I try very hard to hold my shit together online. Put up a good front, my mother used to say. Fake it till you make it.
For the most part, I think I succeed. Yes, once in a while I will rant, especially during certain times of the month; but overall, I think—these days at least—I keep my personal issues off the screen.
This does not mean I don't have my own personal issues to deal with; my own mental demons.
We all have them, some worse than others. While I know many who can write freely about their demons—often with great eloquence—I am not one of them. It is hard for me to let strangers that deep into my head. Personally, I have never had any good come of it.
Being a submissive in a D/s relationship does not somehow magically heal all my personal issues. The anxiety is still there, the depression, the Voice of Defeat whispering to me that I am not enough, that I will never be enough.
What being a submissive in a D/s relationship means is that my behavior is under someone else's scrutiny and control. I cannot let the Voice of Defeat dictate my actions; I cannot comply when it tells me to give up, don't bother, there's no point, I'll never do it right anyway.
That Voice of Defeat is pretty fucking powerful. Sometimes it doesn't talk at all: sometimes it just screams inside my head.
(Sometimes I think I scream inside the dungeon not out of fear, or pain, but out of triumph: to show myself and the world I can, at the most sublimely painful moments, still hold my own voice, and scream louder than that Other.)
The voice of my Master, while not louder, is always stronger. It always wins.
So while I sometimes want nothing more than to disappear into my own personal cave, I cannot. I am not allowed to. I may still lay low, keep to myself, and maintain a low profile...but I am still acting as a functional human being. Meanwhile, I am getting my shit together, kicking that Voice of Defeat in the larynx and telling it to shut the fuck up while I fake it till I make it.
And you know, sometimes that's the best you can do.
