My Valentine’s Day

Trigger warning: Contains mentions of psychological abuse and self-harm.

I was going to do something different today, really I was, I was going to bring you ten things that bring me joy or something like that – something good and positive because I hate burdening people and bringing them down with my problems. That’s a flaw of mine, I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling as though people are too busy for me (I’m not important) or that my feelings are wrong (I was often told that they were). Because of that I’ve spent a lot of time keeping my feelings inside.

Not anymore.

Today I’m having a bad day, a monumentally bad day, so I’m having a bitch and a moan and really that’s okay. My bad feelings and my yucky bits are valid too. If everyone else can have them, and have them be real and true, then so can I.

I’m learning this now, as I recover from the traumas of the past: The things that other people had, I also have. The things that other people did, I can also do. The people who yelled at me can also be yelled at. The people who hit me, can also be hit back. The people who belittled and criticised me can also be belittled and criticised. Realising this has given me strength, it became my “ah-ha!” moment.

Incidentally, I also realised that the things they do to me are the very things they fear or hate being done to them. Those who hate feeling controlled will instead try to control others. Those who are afraid will try to scare people with those fears. Those who feel ignored or sad will ignore others or try to bring them down, and so on.

It’s called projection. Human psychology is fascinating, truly.

I guess the flipside of that is also true, and the reason that I try to project happiness and a can-do attitude into the world is because I do generally feel happy and confident in myself. I annoy and confuse people with my’toxic’ positivity sometimes, as pessimism confuses and annoys me. People don’t mean to be annoying, we just are naturally.

Talking of pessimism, I’m sad now because the tea is all gone. Why aren’t bottomless mugs a thing?

---

My Valentine’s Day started off with the traditional swapping of gifts, or as it was in this household, the swapping of Amazon packages. We have a good laugh about it, that we’re both chaotically disorganised enough not to have gotten around to some gift wrapping. Such is the way when you love a hard-working person.

“Wait until twenty-five years of marriage. We won’t even swap gifts anymore, just throw stuff at one another instead” Matt laughs.

“Why wait? If I start now then by twenty-five years I’ll have a bloody good aim” I tease.

“Hey! No” he says.

“Concussion? A you problem” I wink.

Matt bought me (or really kinda us) matching his and hers ice cream spoons, and we have a laugh about that too because we do definitely love us some ice cream. When you buy ice cream spoons to consume it though? That’s when you know it’s consumed you.

For my part I bought Matt a new notepad and a nice pen. Was the cover of the notepad cute and innocent? No, no it was not. He said no more naughty mugs and that’s not a naughty mug, I followed his instructions, see? I AM a good girl! 😉

Another rule with me: if you’re going to give me instructions then they need to be very, very concise. If I can find a loophole, I probably will. I guess it’s a kind of proverbial shit test: How Dominant are you, really?

If force is your go-to answer to disobedience, you are not a Dominant. I’m in a relationship with two sadists, and they both know how to make me beg and whimper (for our mutual satisfaction) without even laying a finger on me. Even if I want to disobey them, they both know how to twist things so that my obedience brings me no greater satisfaction. That is the ability of a true Dominant.

But also I think the submissive in me likes concise instructions, generally. They require no thinking about what I need to do next, just following. My overworked brain can take a rest.

Alas I fear that little revelation is a part of my conditioning, of my finally becoming the submissive that Sir knows I can really be. Well I put up a good fight, anyway. Didn’t I?

---

“What do you want for lunch, Kitten?” Matt asks.

“It’s a Tuesday so… soup?” I reply. In the winter and spring I always have cup soup on weekdays but Friday. It’s warming for those colder days.

“It’s also Valentine’s Day” he mutters against my ear. The swine, he knows what he’s doing.

“Pasty or Parsons Bakery?” he asks.

“How about bao buns?” I suggest. He should never have introduced me to those.

“Bao buns are more of a Friday thing” he says. I pout teasingly.

“Oh but… it’s Valentine’s Day, isn’t that what you said?”. Matt glares at me for a moment while he thinks of an argument.

“Hoist by your own petard, Mr S” I wink.

“Fine. Bao buns on Friday, deal?” he says, offering me his hand. I take it in a firm grip and shake it.

“A business doing pleasure with you, Mr S” I smile.

“You’re expensive to keep, Mrs S” he sighs.

“Yep, but totally worth it” I reply. “Remember, want premium goods? Pay premium prices.“

In the end we settled for a Cornish pasty.

