Out Here On My Own

This story by Ser­i­jules is used on the Old Tom Archive with permission.

Out Here On My Own

Some­times things have to make a com­plete cir­cle before you can under­stand them for what they really are. This is the third, and final, part to this tril­ogy. I didn’t real­ize when I wrote the sec­ond part, that it was not the end of this story, it was in fact the begin­ning. This part is ded­i­cated to my family.…elle, mys­taka, dag­ney, kiten, ash…and LAR^, the one who helped me become what I am today. I love you all, and I thank you from the bot­tom of my heart for what you have given me.

* * *

I sat on the porch, shiv­er­ing and look­ing out into the cold, still night. A glance at my watch told me it was 3 am. I couldn’t sleep, I had been rest­lessly pac­ing all night. Some­thing was nag­ging at me, some­thing I couldn’t iden­tify. I wouldn’t sleep until I did.

I was home again.…alone. The lone­li­ness was more com­plete this time, more real. I had met some­one, a won­der­ful some­one, and we had been through an amaz­ing dis­cov­ery together, and here I was again; alone and inse­cure. I closed my eyes and shiv­ered, the thoughts and feel­ings of the my jour­ney so far rush­ing through my head and mak­ing me feel oddly content.

A pickup with a horse trailer turned the cor­ner of the dead street, its head­light star­tling me out of my thoughts. I watched it slowly pull out, a lone horse stomp­ing impa­tiently in the trailer. See­ing a horse doesn’t always shift my mind to my Jewel, but this instance, did. I missed her. I missed our friend­ship, our bond. I missed going out in the cold early morn­ings with a sugar cube nes­tled in my mit­tened hand, see­ing how her eyes lit up when I offered her the crys­tal cubed sweet. I missed the void in my lone­li­ness that she had filled.

Just like I was now miss­ing L^. I sighed sleep­ily and shiv­ered, head­ing into the house and crawl­ing under the warm cov­ers of my down com­forter. The shakes didn’t go away, nor did sleep come. Not that night.

* * *

“When I met you.…we DID bond” I inquired qui­etly, “you don’t dis­agree with that, do you?”

L^ didn’t pause as he answered “Oh, no ques­tion we bonded, love.…Deeply.”

I nod­ded to myself, not sure where my thoughts were going. I had bonded with my Jewel, hadn’t I? That bond had been real, no ques­tion about it. Very real. Very right. The nag­ging ques­tions broke through the fog in my head, and I frowned to myself before hes­i­tat­ingly typ­ing it out, before I lost my nerve.

“Did we bond on purely a friend­ship level.…or did we bond on a Dom/​sub level. I’m begin­ning to think it was the for­mer.” I con­tin­ued. It came out as a state­ment more so than a question.

I bit my lip, tears sting­ing my eyes, unsure of what was going on. I had been so happy, every­thing had felt so RIGHT. Where had that come from?

A pause, then his answer blinked back at me, assur­ing me that we had bonded, that he loved me…

but that I was right.

I was right. Oh how I hated being right sometimes.

* * *

Tears spilled down my cheeks, blur­ring my vision. I wiped them away impa­tiently, my fin­gers danc­ing across the keys. I shared every­thing with him, telling him not what I wanted to be telling him, but what I needed to say. I told him how much our time together had helped me grow. I had met him as a shy, dam­aged young woman with this silly notion of sub­mis­sive­ness stuck in her mind. I told him how he had helped me grow into so much more. Patiently ignor­ing my mis­takes for the sake of my explo­ration. Calmly let­ting my hys­ter­ics pass with­out judg­ment. Gen­tly nudg­ing me in direc­tions that he knew and under­stood from expe­ri­ence when I wanted to go in direc­tion that my naïve enthu­si­asm insisted were the right ones. Hold­ing my hand when I failed and telling me it was all right, but never hold­ing back the hon­esty, never sug­ar­coat­ing the truth. He helped me open up, to knock down the very wall that held me back from being every­thing I could be. I would never be lonely again, because he would always stand by me. Noth­ing could change that. It was right, was how things were meant to be.

