Back in the saddle

Thank you gorgeous people for your emails and kind regards. I have been on a surprise extended hiatus as I sorted some things out in my real actual life.

And now I am back in the saddle...not that sort of saddle, you pervs - although I am sure that will come. So here is my theme song for today if you would like to listen while you read my brief catch up.

Just to update you I have now separated from my husband. Surprisingly it had nothing to do with our little "arrangement" (arrangement being our open marriage). In fact that was one of the things we agreed worked well for us.

It is all a little ridiculously amiable, he comes and stays, spends time with the kids, has dinner sometimes, mows the lawn. We laugh and talk. Actually it is kind of the same as when we were married, well we are still married but, you know what I mean? We have always been great friends, just never quite got the husband/wife thing going so we decided to keep the bits we were good at and let go of pretending the marriage bit worked.  Our relationship feels the same.  It feels really good. 

Actually the bit that has been hard has just been the excruciating understanding that this decision will impact my children.

And it did.

And it does.

And they are okay.

Sometimes sad, sometimes confused but because we are okay, they are okay. Because we are still family and always will be. Because we still parent together and care for each other and for the kids and talk with each other.

...and you know?

Like everything, the actuality was not nearly so bad as the anticipation.

I am glad we got married. I am glad for the time we have spent together. I am glad to have him in my life, as my husband and now as my very dearest friend. I know we are both better people for it.

As for Sir, he has stayed quiet. He has checked on me from time to time but very much respected my need for space to deal with things in my own way.  He asked me if he could help, if I wanted to talk - I couldn't. Text was safe. We have stayed out of each others daily lives for months now, checking in occasionally but not talking. I did not want to (could not) feel weighted down with my thoughts and emotions. When I talk with him, it is like being split open.  I picture myself cut from chin to belly like an 18th century autopsy, organs spilling out over the table in an amphitheater for everyone to gawk over. No amount of grasping and pulling at the edges can get the seams back together. I felt the need to stay away so I could think for my self, for my kids.  So I could cope without getting tangled up in my own head.

I have never come to him to be fixed, to be rescued. I have always come as a whole, for enjoyment, for exploration of who I am. To run to him now? That is not who I am.

...but maybe

...just maybe

I need to learn to be embraced by the warmth of people around me.

I missed you all.

And now I am back-in-the-saddle!

xxx JaT

Breathing It In

My body burns like fire. I sit here trying to think of what to write but the words don't come. I can only feel the emotion coursing through me as I try to remember yesterday. It is framed as if far off in the distance, too long ago to recreate. All I am left with are shining shards of pain and bliss.

I left Sir and picked up my children, collecting on my way a friend to come for dinner. More people arrived and I cooked and drank tea. I felt quiet. I felt all of a sudden as though I were falling through the floor. I needed him. I wanted Sir. I messaged him, he replied. I was all at once okay. I felt needy and awful - both unfamiliar to me.

My husband came in. He brushed his lips on mine, looked down, deep into me and smiled a half smile, questioning wordlessly whether I was okay. We sat and ate and drank, laughed and talked. I could see him burning to know, to see, to understand. Eventually our guests departed, children bathed and in bed. I lay on the couch, half sleeping, he rubbed my feet and asked me to recount my afternoon. I was not in the frame of mind.

I showered while he worked for a while. I lay face down on our bed and called him in. He was horrified. He tells me he doesn't understand. Softly I explain to him small pieces as he rubs arnica (which I highly recommend for bruises) and calendula (for healing) into my back and arse.

I tell him fragments. I tell him that I cried.

Sir said yesterday that I love crying. That it turns me on. I thought about it. It does not. What turns me on is that he can take me to that space where I cry and hold me there. The crying itself I do not like.

There was a moment yesterday where I was crying, sobbing actually. He was whipping my back. He has a knack for hitting right in the same spot, over and over. He leaned down and rubbed my back, soothed it. Then he started again. I loved it. I loved in the moments where it was not so hard but hard enough and I felt I could just go on forever, breathing it in.

Then there are the moments when I back my car out of the driveway and I know I am never going back. I know for that second that I do not want this, that I will not be back here. Then it shifts to won't be back for a long time, or at least a while and before I am home I am ready to turn around drive back.

My husband does not understand. He tries. I am amazed at him, so in love with him. I cannot believe how fortunate I am to have someone love me enough to give me this, without understanding it, because I want it.

Today I relish the pain, I love it. I love that every movement, every stretch and turn I feel it. In my bound nipples Sir makes himself known to me. Stops me from falling through to desperation, holding me up through my pain and obedience.

My phone sounds and I jump, literally running to the other end of the house to get it. I know it is Sir. I am waiting for his message. In that moment I forget the pain in my breasts, the bruised assault on my back, the tenderness in my arse. I run like a child runs to a sprinkler on a hot summer day, with joy and forgetting and in that moment there is nothing else.

I think somehow that my husband is amused by all of this, perhaps morbidly fascinated is a more accurate turn of phrase. The most glorious moments are coming home to him. Him caring for me, loving me and the exquisite pain of him rubbing - firmly - into the whip marks left by Sir only hours before.