J-O-Y

It may be that the Dominant I serve enjoys teaching, channeling energies, and guiding submissive development. As difficult as it has been for me to learn, the enjoyment of the Dominant I serve is not mine to provide. The Dominant allows me to observe him so as to better the direct services I can provide, like keeping his wine glass filled, but that observation must not be directed inward. The Dominant exists, whether I am serving him or not. The Dominant can lose himself in his work even when I am there, having already instructed me how to serve during those times. Many times, the Dominant appears to be relaxing when I later realize that time was spent planning tests and rewards for me. My task as a submissive, and as a person, is to serve myself first -- to be true to the person I am rather than disguising my nature behind a mask I feel is more acceptable to others. If I can love myself enough to be my true self, to risk rejection and ridicule by others, secure in the knowledge that I have worth and strength to endure, then I can be a true submissive.

As daunting as my first year of submissive service was, with its ongoing fear of rejection, failure, and ridicule, having to confront the fear of knowing and being who I truly am, beginning in my second year of service and continuing on, was much more difficult. I knew what rejection, failure, and ridicule felt like long before I entered submissive service, and as little as I enjoyed any of those feelings, I had survived them in the past, and knew I would survive them should they plague me again.

Facing myself, admitting and accepting my imperfections, and then being that person, known completely and fully by the Dominant I serve terrifies me. The battle to stay honest, open, and aware tests my determination, strength of character, and understanding. After years of rejecting and denying who I am, learning to accept and own that person so that I may offer her up in submissive service pushes me past long-standing limits and barriers set up to protect me from myself, as well as from others. As I continue doing this overdue, vital, and difficult work, I realize that my avoidance of my image (in mirrors or photos) reflected my rejection of reality. I am, and usually have been, overweight; I have used food as a drug as well as a means to insulate myself from life, other people, and my own rejection of myself. The part of my submission that requires daily photographs for the Dominant I serve has forced me to confront what I really look like and my reaction to that appearance. While I cannot lose the weight immediately, as I would wish, that daily confrontation helps me resist falling back into old habits and bad behaviors.

The Dominant I serve does not want to wrest submission from me; submission must be my freely offered gift. When this is so, submission becomes a gift that gives to the giver as much as to the recipient. When I enter fully into submissive service and behave in the manner in which I am meant to behave, I do so not only because I believe it pleases the Dominant I serve for me to behave that way. I also am pleased to know how to behave to please him, and to strive for that behavior, even when I fall short. In my submissive service, my primary task is to listen to the Dominant I serve, to strive to understand his instructions, and to perform as instructed to the best of my ability. As my service continues, I continue to learn that some instructions are engineered to test my limits, to push me past boundaries that no longer serve me, and to teach me that my standards of success or failure do not apply. If what I do pleases the Dominant I serve, and if the doing as well as the pleasing of the Dominant please me, then I am fully integrated into submissive service that is worthy of the Dominant I serve, respect, and love.