My Life As a Mermaid

I am a mermaid.

OK, OK, you got me – I’m not literally a mermaid.  But over the last year and a half, mermaids have come to have a deeply symbolic meaning for me, representing my journey in the world of kink, leather, and authority exchange relationships.

That journey is a fairly new one.  I only began dipping my toe in the BDSM waters in Jan of 2014, tentatively exploring the shallow end of the pool.  However, I quickly found myself wanting to explore beyond the shallow end, and in the very early days, I struggled a lot with, “Whatthefuck is wrong with me?” It was hard for me to accept that I could want some of the things I wanted.

As a masochist, my desires just didn’t seem normal. They didn’t exactly shake the core of who I was, but it seemed like there must be something wrong with me for craving pain so much. And for how much it turned me on. It couldn’t be right for me to be so in love with looking at my own bruises, could it?

But far more disconcerting than that was my discovery of just how submissive I was. I’d always identified strongly as a liberal and a feminist, and the only context I had for submission outside of the bedroom came from fundamentalist religions. Since I also happen to be an atheist, the rationale that man is head of the household because God said so obviously didn’t resonate with me.  In fact, the idea of an overarching inequality between the sexes never for a moment entered my mind.  Even in exploring my own submission, never did I think of myself as being unequal or inferior.  And yet, the very notion of being submissive just seemed to run counter to my core values, and that was really disturbing for me. It turned upside down a lot of things I’d been pretty certain I knew about myself.

Fortunately, I actually got over both emotional/mental hurdles fairly quickly. (And FTR, I’m still a liberal, feminist atheist. :)) I’m an almost obsessive researcher when something captures my interest, and so I dove into reading everything I could find on these subjects. It didn’t take me too long to come to terms with the things I wanted.

Mostly.

I still had my moments – especially if I was dropping at all. All the cultural norms I had grown up with would flood over me again, leaving me wondering how this could possibly be normal. However, I was always able to talk myself out of it (or talk through it with my Sir, or the new friends I was making on FetLife and in my local community), because I could see that not only was no one getting hurt (in bad ways), I was actually thriving. So I mostly made peace with myself.

Somewhere along the way, however, I totally made peace with myself.  Because I came to the realization a little over a year ago that the only thing that seemed to disconcert me anymore was how little disconcerted me!  I’d gone far, far beyond those first tentative dips of my toe into the pool, and I found myself only wanting to swim deeper and deeper and deeper.  In fact, I discovered that at some point, I’d left the pool altogether and was actually swimming in the ocean, well outside the view of the shoreline, plumbing the depths of the dark waters below me.

And…I wasn’t afraid of that.  I felt like I should be, but I just wasn’t.  It took me awhile to puzzle that one out, to understand how I could’ve gone so far in such a short amount of time without second guessing myself at all.  But I finally figured it out: the reason I’m not scared is because I’ve learned that I’m not simply a human who enjoys a swim,* I’m a mermaid.  I don’t fear drowning because I’ve realized that this is what I was built for, swimming in the deepest water. Sure, I still have to watch out for sharks – there are dangers everywhere, on land or in the water – but this is what I was built for.  The deeper I swim, the more at home that I feel.

OK, so…moderately overwrought aquatic metaphors aside, what exactly does being a mermaid mean to me?  Or, perhaps more accurately, what does it mean to you, a reader here on Sexpective?  These are some of the subjects you can expect from me in the future:

• Master/slave relationship dynamics – particularly 24/7 consensual nonconsent (CNC)
• Extreme S&M – pain play that may result in broken skin/bleeding, bruising that lasts for weeks, permanent marks/scars
• Emotional edge play – long-term mind fucks, sexual objectification, degradation play
• Very long-term orgasm denial – months, years, and beyond
• Non-monogamous sex – sexual sharing, gangbangs, cuckqueaning
• Body modification – piercings, tattoos, scarification, branding

I hope you’ll dive in and swim in the waters with me!  Whether you prefer to stay close to shore or swim out into the deep, one thing is for sure: the water is lovely…

mermaidmickey

*Absolutely no offense intended toward humans or casual swimmers. 🙂 There’s room in the water for all of us!