Submission

Sir has forgiven me for my failure.  I am grateful for that.  Forgiving myself is… hasn’t happened yet.

Sir asked me to think further on what went wrong.

I have been thinking on nothing but that and my school work.

I am not terribly well right now.  I feel that if I start trying to explain I will unravel like an endless ball of thread and wind up a Shadow-shaped Gordian knot.

That metaphor fits well…  When Sir is speaking to me… when he is there telling me to stop… telling me to listen…  Telling me that there are only two things I am responsible for and nothing else… He slices through that knot like Alexander the Great.  He doesn’t follow me through all of my twists and turns and wanderings and tanglings.  He says, “Stop” and I stop.  He says, “Don’t think.  Obey.”

And I glimpse moments of… peace…  I don’t have to untangle the knots.  I don’t have to work them until my fingers bleed and my heart bleeds and I am hopelessly lost.

But I can never keep those moments.  I can’t capture them and hold onto them.  Sometimes it will last a few days, maybe a week.  Sometimes within a minute or two… my mind has already retied the knot and I am stumbling, thinking, tangling all over again.

I wish I could stop.

I’m afraid part of me doesn’t want to stop because I don’t believe I deserve peace.  Somehow it is my responsibility or my penance to always think… always consider… everyone else’s feelings, thoughts, my responsibilities to them…

My therapist says I had to do that to survive growing up.  But I don’t have to do it anymore.  She says it’s time to think about myself and less about everyone else.  But that sounds horrifically selfish.

K said I have a long way to go before I have to worry about that.

My therapist says I am getting better at this but right now I’m not very stable so I can’t see straight.  She says I have to just feel the pain.

I don’t want to feel the pain.

I’m tired of crying.

I wish I could let go.

Sir has asked me in the past why I don’t meditate anymore.

Some part of me, at least tonight in my tangled state, so this may or may not actually be a true feeling… but some part of me is resonating that… I don’t deserve peace.  Peace means complacency.  Complacency is selfish.  I must always put others before myself, I must always be considerate, I must always contemplate how my actions affect others.  I must always take responsibility for everything… I must always be… vigilant…  Hyper vigilant…  lest I… burden or inconvenience or… exist… in anyone else’s space.  I must minimize the impact of my existence…

Oh.  Now I see the transference and regression.  I didn’t see it in therapy today.  Now I see it.

I read this poem tonight.

Submission gives me scope.  It is relief.  It is… so few responsibilities.  It is all of the rest of the world taken from my hands and a simply and manageable set of responsibilities given to me.  They are challenging for me, Sir demands that I care for his property and I have never cared for myself well, it is challenging.  But without the rest of the world on my shoulders… I can focus on that.

But that is such a gift… such a profound and generous gift, it… is like the first breath of air after drowning…  that I feel… unworthy… I feel unworthy of being granted to right to stop worrying… being granted the right to… be selfish… to… give away all those other responsibilities to someone else…  How can I do that?  And to do it to someone I love?

I know I’m thinking.  I know Sir says to not think.  But he also said to think about what went wrong…  🙁

This is what is wrong.

I don’t believe I deserve the gift of liberation.  And submission…is my liberation.

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