My Ten Things in Ten Days – Day 2
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
- I am completely phobic about snakes…once bitten, twice shy..I don’t think teasing me about it is funny in the least.
- I find irresistible having my feet worked on (massage, pedicure etc.)
- I LOVE sushi but hate cooked fish.
- I strive to find more times and places of peace in my life today.
- I have a total soft spot for kids and animals.
- Love me, love my furry kids…or at least appreciate that I love them.
- I don’t have conventional Western ideas on death and how it should affect us.
- I think the bipartisan political system is horrifically broken and needs to be completely reassessed. I also think that any candidate who starts slinging mud as a part of their campaign should be automatically cut from the race.
- My chosen name suits me much better than my given name ever did.
My Ten Things in Ten Days List
I am as usual of recent times, late to the party. The wonderful Senshin inspired me with her list and I set out to do my own. This was really good for me and it had me dedicated to writing every day for the 10 days, if only just the answering of each question. Even I was surprised at a few things that came up.
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Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
1. Life is NOT that horrible. If all you focus on is the bad, that is all you WILL see.
2. Slow down, life isn’t a race to the end!
3. Unless you are stuffing the herbs up in your twat to fill it up, they are not going to keep you from getting pregnant.
4. How in the #*+_)#%(@*!@$ could you not only LET her do this but ENCOURAGE her? You hypocritical ass!
5. I want so badly to come in and straighten out your life for you. However, that would do you no good, you would not learn the lessons you need and it would be all fucked up again in short order.
6. I wish you could believe in yourself and see all of your potential.
7. I miss you.
8. I am so very proud of you and who you are becoming through your own hard work and dedication.
9. If you don’t take care of yourself, all of the things you are doing for others will burn you out and you will have nothing left for yourself and nothing else to give.
10. I miss laughing with you.
The Mother Mirror
I’ve known since I was a little kid that I favor my mom. It is a whole other thing to wake up to her face looking back at me in the mirror. It is actually quite a startling experience and one that I was totally unprepared for!
I don’t really know when it happened & I honestly haven’t decided how I feel about it either. Part of that I think, has to do with the odd relationship I have with my mom & really my parents in general. My mom is…quirky, that’s the word…quirky. I can see much of her in me but more often in the ways I think she would’ve turned out if she’d made some different choices when she was younger.
My mom was always the “cool” mom because she didn’t hover & all that stuff. At the same time, that allowed me to get into a lot of things that I probably shouldn’t & couldn’t if she’d been less “cool”. I’m not saying that I’m blaming her or my dad. I fortunately turned out fairly well after some pretty rough roads, fits & odd starts. The stuff that I did and went through helped shape me to who I am & I think that person is pretty groovy. Let me be clear that saying that is about my self acceptance rather than narcissism.
It has taken me many years to come to a place where I can say that I truly like & even love who I am. And, I’ve reached that great place where I don’t care if others like me or not. That’s not to say that it isn’t nice when people do like me, it’s just not the most important thing in my world.
So, back to the whole waking up & realizing I look almost exactly like my mom at this age. It actually was a mixed reaction of awe & fear. Around 40, which I am rapidly skidding toward, was when my mom started to change in ways I never thought she would. So, when I realized the resemblance those old fears came quick behind the fascination of the recognition. As a little kid I wanted to be like my mom. Then I started to get a little older & got a much more realistic view of who my parents were as people and also that they are just people like me and they happen to also be parents. For many years there was the fear that I would end up like them and let me tell you, that was a whole hornet’s nest of fears. Don’t misunderstand, I love my parents but there are a lot of things that I do not LIKE about who they are as people.
Then I find myself with those old fears coming to the surface again. Those dragons that I was sure I had slain years past. So why were they here again? What had I missed? What had I failed to do? Had I missed an un-hatched dragon’s egg in some cave? What?
After taking a deep breath & stepping away from the mirror for a bit I began to review. I looked back over the years of work, recovery, life altering moments and then came to rest on who I am today. I had to stop and take a good, long, hard look at who I am today; warts and all. I have my faults and they are many, part of being human I think, but they aren’t fatal and they are reparable if I so choose to continue to work on them.
In the end I came to the conclusion that I hadn’t missed anything in the journey so far; I had worked hard and persevered. And today I am my own whole and complete person, who may physically resemble my parents but I am not them. I looked in the mirror again and yes, I did see my mom’s face looking back at me. You know what though? I recognized a glimmer in the eyes that my mom never had, one that says I have secrets untold and adventures to have. I see a tilt of the chin that says I am my own person and good luck to you trying to tell me anything different. I became aware of a lift of my shoulders that says I can bear the burdens of life and put them off to rest when I am tired of carting around things unnecessary. I see the strength in my arms to hold those I care about close and defend them and myself as needed. I see the welcoming and mischievous, impish and somewhat childlike smile that says “Welcome to my world! Wait until you see what I have to show you!”