“I didn’t get you a drink because you don’t drink fizz, it will just end up on top of the refridgerator instead” Matt says when food arrives.

“Oh bite me” I reply.

“An order or a request, Mrs S?” he asks. I shrug and venture out into the kitchen in search of food.

“Can’t it be both?”

“Good girls don’t make orders” he says, backing me against the kitchen wall.

“Bad girls don’t make requests” I whisper. I feel him smile and his stubble on my skin as he grazes his teeth down my neck in a threatening manner.

“Depends, do you want me to bite you?”

“Please” I breathe, he laughs and sinks his teeth against my flesh.

“Good girl” he says, brushing my cheek with his thumb.

---

As the sun sets. two bright white stars become visible in the night sky. I know what they are, I’m just not sure which ones they are. I install Stellarium on my phone and orientate it.

Venus and Jupiter. Cool!

“Wolf, join me outside for a minute?” I ask Matt. He’s reluctant, it’s cold outside. I raise an eyebrow at him.

“Mr S, thirteen years ago you took me for a walk in a park I didn’t know, in February, so you could ask me a question under the stars. Now, in the name of love, fairness and romance, join me outside please? It’s for… kinda stars.”

He pulls on his slippers and joins me.

“What want, woman?” he asks. I point up.

“The Goddess of love shines brightly for us tonight” I say, “happy Valentine’s Day.”

“Venus?” he asks. I nod.

“The very same.”

“And the other one is…?”

“Jupiter.”

“Hey, that’s kinda cool. What about the stars?”. I’m happy to talk him through them.

“You’ve got Orion, with Orion’s belt. The plough, Perseus, where we see lots of meteor showers when it’s clear enough. Libra over there” I say, pointing out his starsign.

“Is that it?”

“Yeah but… Libra has always been kinda boring” I tease. He makes as though to bite my nose.

“And my personal favourite, Cassiopeia. The mindfuck of the night sky” I chuckle, “is she a W or a M?”

Matt steps around the side of the flat and more into the front garden.

“What about that one over there?” he says, pointing out a bright white star.

“That’s Jupiter, from a different angle” I smile.

---

By nightfall my mother messages me. I have to be honest and say that I’m a bit bugged to get into conversation on Valentine’s Day – it’s Valentine’s Day, I have plans – but I grace her anyway. Just because I have plans, there’s no need to be rude. Treat them for who you are, not who they are and all of that. I am a woman with morals and principles.

Questionable ones sometimes maybe, but hey.

I’m looking at fires arm

Atm even lol

Careful! Talk like that and the hunky cop at your door armed with an MP5 will be a real one lol

In my dreams, she replies.

I don’t think armed response really care for safewords either lol

Oh well I will stick to what I have then

Again? Another one? She only met one like… three weeks ago? And she goes to some club where she doesn’t exactly sit around sipping drinks.

Met yesterday, meant to meet at 11 both got there early at 10.30. Didn’t get home until gone 2…. am!

A fifteen-hour date? What the actual fuck. On a Monday? What does this guy even do?

We just clicked and we’re both single, similar expectations too, she continues.

I’ve been here before, not so long ago. The alarm bells are going off in my mind.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Just go careful, I advise her. It started out all shiny for me too, and then…

She knows the ‘and then’.

Forgive me for speaking out here, Dear Reader, but my first meets with both of my two loveable nutters was about four hours apiece. With Matt we went dog walking, he came back to mine for some food and went home a little later. That was it! No making out, (definitely!) no sex, no cuddling, nothing. About four get-togethers in, my parents had him felting Dad’s shed roof and helping clean out the pond. We didn’t have sex until about five months after we first met because we were never spared time alone, and even that happened at his Dad’s flat!

Bill and I met at Bristol Kite Festival and yes, I suppose you could say that we ‘just clicked’. I didn’t feel like I’d never met Bill before, I felt like we’d known one another for years. We don’t have a physical relationship but that has to do with the boundaries of our ethical non-monogamy, not my sheltered upbringing.

My mother, for whatever reason, hated Matt at one time. She used to tell me that I dressed like a slut when I went clubbing with him and was “asking to get raped”. She called him an abuser after I came home with some (very much consensual) sex bruises and said if someone else saw it he could be arrested and jailed. She banned Matt from our home for a time because he couldn’t hold down a job (his home life was making him ill) and would only call him “It” (to be fair to him, he did turn that on it’s head by only referring to her as “Hitler” until she stopped). She once said that her “Christmas wish” was that we would break up and she would have her children back. She wrote me a four-page letter telling me all the reasons he’s bad for me and that she was “sorry” and that we “always hurt the ones we love most”. She even told me once that if we ever had children then she would report us to Social Services because we wouldn’t cope, a statement that come back to bite her firmly on the ass given that Matt and I are happily childless with a dog, my brother is single with no children and still living at home at 33 (so probably no grandkids anytime soon) and I got moved out of her home by Social Services on grounds that she was abusing me. If that’s not karma, I don’t know what is.