I told him how I couldn’t share him, couldn’t be secure in a rela­tion­ship that lacked exclu­siv­ity. Jewel had always belonged exclu­sively to me. She would let peo­ple touch her, be near her…but I was the only one that could keep my hand on her quiv­er­ing coat for more than a few fleet­ing moments, the only one who could cup her smooth as silk nose in my hands and feel her hot breath on my palms. I always took com­fort in this fact, took com­fort in know­ing that even when child­hood friends came and went, even when I didn’t belong in a group, or was left behind for newer and more inter­est­ing people…that my Jewel was always exclu­sively mine, and I hers. It was a deeply bed­ded need, the base of my secu­rity. At times I felt it was a self­ish need, to not want to share, or not be able to share. I tried though…no one can say I never tried.

I remem­ber how I felt before I met L^ in per­son. I was so out of sorts, so inse­cure, because I really didn’t have any­thing to base any of my feel­ings on, from the very sim­ple sen­sa­tions of just play­ing casu­ally with another, to the very deep rela­tion­ship that we had formed. I didn’t really KNOW how I felt about any­thing, I knew how I thought I felt. I real­ized now, sit­ting here blink­ing back tears at the com­puter screen, that think­ing and know­ing are two very dif­fer­ent things. Just as I had thought that it was right to try and own my Jewel, but know­ing at the same time that there was no worse move to make.

My mind wan­dered to that moment when He had buck­led the col­lar on my neck. “Is this what you want?” He had asked. The very same ques­tion my daddy had asked me oh, so long ago, a lit­tle girl grip­ping the bars of a steel pen and star­ing into the twin­kling eyes of her dream. Yes, it was what I had wanted then, it was still what I wanted, on an adult level. The ques­tion that should have been asked, though, was if it was right.

We talked, my Dom and I. We opened our hearts and we bonded, again. This time, we asked the right questions.

* * *

Some­times, in the eyes of a child, wishes were horses, and mine, well, mine was called Jewel.

I real­ize now that I had what I needed to be every­thing I wanted to be. I BELONG, I belong as a sub­mis­sive, and L^ had helped me to dis­cover that I really am a sub­mis­sive. I had noth­ing to base that claim on before I had met L^. Noth­ing. Just my wishes, and my hopes. He took my col­lar and gave it mean­ing by mak­ing it truly mine. By open­ing doors I had refused to open, by mak­ing me face hurts and fail­ures I had refused to face. He intro­duced me to myself, col­lared me to my sub­mis­sion, took two parts of me and made them a whole, a stronger whole.

I ran my fin­gers over that col­lar again. Twin­kling crys­tals embed­ded in vel­vet cov­ered leather. It was my col­lar, it belonged to me, was a sym­bol of the start of some­thing so won­der­ful, so right, that it could not be owned by any­one other than me, not just yet. I had thought that L^ had taken some­thing of mine and given it mean­ing of his own, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. He had taken some­thing of mine, alright, but he had not made it his own. He had taken two halves, one in each hand. One half was a lit­tle girl, scared to open up and let oth­ers in, cling­ing on to a past that was dam­ag­ing every­thing she could be. A child with a dream, a wish. He had taken her hand and intro­duced her to the young woman he had helped that child become. A woman whom he had shown had poten­tial and was worth­while. A sub­mis­sive at the very begin­ning of her journey.

I was not ready to serve a Mas­ter, not yet ready to be col­lared. I was ready to embrace that jour­ney, to become the strong per­son I needed to be before I could give myself entirely, truly, to serve another. L^ had taken these two halves, and made them a whole. A com­plete per­son, the lit­tle girl with the wish, and the young woman with the dream. Prov­ing to me who I was, and point­ing me to the near­est star. He would always be my men­tor, and stand by my side, but he had released me, for it was what was right.

I can hon­estly say that this is the hard­est deci­sion I have ever made, but in my growth, I have gained a stronger friend­ship with some­one that I truly adore. We have evolved, not parted. I will look back on this time, some­day, and remem­ber. Remem­ber the one I first called Sir, show­ing me it was all right to reach out, and to stand out here, on my own.

xoxo, ser­i­jules

Copy­right 2001–2013 serijules

• Related Posts
• Bookmark
• Tags