Crossroads, Real/Imagined

by Hannah Corrigan

(c) August 2013 All rights reserved This article is the sole property of the author and CAN NOT be reprinted in any format without express written permission of the author.

This is in part, part a private conversation I have been having with a beautiful woman and in part a set of thoughts based on this article:

Struggles of the Dominant Identity: Good Doms Don’t Cry
by by Jacean Mikhael
http://www.kinkycupoftea.com/struggles-of-the-dominant-identity-good-doms-dont-cry/

When illusions fail, suddenly you are fully present, ‘ in the room’ and in my case, still wanting to be with my mentor after the event, a near overwhelming gratitude for that patient person who stood there and let me have that beautiful illusion in privacy, came out like a river.

I suddenly saw him as the one who had set aside time and personal identity for a time, in order to allow me to experience the grace and beauty that only imagination can bring.

He was the one bore that weight of my expectations for me while I was in that sack of self protection and after it was torn open, a different and powerfully motivating love came into play in our relationship.
For us, this is when the bond of Service first formed. The seed that had been planted, sprouted over the soil for the first time. Everything before this time, became a prenatal experience…almost instantly.

Today I feel this is the point of reaching the real/imagined crossroads, maybe even the reason why crossroads like this exist at all. As it’s only on arrival at this point, for me now a mile marker within my M/s journey, where I felt I was deemed ready by the universe itself to ‘move forward’. I was given a unique choice – to stay under the blanket of illusion or let go of it – and that choice came without expectation or threat of judgment. It just arrived.

In choosing to let go of my illusory blanket, in trusting that was the right thing to do and in accepting the right time had been decided for me, I was given the first gifts of maturation. What I had feared as a loss, was in actuality, a gain of exquisite proportions. It was in fact, a loving invitation.

So this is why I feel that being aware of the existence of this real/imagined crossroads, its nature and the process, as much as its inevitability, is so important in our walk of the BDSM world.
Given my experiences I am able to say that stepping from the imagined into the real need not be a loss of anything but that self created illusion. If you choose, you can choose to see it as an opportunity to grow up, to mature, to ‘get real’, to step forward together with your opposite and together, to grow past the need for illusions entirely if that is your desire.
You can choose to let go and may need to mourn the loss of an innocence for a time, or you can celebrate its departure. Its entirely up to you. I just know, that that loss wasn’t the end of innocence for me, it was only the end of a beautiful journey, and potentially disabling naivety.

When I realized at my first steps, that it was an image in my head that I had been serving and not the man and dynamic that actually was, it was then that the ‘real’ meat of what M/s is to me, was born inside me. I came into full actualization of my role only after that time, as I was empowered by my decision to leap, to make wiser and better choices for myself. I knew how to.

I was enabled by the room now free in my mind and the energy now free in my body ordinarily spent on sustaining the illusion, to make even more decisions and to fully comprehend what choice and decision even was in actuality, for the first real time. My dynamic became more authentic to me as a result. I could give more of myself to it and my inner power was drawn out of its perceptual prenatal construct and birthed into organic life.

This is in part why I and my people do not ‘play’ in the imagined. It is not a judgment on others, but it is why we don’t go out much, don’t engage often or rather, engage very intentionally. It’s not because we are shy or closet criminals, we simply choose not to.

We will care-take and we are patient; we act as sounding boards or trampolines depending on the needs of those who arrive on our doorsteps but we do not engage power dynamism with them below the superficial strata.

We only ever work and play with those who have made a similar choice to take the leap out of self created illusion as we have made, as that is when we feel, people are really capable of informed consent; when they are free within as much as without, to choose authentically to do what they are doing with the person they are doing it with.

Real growth can be painful. Expansion of awareness and de-illusioning within a M/s dynamic can be an uncomfortable, even frightening process. It is true that not every outcome can be prepared for, let alone assured but it is here that I/we find that the risk as much as the love is made real and so, for me, it has also been very much worth it.