Only when Matt confronted her and showed her that he really was good enough for me did she believe it. The day he stood up to her was the day she backed off. She yelled at him and he yelled back. She blinked first.

---

Helen I’m a consenting adult, let me have some fun.

I’m appalled, completely flabberghasted. She put my family through pure hell because I was having my fun, but now she just wants me to chill the beans?

Fine, but she’s going to get exactly what she’s asked for.

In the heat of the moment I wrote out a note that I planned to send to her, though fortunately and under my husband’s guidance, I didn’t send it:

Mum it hurts me to say this but I will be pulling back for a while to protect myself. You seemed very busy last week and you were worried about seeing me Sunday because you would be tired from Saturday and had to go out on Monday. I compromised my Friday plans with Matt so that we could catch up, and even then there were issues for which you called me a wally and made me feel stupid. I told you that your message was confusing and I asked you politely for clarification to help me understand you better, your reaction has really hurt me and tonight has just furthered it. I thought you had an appointment on Monday but then I learn that you were just seeing someone else for fun. You told me once that the family will always come first but it feels now like this is not true. When I show concern you tell me to let you have fun so now that’s what I am going to do. I’m sorry I love you but if you are going to be selfish then I have to be selfish too xxx

Nobody ever said being strong was easy. It’s absolutely fucking shit sometimes.

I’ve disabled Facebook on my phone. I realised that I was only ever really posting updates so the family knew that I was alive and well; my people-pleaser tendencies. If they care so much now they can call.

I’ve also reduced my ‘call Mum’ task from once every few days to once a week. If I’m not a priority to her, she doesn’t get to be a priority to me.

This isn’t love, no. This is self-love in it’s rawest form.

“What a fucking hypocrite” I seethe, I am beyond livid. It’s more than just hurt, it’s pure anger at all of the things she went to extreme lengths to get me not to do because she cared, and is gladly doing now when I care.

Perhaps coupled with the fact that, growing up, the “friends” my mother had weren’t really friends at all. They were, well, clients.

“Friends” was a lie we were told to make the abnormal seem more normal.

She’s had her fun. She’s had too much fun and she ruined my fun too!

That’s why I’m so angry. I’m resentful.

If I wasn’t respectfully confined by the boundaries of my poly relationships then, well, there would be some very lucky guys out there tonight, let me just tell you!

I’ve already decided not to return to my local BDSM scene; I’m embarrassed of my mother, who frequents it plenty. Last week she tormented some Dominants at an event and got herself more trouble than what she could realistically handle and she seems to be finding a new partner almost every month as of late. She is a danger to herself and I can do nothing but watch, wait and pray to all things holy.

I don’t want to be associated with her behaviour, I don’t want people to think I’m that easy. Had that been me, I probably would have been threatened with eviction and sex addiction therapy.

I am going to go ‘I don’t wish to know’ on her; if I can’t care then I don’t care. Yes it will probably hurt her but she’s hurt me. Right now I have to protect me.

“I will never, ever heed another word of advice from that woman again” I tell Matt.

From now on there are only three opinions that matter to me: Matt’s, Bill’s and Andy’s.

“I’m going to bed, love” I say, “I’m so sorry this Valentine’s has been an absolute shitshow” I add through my tears.

I sit on the bed and watch the corydoras for a while. As I do, my hand wanders subconciously to my leg and starts picking at any lumps and bumps it can find.

I’ve never been a cutter, but I was a scratcher in my secondary school years and skin-picking is something that I’ve long struggled with in times of stress.

I’m loosely aware of some discomfort but it doesn’t feel that bad. I move my hand up slightly and I feel wet – blood.

For the first time in more than a decade, I’ve drawn blood.

I feel more hurt, and ashamed.

BDSM was supposed to be my alternative, my antedote, my panacea. Masochism was supposed to be the way that I could sometimes hurt in a controlled manner to keep things like this from happening. I was supposed to suffer at the hands of a skillful sadist to feel all of the things that I’d been keeping in. My own kind of twisted therapy.

Not this.