Monday, March 8, 2010

Day 214 - On Coming Out of Depression Via Micromanagement, On Master Being Sick Again, On Shamanic Healing Rituals That Do Work and Sometimes Don't, and On Causing Master to Become as Angry at Me as He's Ever Likely to Become

In very sharp contrast to the last time I posted, things are going great now, emotionally AND physically AND spiritually. Master, seeing I was in the depths of depression, decided to take over my task-making abilities, and he micromanaged my chore list for most of last week. By the end of the week, I was back to a regular schedule of things to do, and I could put everything in a very effective perspective – and, best of all, I was getting stuff DONE – which cheered me up to no end!

*bounces*

As things are now, the inertia has taken over, and I’m running stuff on my own again, setting my own chores for the most part (although I’m still getting the main tasks for each day approved with Master so he can make sure I’m setting my priorities right).

So things are okay again. Well, for me, anyway. Master has been quite sick with a really awful sinus infection for days. *sighs*

I love winter (the snow and icy landscape remind me of some far-off memories, like from another life. In all seriously, I’ve often felt it has to do with a previous life as an arctic wolf) – but this winter has sucked regarding people getting sick. Master was sick for a long time (experiencing ups and downs that allowed him to function but kept him from having much physical fun) after I moved in, and then I got sick for about a week right after Master finally recovered, and now that I’m well again, Master is sick once more. He’s on antibiotics and resting, so hopefully he’ll come out of it soon. I feel bad not being able to do anything but watch.

Well, I tried to do something. The night before last I did I healing ritual, focusing on his chest (which he said was hurting at the time) and spiritually I found lots of green, bubbly gunk in it (which I worked to remove) – but that didn’t seem to help Master overall, which makes sense because it turns out he has a sinus infection (and I didn’t even do anything spiritually regarding his head, so I treated the symptoms and not the cause), and I’m not really the best at healing rituals. Actually, I wonder if they do much good at all. Yeah, I admit it. Some shamanic workers like to say they can do anything, but I can’t. I do my best to be realistic and base my beliefs on my experiences.

So why do I attempt to do spiritual healing if it usually doesn’t work? Well, it doesn’t work usually if I do it, but I’ve known it to work twice in the past on people I know well. And the thing is, the typical shamanic worker I know will tell you that they personally suck at doing healing – because for a shaman, it’s not them doing the work, it’s the spirits. That’s what makes a shamanic worker different than somebody who claims to be a “magic user” – in my experience, a shaman’s role is to act as a conduit between the physical world and the spirits, but anything that’s miraculous is done is by the spirits, not by the shaman.

A couple of nights ago when I worked with Master, I asked Bear to guide me, and Bear did, and Fox helped as well (which I found surprising, as I hadn’t asked Fox for help – but Fox is M’Lady’s guide, so it makes sense that Fox wants Master healed soon). If two spirits were working to get Master all better, why isn’t he better already, you may be asking? (And the fact is, he’s still feeling lousy – he went to the doctor yesterday, and that’s where he got the antibiotics). The answer is – I don’t know. Maybe Master would be even worse today if Bear and Fox hadn’t helped. Or maybe something’s going on that simply I don’t know about.

Not much proof for your skeptics, eh? I can understand that.

Okay, as I mentioned, two things have happened in my life that got me to believe this stuff is real.

