrote break my will as a private message to Him. It was the culmination of slowly wearing the unlocked collar more and more until I was wearing it full time. I had so many fears about what people would think and doubts about whether I was ready. Writing and asking Him to break my will was very freeing. I’d fantasized about Him forcefully locking the collar. When He responded so positively to break my will, I imagined that not only would He lock the collar, but this fantasy of having Him forcefully take me would come true.

He called that Thursday night and asked if He could come over. It was about 8:30 pm, and His call caught me off guard. Butterflies filled my stomach as I waited for Him to arrive.

He calmly pulled my hair to the side and locked the collar. I told Him I wanted to fight Him…trying to figure out how to make this fantasy of Him forcefully claiming me to come true without it being too contrived. He heard my request and answered by telling me to lay down on the bed.

I’ve often laid naked in front of Master in this position, but I never felt as exposed and vulnerable as I did in that moment. He caressed my body as tears started to trickle down my face. He asked me what I was thinking, and I could not form the words. It’s still hard to put into words what I was feeling in that moment. The embarrassment of trying to provoke a more forceful scenario had set in, but I also couldn’t believe the moment I’d longed for was here.

He marked me as His own by giving me bruises on my breasts and my thighs. I honestly don’t remember if He gave me the bruises with His hand or some other object. I remember admiring them the next day as I do when He marks me. Bruises, however, fade; now I was wearing a mark that wouldn’t fade: His collar.

He didn’t fuck me, but He did have me suck his cock. I welcomed the opportunity to just serve and be (rather than thinking) in that moment.

As He was leaving, we were talking and then hugging. In response to some of what we were talking about, He told me I needed to remember I was the bottom in this relationship. My forehead crinkled with confusion because – of course – I am the bottom. Little did I realize or know in that moment that I still had a lot to learn or – to be precise – more to let go.

This first anniversary comes on the heels of me having my first experience of cumming on command. I’m still trying to reconcile that experience for myself. The steps to relinquishing control feel very out of control – at least in the initial moments.