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stella41b -> the value of friendship in BDSM (10/16/2008 8:14:58 PM)
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"Don't let them fool you
Or even try to school you, oh no
We've a got a mind of our own
So go to hell if what you're thinking is not right
Love would never leave us alone
Ayin the darkness must come out to light..."
Bob Marley 'Could you be loved?'
Coming to these boards on a regular basis I guess we get used to the usual non-BDSM topics appearing here. He doesn't love me. She lied to me. He hasn't called me. How do I get her to be more kinky? He's meeting her. How does my profile look? How can I tell if he likes me? How can I tell if she's dominant.. and so on and so on. Indeed it would appear that there is a whole focus out there on relationships, kink, play, events and so on.
But what about friendship? Yes, here I'm talking about pure, unadulterated, platonic friendship, the sort of friendship shared between people here irrespective of their gender, sexuality, whether they are dominant, submissive, their interests, even their location and the country they live in. This to me is the big advantage of this Collarme site, part of why I have made it my spiritual home, in that over the last year and a half since I started posting on these boards I have formed a considerable number of friendships with some of you off the boards, some on the other side, friends who make their home in places such as Saarbrucken and San Francisco.
Each and every one of you, and each and every one of these friendships, are in some way special or important to me. I have got to know some of you as you have got to know me, and privately and on the boards from time to time I have shared much of my life, my work in theatre, my community and charity work, my writing, my transition, my social activism and also my issues. Though most of us haven't met, and in many cases it looks unlikely we will ever meet, but together you form one of the pillars of my support network, and at the risk of starting to sound mawkish and sentimental here you have all had some part, maybe tiny, in my journey and progression through my transition, my life..
Some of you know my story already, especially the more regular posters and if you don't it's covered in my website in my sigline. Another good thing about this site is that it sort of acts as a kinky Facebook or MySpace and I have even been found by some of the people I know from Poland (it seems they took my advice and and set up profiles on CM), from my downfall in Polish theatre my homelessness and return to the UK.
One such friendship stands out from all of them and that is the friendship I share with a domme known to quite a number of the regulars - Lockit. It's a friendship which started last year and has continued, and it almost recently turned to something more than friendship. Some of you who have been reading her postings know of her struggles with the authorities over her son, her own illness and the difficulties she faced, and it was at the time when she had split up with another submissive and I reached out across the miles and the Atlantic to help her through this difficult time.
It started an exchange of messages, IMs and even phone calls and we got to know each other much better and our friendship deepened to the point where we were both prepared to try and overcome our difficult circumstances on both sides, and I would have eventually ended up as Lockit's collared submissive or slave. For some days this was how it was looking, but then we examined everything in the cold light of day and looked at the issues involved we decided that the relationship - which would have been a very close, harmonious relationship in theory, presented us with just too many difficulties to overcome - looking at things realistically - and we decided that it would remain friendship which brings something to both our lives across the Atlantic, but without any of the costs of the relationship.
I'm writing this at the end of a week when I am due to have an opening performance in theatre with the opening of 'Switch'. However it's not going to be. One of the actresses has dropped out of rehearsals with a major chest infection, depression and a major life crisis. Yesterday there was a stormy rehearsal when it came out that not only the set hasn't been designed but also the other actress hasn't quite mastered part of the play. Twice I threatened to walk out of the rehearsal. This actress started an argument with the other members of the cast and then she turned and blamed me for not directing the play properly. She had the text in March when I opened the production, and now in October my infinite patience has finally run out. Next Tuesday is an open rehearsal. The production is suspended.
Partly the actress is right. While it doesn't excuse her not learning her lines or preparing her role it also highlights the fact that part of the reason why this play hasn't reached the stage is largely down to me. Many people appear to think that gender reassignment is just taking hormones and living in your actual gender. It is of course, but that living in your actual gender also requires an internal transformation where you throw off all your former socialization, you have to go through a metamorphosis deep within yourself and transcend that barrier between the genders, throwing off your former gender and learning to live as yourself. I have made progress, but my relationship to my past, particularly my difficulties from childhood have caused me to be stuck in a rut for the last two years.
So what's wrong? Well in reality nothing's wrong, except for the fact that at times I'm listening to the wrong voices in my head - voices from the past which invariably lead me to go through a crippling loss of self-worth and self-confidence. This is something Lockit picked up on and has been helping me with. This is not to say nobody else has, you all have to varying degrees, but Stella has blonde moments, at times a pretty thick skull, a stubborn streak but somehow with the help of a simple computer Lockit somehow got through to me.
So partly this is to say thank you to Lockit and others for giving me this clue by four.
But I'd like to open this now to other people among you all to perhaps come and share something which you have gained from your friendships with others from the BDSM community. I'm not talking about the relationships, the topping, bottoming, the kinks, the play, the sex, or anything that intimate - but what you have found, gained and discovered from your friends in the community.
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