All in all, I see me. I see the me in many ways that I have wanted and have striven to be my whole life. The voyage is far from over and I am embarking on new adventures even now! Each day I continue to create the me I want to be. No matter who I “look like”, at the end of the day I am me.
I am Magnolia Nightingale and pleased to make your acquaintance.
Home again, home again!
I had no idea when I sat down tonight that I had been out of the loop here for almost 5 months! I was thinking it had been 3 maybe…how time flies!
There has been a LOT going on in that time. I am back to work full time finally! And even better, I am back to work with the company that had to lay me off almost 3yrs ago. It is amazing to be back there, working at a place I really love and having a great time doing it! It is an amazing feeling to know I will be able to pay my bills this month & not have to fret about how I am going to make ends meet. It had been so long I had forgotten what this felt like!
I am still dating…we are coming up on a year actually very soon and it has had its ups & downs but overall I am very happy with where I am at relationship wise. (More on that later.)
I still have the most awesome roomie and he gets more awesome every day. I swear I wouldn’t have been able to readjust to full time+ if it hadn’t been for him picking up the slack when I come home and pass out exhausted. This is happening less (the passing out I mean) and I am starting to really get my feet under me again.
And of course through it all I am still working out how to cope without my obsessions & compulsions. They haven’t magically gone away or anything but I am MUCH more aware & able to spot them now which means that I have to actually work on making them go away….or at least be a lot less prevalent.
So, I am still alive & kicking and making a commitment to starting to blog again.
Wandering but Not Alone
I haven’t had much to say of late (please do pick yourselves up off the ground). Not because there’s nothing going on in my life, quite the opposite really. I have so many good things in my life at the moment and am so very grateful. In the midst of all of the great things I am still struggling with all of the meds for my OCD and trying to re-learn behaviors (nothing new to us in this crowd lol) and readjust to the way that my brain works with this stuff…or doesn’t work.
I have sat down so many times to write something and then I just sit here staring at the screen and feeling like my mind has left me and gone on vacation to Tahiti or somewhere, the traitor. I feel like I don’t have much to report, share or talk about a lot of the time even though logically I know that’s not true. I just can’t get my brain to click into gear it feels like.
So I finally figured I would just say that I am still here, I am working my programs, going to meetings, reading posts (even if I don’t comment much), talking to folks in recovery, doing service work, looking for work, dating (holy mackerel lol) and working to get my brain on track crosses fingers.
Thank you to those of you who check in and poke me occasionally to make sure I am still kicking. lol
Kink from Then to Now
It’s interesting to me to think about my “story” about getting involved in kink, BDSM, WIITWD, etc. I was a pretty young kid when I started having what I think of now as just normal thoughts about sex. I thought back then that no one else though the way I did and so kept it mostly to myself. When I was 15 I was riffling through my sister’s stuff…like you do…and came across this book that intrigued me. It had a plain white cover with a small blue border with the title printed simply on the front. I had not seen a more modern book printed so simply and it drew my attention from the others kept in her dressing table, hidden away. I pulled it out and flipped it open to a random page. That was when my world got a little bit bigger. I read about things I had only barely thought about in that particular sense. But I do remember feeling like “Wow! I am not the only one who thinks this way! I had discovered that I wasn’t alone and I wanted to know more.
I devoured The Story of O, which I had stolen from my sister, that afternoon sitting in my bedroom and soon went on a hunt for more stories like it. You have to remember that there was not a thriving internet then so I couldn’t just log onto my computer and Google information. I started by feeling out people I knew to see if any of them were into what I was into. Over the next several years I would be involved with my first dominant partner and my desire for more and my lack of good information would get me into and out of situations that sometimes today I wonder how I got so lucky.
I never really questioned in the beginning that I was submissive or a slave, it was just a given for me like the fact that I have grey eyes. As the years went by and things didn’t go the way I wanted or hoped and my illusions came crashing down again and again I became frustrated with BDSM and relationships that incorporated it. BDSM wasn’t failing me, I was failing myself. I was trying to cram my growth as a person into the context of d/s relationships in hopes that they would fix me. I don’t care who you are, if this is what you bring to the table in any relationship you are doing it wrong. I proved that out by marrying into a vanilla relationship. After about 5 years I knew I couldn’t give up kink. After another 5 years I knew I could give up my husband and get busy living the life of the person I had wanted to be since I was a kid. I tried switching and had my own submissives over time. While this was fulfilling in its own way for me what I got out of it the most was that I wasn’t dominant; I am a sadist pure and simple and I am also submissive.
