You Say Tomato, I Say Tomahto

“Passion is a positive obsession. Obsession is a negative passion.” –Paul Carvel

I know several people who have read my blog.  I have gotten one of two reactions:  “I’ve learned something about you I didn’t know before” and “I have read over and over your stories.  I feel you were saying mean things about someone I know.”  A person’s response is a great litmus test to how they take the emotion elicited by my blog and transform it through their thoughts. 

The fixation generated about reading a few stories that I equate to life lessons and my desire to share them.  Other than one person, I don’t use actual names to identify anyone.  Some of my life events occurred anytime between twenty years ago and up to recent times.  People who weren’t there wouldn’t have a clue about who was there with me through my life lessons.  I have heard people tell me, “So-and-so said they couldn’t believe you wrote about them in your blog for the world to see.  There is a good reason for what they did.  You just misunderstood their actions/their words.”  My thoughts are this.  Why isn’t so-and-so asking me out right about my blog?  Why is so-and-so talking to others about what they assume to be my truth?  Why is so-and so spending so much energy telling others my life lessons misrepresent what really happened or what was really said; “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”.

The enthusiasm generated about getting to know a bit about me through stories I normally would not disclose over coffee.  This is the other side of the same coin.  The same emotion my blog creates as it runs through another’s psyche, another’s filters.  My blog is a catalyst for discussions about how I got to be this person at this point in time.  And it shows people they are not alone in stepping on landmines as they navigate this life.  My blog also shows people they can recover with their sanity intact from the damage inflicted by such landmines.

Why I consider the reaction to this blog as a litmus test is simple.  If you fixate on a few stories that you believe are an injustice for me to put out there, I think there will not be any common ground for us to meet.  Well, other than your sense of self importance.  If you read, reread and reread again my blogs, then accuse me of being unfair to others without having been a firsthand participant, then I know you have come to plead for another’s case.  Which I begin wonder if you have already approached me with bias and another’s agenda at hand.   If you read my blog with the desire to help me celebrate how far I have come in this life after almost being aborted, well then you get it.  You understand the story is not about the people, me or others, but about the celebration of realizing we are infallible beings. 

I have a right to express myself.  I have a right to share what has happened to me.  I choose to use this forum to send out to the void what I see as my truth.  If you don’t agree, fine.  If you agree, fine too.  You have a choice to keep coming back to read this blog.  Or not.  Simple.

What Is Violence?

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”  --Isaac Asimov

Most of us think of a fist to the face as violence.  That’s not where my mind goes.  I think of nonconsensual interactions between beings.  I think of ‘bait-and-switch’ tactics and hidden agendas to lure others into relationships.  I think of malicious, seemingly never ending mind fucks.  I think of all the things people do to others to justify their unawareness, to validate their petty selfishness or to satisfy a mean spirited nature.

We know women who trusted a ‘Dom’ who tricked them into being bound and then commits assault.  We know someone who entered into an M/s relationship and then found their wallet emptied and credit trashed by the ‘slave’ who was full of excuses why they could not get or keep a job.  We have experienced the person who agreed to join us in a poly lifestyle and then built outside intimate relationships without our knowledge.  (Notice I do not use the word ‘consent’.  Many poly people do not require consent, or veto rights, only knowledge.)  We know couples who enter this lifestyle and each person has different motivations: one wants to please the other and one wants legitimacy to have extramarital sex.

The crazy thing about my life is that most people out there would call me the deviant who likes violence.  However I challenge their assumptions.  I believe the deviant people are those who are responsible for committing true violence by assuring us their motives are pure, full of love for us, while they create harm and deception in order to hide their real agenda.