Blood Beneath the Domme Armor

I have an entire paragraph in all my online profiles geared at male Doms. It goes something along the lines of: "I'm open to friendship if you approach me with respect and as an equal. I'm not into the 'you just haven't been topped by the right man yet' line of thinking, and frankly, that's a presumptuous and rude way for anyone to approach anyone else anyway ... been there, tried that; I don't switch. If you're looking for a Domme to play with your female subbie while you watch, you're barking up the wrong tree. And I already have a daddy... he's married to mom." So, yes ... I'm ever so slightly leery of male Doms. But ... I also know a few who are pretty great. I was reminded just how great last night.
It's no secret that I've been hurting lately, and you know what? Fuck it. I'm not apologizing for that, and I'm not hiding it. Especially since the responsible party has been making a point of twisting the knife by ever so subtly and gradually broadcasting my apparent expendability in public forums where he knows I'll see it ... because apparently just hurting me and using me and wasting my time as exquisitely as he did wasn't quite enough. And I don't really think I'm dragging anyone's name through the mud here either ... only a couple people are privy to the gory details; I'm simply answering honestly when concerned parties ask me how I am. And for me, that's a sign of growth and progress. Back when I was about fifteen, I worked in a grocery store. And I remember this one day when I was hurting, kinda like now, and just standing at my register crying, this older lady customer started prying to find out what was wrong, and I damn near took her head off, like, "Who the hell are you and how is this your business?" Needless to say, she was more than a little taken aback. After last night, I'm really glad I didn't feel compelled to react to my Dom friends in a similar fashion.
The first check-in came from Damien Saint; we have several friends in common but only met a few weeks ago, so we don't really know each other that well yet, but I really like what I do know of him and his girl Salome so far. It was just a quick little message on fet, "Hey, saw you changed your status. Hope everything's ok." I wrote back, keeping it vague, "I'm hurting, but I'll be ok. Thanks for asking." He encouraged me to come out to a munch last night which he and a bunch of our mutual friends were planning to attend. So I did. I figured it was better than sitting home on the verge of tears ... even though that verge kinda stayed with me throughout the course of the evening, and whenever I wasn't involved in a conversation about something else, I wondered whether this had really been the best plan.
There was apparently a play party after the munch, which I'm not sure anyone knew about 'til we got there, but then, I never really check my email updates for those things either. I drove over with another Dom friend, Magnum. I think I've known him for just under a year now, but up 'til last night, we'd never really talked about anything real and gritty. As it turns out, he's a counselor in his vanilla life, so I figured he knew what he was talking about. More on that later.
So we walk into this lifestyle home and upstairs to their attic dungeon. My friend Kitty* who's an awesome hardcore bottom (recently renamed a "middle" in our group since she's a wealth of knowledge and helps people out with their scenes all the time) was sitting on a couch. She's one of those supersweet, comforting, snuggly types, so I lay down with my head in her lap and just kinda started thinking out loud while she stroked my hair, verbalizing bits and pieces of the ridiculous fucking blender that's been passing for my brain lately.
And maybe it was just partly appreciation because of how sweetly, unexpectedly there for me these guys had been, but for a second there, I had another little breakthrough. Another new Dom friend Leo* has been asking to suspend me for awhile, which I've considered as long as I can stay clothed. We kinda haven't really gotten past going in circles with him trying to talk me out of that condition. Anyway, I remembered a story from Scarlette's TES class about how she'd once let a friend of hers top her when she'd been bottling things up emotionally, and as part of my thinking out loud, I said something like, "Maybe I should get one of you guys to smack me around a little so I have an excuse to cry all this out." No sooner were the words out of my mouth when a hand grabbed my wrist, and I looked up to lock eyes with a random, creepy old dude I'd never seen before in my life. "Well, you I don't know from a hole in the wall," I quickly rebuffed him, "I meant one of my guys."
Muttering something about how, well, if I was gonna be picky about it ... he ambled off.
As it turned out, after that little display, I didn't end up bottoming to anyone that night. Instead, I turned to a sweet guy a few years older than me who'd been sitting across from me at the restaurant and had told me his story while I picked at his cheese fries, explaining that he was experienced but had just moved back from Georgia and didn't know anyone in the local scene and was looking for "someone who'll show me around and someone who'll hit me."
"Hey, Jay,* come over here a minute and talk about your limits with me."
Yes, I'm blunt, and I put them on the spot. It's fun for me. I watched him trip over his tongue for a minute or two, then asked, "Well, would stripping down and having me spank you a little in front of a room full of people you just met be a limit?"
"I wouldn't rule it out," he said. I think he might've blushed a little, too.
After a mini group discussion, we decided I'd start out with the form of catharsis I already knew and see if it helped. Then, if I didn't feel better, my guys were more than happy to lend a hand ... or a few well-placed lashes.
Topping Jay was a great quick fix. I felt like I maybe should have been a little more attentive as far as aftercare, and I don't know if it's technically "ok" to play with someone when you're as stuck in your own head as I was that night, but he was really sweet and didn't seem to mind ... actually, he seemed to have quite enjoyed himself.
But for no apparent reason, once I was done I decided that, for my next trick, I would wake up a napping Magnum by jumping on his lap and straddling him.
From that point until he dropped me off at my car, I basically got the free therapy session of my life. I remember a girl I knew from when I was more active in the GLBTQ community once trying to pick me up by analyzing what I was feeling about a recent breakup with the line, "I read your poems in your myspace blogs so I know you." I guess it was a clever concept in theory, but at the time I was once bitten, twice shy and more than a little bitter, so I just laughed and responded pretty condescendingly, "Oh, really now? Well, enlighten me then. Explain me to me." Surprisingly, she actually does still talk to me once in a blue moon when we run into each other.
Anyway, last night, Magnum actually managed to do just that. He pretty perfectly explained me to me. How what I'm feeling right now is normal because I had originally intended to keep everything black and white with dating vanilla girls and keeping my D/s play completely separate and nonsexual, and now everything is a gray area. I didn't even have to mention to him how notorious my burning, fiery, passionate hatred of that gray area has always been. The other thing he said that really hit home was that, as dominants, we don't like to be vulnerable. "Trust me, I get how much you just want to put your Domme armor right back on and zip it up, but you're bleeding underneath right now." Which meant that basically, I need to give myself time and just deal. And of course, I fucking hate that part. He did kinda give me a loophole on that though: "You can still go out and play and smack the shit out of someone tomorrow. Take it out on the subs. They don't need to know why."
So today, I'm bleeding through the cracks in my armor. I've cried it out a little bit, done some scream therapy. Alternating between sobbing and rage is lovely. But I'll only do it in five minute increments for some reason. I'm really wondering if I shouldn't just try and complete the catharsis at this point by going back to that original notion of having one of them top me, just so I can really feel everything and hopefully just get it all out of my system. I'm toying with the idea, but it would be a pretty huge deal for me, and a completely different experience and dynamic from the one time in my life I had Derek do it, so I'm on the fence still.
The most fucked up part of all of this is that I have so many more people in my corner right now than I've probably ever had at any one time in my life. Most of whom I haven't even asked; they've just offered their assistance, whether it be in the form of arms, ears, shoulders, laps, advice ... or yes, even a bare ass beneath my paddle. But even though I know I can essentially turn anywhere for support ... I also feel - on some weird level that I haven't completely been able to wrap my brain around yet - more alone than I ever have before. I've been trying to make sense of that one all night, but I still haven't really come up with much.