About seven or so years ago, my sister-in-law was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She went back to her doctor repeatedly as needed, and the disease progressed, to the point that her doctor said she likely had less than a year to live, and it would probably be just a few months before the cancer started really hitting her body hard. Needless to say, everybody in her family was upset (especially my ex), and I decided to do what I could – I decided to go out into the woods alone with all of my shamanic tools (which I’ll describe here someday) and do a full-fledged healing ceremony on her behalf. She didn’t believe in such things, so I did it without her knowledge. I called upon all of my spirit guides to assist me and to heal her if they felt such a thing should be done, and I was being careful to express my desires but not to demand that they do anything. One spirit out of the others said she would do it. Arctic Fox. A survivor if there ever was one. She said she would make sure that my sister-in-law survived, but she wouldn’t be perfect – she said my sister-in-law would be damaged in such a way that would affect her for life. I told my ex about it, and my ex said we’d see what happened – and the sister-in-law wasn’t told. A couple of days later, my sister-in-law went back to the doctor for a full examination, and the doctor took and x-ray and did tests and … was extremely perplexed – he said he couldn’t understand it, but somehow all of the previous readings must have been wrong because her cancer was gone. Completely out of her system. There was something wrong, however, he told her. Her ovaries were now unusually scarred, in such a way that she would never have children again. FYI, I asked my ex to tell my sister in law about the ritual after that, but I’m not sure if my ex ever did.

About 17 years ago, my ex had had a cerebral hemorrhage. It had happened suddenly, with the result being that my ex lost peripheral vision and had a virtual time bomb in his brain that at any time could explode and cause him to fall over dead without warning. Doctors said death was extremely unlikely, however, and the two of us were faced with a strange and tough decision. I had just graduated with honors from college with a journalism degree and had just gotten offered a job at a small newspaper in Sheridan, Wyoming. My ex had an administrative job at a large bookstore in Denver. We had planned to move to Wyoming together because we felt I needed the initial experience there to get a job at a newspaper in Denver. but he had the hemorrhage literally one day before he had planned to quit his job. He had already told his manager about it (and fortunately his manager said nothing would be mentioned about it). My new job wouldn’t have insurance, but his existing job did. So we decided something tough – for me to go to Sheridan by myself and visit back as much as possible (which turned out to be once every three weeks). While in Sheridan, I became friends with some residents of the nearby Northern Cheyenne reservation, including an old and respected holy man. Although they were quite secretive about many of their beliefs, he took a shine to me and saw my honest desire to learn, and he allowed me to take part in several very intense sweat lodges – in which a very small dome-shaped structure is created out of bent sticks and blankets over a fire pit, into which are put red hot stones that have been heating over a fire all day. A half dozen or more people get inside, barely fitting in, and the leader then pours water slowly onto the red-hot stones, causing flumes of steam to billow into the tightly confined space. It’s awful and suffocating and so incredibly hot and – the point is, the only way to stand it is to turn inward, to seek yourself and to connect to who you are beyond the physical. The sweat-lodge usually lasts for more than an hour, in four segments (with participants getting a break between each segment and being allowed to go outside). Several months after moving to Sheridan, I told the holy man about my ex’s condition, and he talked with other members of his tribe, and, to my happy surprise and honor, scheduled a special sweat lodge just for my ex, to pray for his recovery. I took part of it, of course, and that sweat lodge was very intense, just like all the others. Afterward, a woman who had taken part with me came to me and said she had had a vision while experiencing the lodge, and in the vision she saw a river flowing through a landscape, and blocking the river was a large rock. Then, as she watched, the rock began to melt and break into tiny pieces, and soon it had fallen apart and washed safely down the stream, allowing the river to flow as it should. I told my ex that the next day, and my ex kept it in mind when he saw his neurologist next for a MRI brain scan. The neurologist said with pleasure that, to his surprise, the scan showed that the blood clot in my ex’s brain had broken up and dissolved in the blood stream, and the danger was for all intents and purposes completely gone. FYI, it wasn’t long after that that I returned home to Denver, and my ex and I were reunited.

So, without a doubt, healing can occur in ways beyond physical explanation.

Master’s illness, by the way, has made him susceptible to being unusually cranky, and twice today I’ve pissed him off greatly. One of the times he said is the angriest he’s ever gotten with anybody, and so I’ve most likely seen him at his most extreme. Looking back, the things I did seem minor, but I seemed to be able to press his buttons in exactly the wrong way, the equivalent of a few uranium atoms coming together to create an atomic explosion.

