WHEN A DOMINANT MUST LET HER FLY
1. Sometimes birds need healing and love; sometimes they need to fly.
2. If a Dominant does his craft well, she can fly when she chooses.
3. An empty collar hurts like hell, but there is pride in her freedom – and love.
That night, parked in her car, I had the sacred honor of being a counselor to her. I loved her but she needed to fly. Perhaps it was fitting that we were in North Carolina. It seems a bit corny but I related an episode of Andy Griffith to her. Opie had foolishly killed a bird who had chicks in the nest. Andy, sage of a father that he was, informed Opie he would have now have to raise the chicks himself. As he took responsibility for healing and nurturing the tiny birds he grew to love them. Then, too soon, they were no longer chicks – they no longer needed him, they needed to fly. Reluctantly Opie opened their cage and they soared. “Gosh, Pa, don’t the cage look empty” Opie pined. “Yes, son, but don’t the trees look full”. It was time for the birds to fly. I looked at my girlfriend. Now it was her time to fly. She had to go create a new beginning and I had to let go. Empty cages are lonely. Empty collars are nearly hell.
I am a healer by personality and by experience. I believe most good Dominants have at least some measure of that in their soul. Perhaps the best Dominants are able to keep a safe distance with their heart, but I seldom been able to do that. When I claim a woman, accept her surrender and her dependency, I invest my full self in the dynamic. This is especially true when I know that she needs strength, nurturing, healing, and to be loved. Dominants, it is often said, need to be needed, submissives need to be loved. I believe that deeply. It is the intoxicating exchange of need and love that fuels this most intense, and perhaps most fragile, of intimacies. D/s, as I live it, is truly about so much more than ropes and whips.
There is a sort of palpable charge I feel when I pull a leash taunt and sense the collar wrapped firmly around my girl’s neck. That power, her surrendered power, runs up my arms and through my chest and surges, yes, even to the point of erection. I adore her, and she needs me, and there is bliss. And there is a tinge of sorrow. If I am doing my Dominant task well, I am making her stronger, more confident, and always more able to fly. Of course I don’t want her to fly. I want her to grow, but I don’t want her to fly.
A Dominant is aware from that first proud moment he fixes the clasp around her neck that his girl may one day choose to fly – may NEED to fly. I understand that some D/s relationships have more contractual permanence. Trust me: I know that even (perhaps especially) real time 24/7 relationships, though infused with hope and diligence, are fragile under the best of circumstances. Those who surrender to me will always be free to choose. Her willingness to surrender in each moment is more important that her choosing to surrender in the first moment. She may choose to fly. She may need to. And if I have been a good Dominant, she will be able to, even if it is the thing I dread most.
There are times when the most loving, if painful, thing a Dominant can do is remove the collar at her choosing. Perhaps she’ll return – perhaps not. I have stood alone, holding a slack leash, and staring at an empty collar that once adorned my girl. It is an empty, lonely feeling – gazing at a strand of her hair left tangled in the clasp; the weightlessness of the leash. The cage sure looks empty.
On the other hand, though, I’ve seen her healthy and happy and she began a new chapter of life, better and stronger for our time together. She’s still in North Carolina and we still stay in touch. And of course, in some real and sacred way, we will always be together and she will always be mine.
Then too, there have been other birds that needed healing and love, and perhaps there always will be – and maybe one will come home.
Play hard and love well
Steven
cc. Turk (D/SOM)
image credit unknown.
