Sometimes Things Go Wrong

Submitted anonymously by a submissive at Dominion.

Please forgive me if this rambles a bit. What I'm about to write is something I've never put down on paper before and don't even know fully how to describe it.



In my vanilla life, I don't lack confidence. I know I have skills that allow me to succeed in my job. I know I'm gifted with erratic flashes of brilliance, tempered by the occasional complete lack of common sense. But my ego is healthy when I'm dealing with normal things, such as my job. I don't lack confidence in my physical body, my mental acuity or my spiritual center.

But sometimes things go very wrong when I'm fully in the role of the submissive. I second guess myself. I second guess my worth. And it's not because I'm being pushed to this point with humiliation or something similar. That at least I could understand. And I can't even predict when it might happen.

I'm sure everyone has heard the old adage that when a submissive says they're "fine", they actually mean "F.I.N.E.", which supposedly actually means 'Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional'. I may have the acronym incorrect, but the gist is there. Maybe that means I'm not unusual in this, but if so, I don't see it very often in others. Or maybe they can mask it as effectively as I can.

Let me step back and try to describe what happens. I have always had a hangup when playing with other people where it's very important to me to know that they are enjoying themselves. It's because of this that I never ask my Mistress to let me play with a specific person, they have to express interest in me or my Mistress has to set it up. It's not that I'm being hard to get or anything like that, it's just that if I ask to play with someone else, how do I know they didn't just say "ok" to be kind, but in their hearts don't really want to play with me? I'd spend the whole time wondering if they were resenting it. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but there it is, and as a result I don't get to play with other people very often. It's not necessarily a healthy thing, but probably not completely a horrible thing either, right?

But there are times when this turns into a self-destructive cycle. I don't know why, I wish I did so I could stop it. There are times when I'll spiral down to feeling worthless, ignored and totally unwanted. I know my Mistress loves me without question, and you would think that knowledge would give me strength when feeling this way, but it somehow doesn't. Most of the time I get to feeling this way at a situation where lots of people around me are playing with lots of other people, and I feel like I'm a spectator to the event. I know what you're thinking, it's just jealousy in my heart, watching others have fun and having none myself. And maybe you're right, that's a part of it. But there's no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes it can happen after just a few minutes while at other times I can watch an entire party from end to end and not feel this way. Sometimes it happens and I'm not even AT a party, go figure.

When it happens, I usually begin spiraling down out of control. I go through phases, beginning with sorrow, then anger, then despair, then self-loathing, then usually back to anger again. All of this is internal and while it's going on, I'll usually be sitting in a corner or looking nowhere but at the floor, my face a mask. I'm not sure my Mistress even knows when it's happening.

If asked if anything is wrong, my answer is usually that neutral and warning-laden response, "I'm fine." But I'm far from fine, I'm fucked up. The only things that I've found might break the cycle are a particularly hard beating where I'm driven into pain so far that I really don't care about anything anymore, and leaving the party and hoping I wake up with my ego mysteriously recovered. As I'm unable to control when the first might happen, usually I'll ask to leave the party, prematurely ending what might have been a fun night.

I don't mean to give the impression that this happens often. It doesn't. But when it does, I can't seem to stop it. In my mind, I know that it's stupid, irrational and self-feeding. When I'm like that, who the hell would WANT to deal with me, never mind interact with me as a submissive? Who wants a completely neurotic sub in the midst of an ego crisis? Maybe this neurosis is always under the surface somewhere. Maybe when I'm doing normal things like a job, my brain is in control and it knows better than to let this happen, but when I'm naked and kneeling on the floor, my guard is down and my emotions run unchecked, which can be a good thing, but maybe sometimes a bad thing also.

Do a lot of submissives feel this way? If they do, I never seem to see it. Are they emotionally messed up in other ways? I don't know the answer to that either. If they're not, then where's the truth in the 'F.I.N.E' adage? Does every submissive harbor secret neuroses of one type or another? Maybe this is the most natural thing in the world and every submissive feels it from time to time, in which case that totally blows. I don't have any answers.