Submission is impossible in the absence of humanity.

This morning, this was waiting for me in my feed reader:

(Excerpted From Can you?)

My need to submit is sometimes a bit of a curse, because it takes someone strong … much stronger than me … to tap into that aspect of my personality and completely remove my brain from the equation. As an ex-boyfriend once said to me, “Don’t you ever get tired of that brain of your being on all the time?” Because it is. All … the … time.

Can you remove that factor? Can you reduce me to a creature of such basic raw need that I become purely reactive? Can you stop making me think? Many think they can. A few are even sure of it.

So far, they’ve all been wrong. Because, eventually, their ability to dominate me cracks a tiny bit somewhere, and they allow me to dictate the terms of something. It could be something tiny, but the second that line is crossed, the very instant I feel that I am in control, I’m the one running things, even if it is fleeting, the death knell begins.

I doubt I’ll ever completely belong to anyone. Nobody is inviolate. Nobody can maintain that sort of control all the time, especially when I’m constantly looking for the fissures.

But oh, how I wish. I just want to sink into someone and just be.

This made SO much sense to me that I ended up leaving a comment that was pretty much a whole blog post in itself:

Oh. My. GOD. I could have written that. I know exactly what you mean.

The place that I’ve been slowly coming to in recent months is this:

There is a part of me that is dominant and bratty and terrible and wants control of things, and that part will look for cracks and weak spots in someone else and try to find ways to exploit them. For me, it’s a result of being abused and not wanting to experience that lapse of control again.

However, the other part of me wants someone to dominate me just the way you mentioned, until I don’t think anymore. But honestly? That’s not possible. Everyone has cracks and weak spots, and that’s what makes them human. I don’t want an emotionless robot. I want to be with someone who I can love and who can love me. And the only way that love is valid is if we’re accepting each other for who we are, weak spots and all.

There was a time, months ago, when I was pretty sure that my owner’s weak spots would destroy my desire to submit to Him. But I’ve found that the opposite is true. The more I accept His flaws and the ways that He is human, the more I love Him and want to submit to Him. I just wasn’t ready, previously, to let myself submit fully to anyone, so I was always looking for that weak spot as a way out. Submitting fully to someone long-term like that… it’s a terribly scary thing. Sometimes my brain still tries to convince me that I’m not long-term safe with Him, and I freak out a little, but as He accepts me through even that, I realize that I’m as safe as I could ever be, and I settle down.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is… there really is no perfect, flawless person, and if there was, you wouldn’t want them anyway. Part of the beauty of submission is that when you submit, you’re doing what’s arguably the scariest thing in the world, and just like with any other scary thing, surviving it adds a tremendous value to your life and who you are as a person.

It’s a process, to be sure, and I certainly don’t have it all figured out. I’m 18 months in and almost as nervous some days as I was at the beginning. But I’m better now than I was. For the rest of my life, I’ll be more than I was because of this experience, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

I'm chalking up my sudden expressiveness today to the talk I had with Him last night.  He called me into His room and snuggled me against Him like He always does, and stroked my hair while we talked about my last post.  He told me that I was being unfair to both of us in it, and He was right.  The part that I didn't manage to convey, or even acknowledge inside myself as I wrote that, was that He's a human person.  Beyond that, He's a healthy human person.

When I like something, I want it over and over and over.  When I don't have it, I plan and scheme about how to get it.  (Right now, I'm totally planning to get an iced vanilla latte in the very near future.) He's not like that.  He can like something and not feel a burning need to have it 24/7.  Once He has it, He can be satisfied and not feel like He needs more of it. Me.... as soon as it's finished, I'm trying to get more.  I'm just kind of fucked up that way.

He explained that His desire for something is based on lots of factors, and the issue of when and how He wants to play with me is largely dependent on both how He's physically feeling AND how He's emotionally feeling.  If we've recently been through something kind of emotionally taxing, and we do on a fairly regular basis (oh, the joys of trying to have a reasonable relationship with an emotionally unhealthy person!) then He's just not in a place where He desires the kind of play that I want.  The interactions that He has with me are very emotionally-driven in a way that I don't fully understand.

He is, and always has been, very adamant that any interaction between us be genuine.  He says that if He were to do something just because I like it, disregarding His personal feelings on it, that it would have a deep negative impact on our relationship.  I don't disagree.  If I thought that He was doing things just to placate me, I'd never be able to rest easy in the knowledge that He wanted every bit of me that He took.  It's important to me to know that I'm genuinely wanted.

I love Him because He's human.  I wouldn't want Him any other way.