I’ve been really involved in the Atlanta community more and more over the last several years and I love it. I love that we have so many munches in our city and that you can find one in almost any part of town you are in. Being of service to the community, education and outreach are really important to me. Those are things that are important to me throughout my life; kinky and non-kinky.
Well, I am not one for labels and boxes but it seems that everyone wants to know how you identify. I identify as me. Hi, I am Mags and I am kinky…however that looks on any given day. I like how my roommate puts it best “Go ahead, put me in a box. I have a knife and will just cut a hole and crawl out.” That makes me laugh every time because I can see myself doing just that!
So, today I fully embrace that I am submissive, sadistic, a slave, a slut, service oriented, loud, goofy, outspoken, active, a big ideas girl, an educator, a counselor, a mentor, a good friend if you make it into my inner circle, a great acquaintance if you are in the outer circle, an activist, community oriented (for real), I loath drama with an unmitigated passion, if I think you’re an ass I will tell you so, I am absolutely NOT a doormat (if you try to order me around and you’re not my dominant you are likely to get a very rude retort or at the least a look that says “I know you aren’t trying to be uber domly dom with me!) and sooooo many other things. I am not a “conventional” slave and not everyone’s cuppa tea and I am totally ok with that. I have the attitude of if you aren’t ok with me that is fine; I will go my way and you can go yours and we can still be nice to one another on a human level.
The journey of my life and where I “fit in” to kink or where it fits into me is ongoing every day. I am at my core a “what you see is what you get” kind of person. Some days I still struggle with my gender fluidity and how the people around me react to that but most days I know it’s just who I am and I am 100% right with it. Most of the rest of my kinks have settled into place over the 25 years since I discovered that I wasn’t the only one with these wickedly wild ideas but by no means does that mean I can’t find new ones! This is an ongoing journey and just a part of who I am. I wake up every day and look forward to the next day of life and my explorations!
DNA Weirdness
Some days I think I am supposed to be smarter than I may appear on first glance.
So, there I am on my way home and what should pop into my brain but “Recombinant DNA”. I mean it’s the most natural thing in the world to think at length about right? Oh, only scientists think in depth about this kind of stuff? Well, I am not a scientist and this is the thought that got stuck in my head tonight on the way home from a meeting. Nothing in particular that I can put my finger on triggered it. I had three different phone calls that I caught up on the way home; none of which even remotely included anything on this subject. In the background the whole time was my friend Recombinant DNA.
Some of you are saying “Mags, what the hell are ‘Recombinant DNA molecules’ and why do I care that your head was stuck thinking about it?” Well, I can answer the first part for you rather easily.
Recombinant DNA molecules don’t occur naturally, they are from the laboratory processes of molecular cloning. Molecular cloning brings together genetic substance from numerous resources. This generates molecular chains that are not found in naturally occurring life forms. If you want more than that you have access to the internet since you’re reading this. Come on, I can’t make it too easy on you or bore the hell out of the ones who don’t care.
This is nothing new with my head. I never know what will pop into said cranium and that my brain will think it is worthwhile to spend hours thinking about. Fortunately this time it was something complex and challenging on several levels. The days I obsess for hours over rearranging a room, not so much. I have this amazing wild brain that takes me on all kinds of fun adventures, helps me write, when it’s not got a lengthy writer’s block going on that is, and is just generally a groovy grey thing. There are many days though that I wish I could harness more of that fabulous wild brain into doing things that I want to do and think about at length.
I didn’t get where I am with all of this overnight and I know it won’t change overnight…though like a good citizen of our Western culture today I want it to change NOW NOW NOW! I know this is all a process and I just have to be patient but some days being patient is just annoying.
Dragon Con Down Time
So, it’s that time of year again…Dragon Con weekend. I have spent the week getting ready for it work wise and that has taken up a lot of my time and energy…hence no posts this week. It will be over in 2 days and then it will be back to things as semi-normal. Well, as normal as they ever get for me. lol
Predator or Prey
You are predator or you are prey
There is no in between
The pussy cat or the crocodile
No fine line betwixt the two
Danger in the air, a struggle in the making
Either run from the danger
Or turn and fight with all you are
You are predator or you are prey
There is no in between
The peacock or the panther
Waiting in the shadows for the chance to escape
Waiting in the dark, rolling fear across the tongue like a fine vintage
Breathing quickens, blood pumps faster
Darting quick movements, seeking escape
Smooth sinewy strides, the chase begins
Covering ground quickly in leaps and lunges
Breathing harder, pushing further
Racing against the shears of the Fates
One misstep, one great burst of speed
There is no in between…
You are predator or you are prey
Free Range Brain 