The first was this morning, when a “to-do” list task-managing program on my computer wasn’t working right, and I told Master, and he tried to fix it, and he did something wrong that made matters worse, and I offered a suggestion on what he did that was incorrect and how to fix it, and he told me to explain it to him, and I couldn’t figure out how and so I asked him to just do as I recommended, and he did and he again demanded an explanation, and I finally was able to show him what I meant in ways that I couldn’t explain with words alone, and he blew up and started yelling at me and accused me of being disobedient and disrespectful and refusing to answer his questions, and I started to cry and explained that I had to show him because I didn’t know how to tell him, and he yelled at me and ordered me out of the room. Later he called me back and gave me a big hug and said my suggestion had been correct and had fixed the problem, and I told him I should have told him the issue was the fact that the database table used a “two-column primary key” but I couldn’t remember the terminology at the time, and he apologized for exploding at me and losing his temper, and I hugged him tighter and told him it was okay, for I’d much prefer he expresses his feelings than keep them bottled up, and things went fine from there.

Well, until this afternoon, when I came home from the grocery store and, as I was opening my car door, accidentally caused a brand-new bottle of wine I had bought myself for cooking to fall out onto the garage floor and shatter everywhere, leaving a pool of glass and wine. I stormed inside the house, totally pissed at myself, and, holding part of the broken bottle, launched into a tirade about what had happened, and Master didn’t put up with it and angrily ordered me to go back out to the garage and deal with the mess. After cleaning things up, I went to my room to look up wine on the Internet, since I was going to have to buy another bottle to replace what I had broken, and for no reason my computer started going haywire and started freezing up. I asked Master about it, and Master went with annoyance to my room, and the longer he tried to figure things out, the more frustrated he became and angry at me, and, having become upset as well, I left the house to go get the wine, and I closed the garage door angrily, and Master suddenly stormed out of the house into the garage and bellowed at me, the force of his inner Dragon spirit launching at me with venomous ire, and he chewed me out for slamming the door, and he yelled that he was too sick to deal with all my drama, and he bared his teeth and told me he didn’t care what I did regarding dinner anymore, and he barrelled back into the house and left me alone. When I came back with the wine he was somewhat calm although still annoyed at me because he said he strongly suspected I had done something foolish to cause the problems on my computer, but fortunately he only raised his voice at me about that a couple of more times before finally calming down for good.

The rest of the night was overall a good one, although I’m quite behind in my tasks. I was supposed to clean my room today (he chewed me out this morning because he feels my room has become unacceptably cluttered and far too messy for his standards), and I got it partially done, but with the shopping and the laundry and the cooking and the other tasks of the day, I didn’t quite finish. Okay, I actually still have a lot to do in my room before finishing. And I didn’t even start on my other task of the day, which was to clean the kitchen top to bottom. *sighs*

And yet, I feel better about my position here than I have in a while. Go figure.

This is my home. And I love my Master. Even if he does have an incredible temper.

Who knows? Maybe that’s part of why I love him.

*shrugs and smiles*

To quote Linda Ellerbee (my inspiration and role model as a journalist): “And so it goes …”

*grins*

Toodles for now! I’ll write more when I have a chance!

Monday, March 1, 2010

Day 207 - On Being Emotionally Exhausted After Several Weeks of An Incredibly Busy Life, On Making Master Incredibly Angry Twice, On Breaking Down in Tears Repeatedly, and On Having Two Wonderful Kids Who I Miss Very Much

Hey, everybody. You were probably wondering where I went. Truth be told, I was so busy the last couple of weeks I didn’t have time to blog.

“Yeah, right,” you’re thinking. “It’s not that she didn’t have time to blog. She just got lazy.”

No, really! It was an amazingly busy couple of weeks.

Well, the last week was busy. The previous week ...

Okay, last week ... what a week! I started a ponyplay group in Denver and held the first meeting at my Master’s house, I took a long orientation class at a local therapeutic horse riding center in the bitter cold, I worked with my son to put together his annual science project presentation (and as he predicted, we found out that potatoes conduct electricity just a bit better than lemons! Hooray! *giggles*), I attended a half-day conference on women’s health issues, and I did my normal chores and duties and spent time with my kids, all while working to recover from a cold.

