less than this

I am not emotionally stable.

Not right now, and not for a long time.

It is easy, too easy, for things to dramatically shift in me. On edge. All the time. Nowhere to go but down. It hasn't been this bad in a long time, but it's been this bad for an increasingly long time. Little comments can be like weights, pulling me down. I know intellectually that they're supposed to be flippant, or sometimes that the people speaking don't see farther than the words coming out of their mouths, but my mind looks forward, extrapolates, and sees a future I don't want to have to try to survive, implied by their words, their sentiment.

So many of my decisions are made to sabotage my own willingness to try (for the first real time since '99) to end all this. Maybe whatever it was I was supposed to do is done by now, maybe the last 7 years were enough, and now I can go home. The only ways I've found to stop myself is by making myself a terrible burden to leave behind, by making future plans, by sabotaging the ease of it - the psychological and emotional impact I have always been able to abide, but measurable difficulties like financial burden on my family and unfulfilled promises are things I worry about, things that hold me back.

Things that often make it harder and harder each day, every day, to go on.

Things that work against the tiny amount of balance I've worked out.

I'm not stable here, and I can't see a safe way down.

(The following is adapted from an email I sent to one of the many people who have asked me this recently, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to post.)

Well, I've begun admitting it, so I'll post it on my online journal, too: While there's not a lot I haven't already seen or read about that goes on between people of this lifestyle, and while I've been 'involved' in it off and on for over four years, I basically have no personal or 'hands on' experience with ... almost any of it. There were two main reasons and one excuse why I didn't dive into the lifestyle when I really began dipping my toes into it in 2001 and 2002.

The excuse I've always given is that in 2002 I moved to Pine, AZ, which is 100 miles from Phoenix, to take care of my grandparents; it's true, but it's not a good reason, since it takes almost as long to get from central Phoenix to Mesa during rush hour (ie: to get to a TNG coffee at Coffee Talk after work, for example) as it does to get from Pine to Mesa (or Scottsdale, and not much longer for the rest of GMPhoenix.) And I came 'down the hill' to PHX several times a year; it makes for a good-sounding excuse, but it isn't really a reason.

The first real reason is that I've been single since early 1998 (except for a couple weeks in 2000 and about a week this year), and I know that without a meaningful trusting relationship, there is no one to 'practice' the lifestyle with... and so seeing DEMOs, meeting couples, hearing about other people doing things I wanted to try but couldn't because I'm alone, the whole scene became a reminder of my alone-ness. Alone-ness amplified by living in a tiny town nestled among the mountains and the trees where the only people I know well are my family, the librarians, and a couple of the people who rented out retail space on our property. So that was (is) a factor.

The other real reason is like a sort of catch-22; I have not gotten myself involved, have not experienced these things because ... I haven't experienced these things and am not entirely sure what I like, dislike, or desire. People keep asking me if I'm a top, a bottom, a switch, and I can't honestly answer. (Based on everything else about me, I'm most likely to believe that none of those is the best description for me, but I doubt I can avoid being pigeon-holed and labeled by some.) People ask me if I like knife play, and I can't honestly say; I've never personally been involved in it. Or flogging. Or wax play. Or blood play. Or piercing. Or single tail. Et cetera. I have some ideas, but I'm sure I need to explore each thing, each combination, and with different partners and in different settings, more than once. And because of the first reason I gave, and the way I've reacted to both reasons, I haven't got the experience.

Which, it is my impression, the community -unintentionally or not- holds against me. So much is assumed, so much is taken for granted as common knowledge, so much that ... I might understand, but don't know I do yet; that I might have a really good answer for in two months or in six months or a year that I don't know now... but that I feel people expect me to know already. A lot of people seem to be balls-to-bones Doms or Subs or know like they know they like chocolate that they like being tied up or beaten or whatever, and I just don't yet. Some things don't appeal to me at all, but most of it just seems... perhaps passe to me, or ... like BDSM seems vanilla to me and specific fetishes may be like colored sprinkles, but I have the feeling I'm looking for the chocolate with fudge ripples, truffles and brownies compared to this. Or that maybe I just feel that way about watching other people do it, and I'll really love it once I try it.

Anyway, that's the 'short version' of why I 'got out of' the lifestyle. As to why I'm getting in now? I think in part I'm trying to find a way to break that catch-22 and answer all those questions I'm not qualified to answer about myself, yet.

I remember when being depressed meant more posts, longer posts, intense posts...

I remember when other people's belief in privacy was not a stumbling block, when other people's demands for me to not post about this, not post about that, not mention them at all on the blog did not come up at all, or came up so seldom that it didn't impact me... the way I am impacted now.

I've basically stopped posting altogether anymore. I've almost entirely stopped telling people about my site, except to try to sell books, or art. Things I've never actually made sales of through the website, it turns out.

I'm working on going through and updating all the pricing on my art, trying to get to a price point where it starts moving again. I've been taking this Art Marketing class, and while I'm learning a lot about art marketing, it's also largely depressing. For every two details I learn that might be useful for building my art into a profitable business, a third detail points out a new reason to believe that I have no business making and/or selling my art. I'm not making it for the right reasons, my techniques and vision are immature, my art is ego-centric, and on and on and this is part of why I haven't created much new art in the last year or two: I'm conflicted, torn between wanting to create art for my own reasons, in my own way, and wanting to create art I can sell, and to change the way I create art to be compatible with the "realities of the marketplace" -- and it's frozen my brush.

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