Woo hoo!!! *bounces and wags my tail*

The previous week (and a bit of last week), I was knocked out for several days pretty much by one of the worst colds I've had in years. I was sleeping 14-hour days to recover. It was intense. The cold had actually been building up all of the week before last, sapping my mental energy each night more and more.

Fortunately, Master had on hand copies of two great (and very appropriately educational) PBS reality shows. One was called "The 1900 House", and it was about a modern family trying to live as a middle-class family in a Victorian London home. Wow, the mom and oldest daughter were whiny. The other was called "The Manor House", and it focused on a well-to-do family living as Edwardian aristocrats while modern "normal" people took on the roles of their servants -- and BOY did the servants have a hard job of it! I'll talk more about it all later, but I'll say it inspired everybody in Master's household and enlightened us a bit! *grins*

Anyway, those shows allowed me to recover a bit while watching hours and hours of television, and after all that's happened the last couple of weeks, it’s not just the blogging that I'm behind in now. I got behind in a lot of stuff, so much that I was starting to have emotional breakdowns because I had so much to do and couldn’t figure out how to handle it all.

Well, the emotional overload started happening a couple of days ago, actually.

Saturday night, I was dog tired from a long day. I had gotten up early to go to a conference regarding feminine medical issues in town (It’s a weird thing to walk into a fancy hotel and to have a well-dressed woman waiting for you there, and the first thing she asks is, “Are you here for the breast conference?” *chuckles* Okay, in all seriousness, my mom died of breast cancer, and I’m at risk, so it’s not really that frivolous a topic at heart to me). While there I talked with a lot of people about a lot of stuff, and talked to my former surgeon (who was in town for the conference) about some facial procedures he had done on me in the past, and after he examined me for an hour he told me he wants me to come back to his clinic in Chicago when I have a chance for some light follow-up work. After I came back home, I told Master and M’Lady, and they didn’t bat an eyelash - M’Lady turned to Master and said, “I guess it’s time to start looking for a good super-saver flight for her to get to Chicago soon.” To them, getting me to Chicago for some medical work is part of their responsibilities to me -- they’re so incredibly caring about me, it’s unreal! It was just another thing to remind me how blessed I am to have them as my Owners!

After I got back that afternoon, after doing the day’s normal chores, I cooked an unexpectedly time-consuming dinner of Chinese stir fry that took about three hours total of chopping and mixing and cooking and serving and then cleaning all the dishes, and I was so brain dead afterward I could hardly think.

Well, Master had told me he had planned on going to the Sanctuary BDSM club that night, and I suddenly remembered and came down to him, my shirt still wet and my pants still stained with oil, and my hair a mess, and I asked him if he wanted me to go. And he said he had expected me to and asked why I wouldn’t, and I said I was tired but I hesitated because I didn’t want to disappoint Master, and I asked whether he wanted me to stay home, and he ordered me to get some rest upstairs. See, I had thought it was just another normal, typical night, and I’d spend most of it standing at his side or kneeling at his feet while he talked with other people at the club. As you’ve probably guessed, when we go to the club usually, it’s for Master’s benefit, and I’m just there as his companion and servant. I usually don’t mind, because that’s my role in life, but Saturday night, for once, I happened to be unusually tired, so much I didn’t want to go.

I did as he said, but I couldn’t sleep. I just tossed and turned and kept thinking about how lonely I was and how much I wanted to be with Master, even for a little while before he left.

And I went downstairs and laid on the couch near Master until he was about to leave, and then I followed him and saw … a set of boxes of his equipment near the door, including the violet wand, which I’ve been dying for him to use on me since before he took possession of me.

And in shock I asked Master if he was bringing all that to the club for me, and he told me he had planned to.

And it hit me that he had brought all of the toys for me.

And I lost it.

Since the day Master took Ownership of me, I’ve been waiting for him to play with me like that. To take me to the dungeon at the club and do things to me. To tie me up. To electrify me. To have fun with me. To interact with me.

And the night that finally was going to happen, I was too tired.

I couldn’t take it. Kneeled on the floor, I burst out weeping uncontrollably, nearly screaming.

In response, Master announced he would be back in a moment, and he went upstairs. To me, that meant for me to stay there until he returned.

And I kneeled there. Sometimes in silence. Sometimes quietly crying. Sometimes bawling at the top of my lungs. Most of the time, my head was on the floor, my eyes shielded from the world, in wait for his return.

I didn’t know what was going on. I thought he might be near me, watching me. I thought maybe he had left out of the house at one point.

But I stayed there, in obedience. To me, that was my place. I was a slave, and I exist to serve him. And he had told me to wait for him there, and that’s what I did, unmoving except to shift in place.

Finally, after more than an hour, I became a bit concerned because this was very unusual for Master, and I very nervously went upstairs to check on him.

It turns out he was in his room, angry. He had gotten into an argument with M’Lady, and he had forgotten that he had said he was going to go back downstairs, and that I was to wait for him.

Eventually we both calmed down, and we both went to bed feeling generally okay.

But basically, Saturday night sucked. Master stayed home, and I ruined his evening. I fucked up the night for both of us.

And that’s what life has been like lately.

Oh, it hasn’t sucked all the time. Actually, last week was quite good in most ways. But it was very busy and very stressful. More on that in my next blog.

Sunday, by the way, I was still overly emotional. I hadn’t gotten over it yet. I went to Master before going out to my kids and told Master I was having a small problem on my computer when I tried to open some Web sites. As a result, Master wound up chewing me out for most of an hour about the computer and saying I hadn’t been respectful of the fact it’s a business computer attached the house network, and he chewed me out for my disobeying and neglecting of some of his recent instructions, and I wound up making him very angry yet again. He told me he was going to get on the computer I’ve been using and find old files to delete to clear up space, and even though he said he wouldn’t delete my personal data, I got scared and nervous and upset and started bawling again.

Eventually, Master ordered me to leave to see my kids, and by then I was an hour late, and when I got there, I spent the first hour or so just crying my eyes out in the kitchen at my ex’s house while the kids played in the backyard, being very considerate in letting me pour out my emotions to my ex, who fortunately for me was quite caring and understanding that day.

My kids wanted to see me, and I wanted to see them, but I had to calm down first, and slowly I did.

And what did my kids do when they saw I was doing okay?

They walked in to the room together, held hands, and said in unison (clearly having practiced it), “We love you very much, and we want you to feel better and be happy again.”

And then they hugged me, and I hugged them so very tightly, crying again, but with tears of joy and love.

Damn, I miss them so much. It hurts so very much to not be able to have them in my home anymore. But that’s part of my new life, and it’s something I accept as necessary for my position, whether I like it or not.

Still, though, some days it hurts so much to not have them with me anymore.

The rest of the day with my kids was pretty darn good, by the way. I helped them with homework, and we did lots of crafts. My daughter and son both made and painted wooden catapults, and I made a decorative wooden birdhouse (that I’m pretty proud of. *grins*). And we all did some leather crafts using a great starter kit I got last week, with my son making a leather-embossed flower, and my daughter making a very cute cat.

And I tucked my son into bed and laid down with him in the dark for awhile. The ceiling of his room is covered with glow-in-the-dark stars and constellations and meteors and planets, and being him felt like we were huddled together outside under the night sky. It was so beautiful I couldn’t help but cry again, but in a good way.

Anyway … leather work is pretty fun, to be honest. My dad taught it to me when I was a girl growing up on a Texas ranch, and I think I’d love to make a purse sometime soon. Something I can show off at the club and be proud of. But that’s for later. As is further writing. For now, bedtime. The only way I’ll be able to do the Herculean task of catching up on this blog is to take it in small chunks, and for now, this one is done.

So … as always …

La kajira!