Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh and trotted across to the Lion. “Please,” she said, “you’re so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I’d sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.”
I read these words from a children’s book when I was a little girl with a sense of wonder and deep curiosity. I liked the image evoked by the words, “I’d sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else,” and I wanted to know what sort of person could make me feel that way about them. I wondered what it would be like to want to give myself so completely to someone that I would be willing to be consumed by them? I wasn’t sure, but my instincts told me that I would like it.
I spent most of my adolescence feeling lost. I was more “serious,” I suppose, than many of my peers and I felt like I was constantly searching for purpose. I struggled with feeling out of step with what girls my age wanted from their interaction with boys. While my peers were enjoying the full range of teenage girl emotions and the experience of having boys fawning over them, I wasn’t drawn to the guys who would let me lead the way. The part of me that the passage from the book had touched when I was young stuck with me, or more accurately, touched something within me. Even before I could really name what it was that felt missing from my life, I was searching for someone who would make me feel the way that little “Hwin” had felt. I found myself attracted to men older than me, mostly because I felt secure around their confidence and I liked their natural ability to command authority. I felt it was important for them to notice me, not for the sake of having their attention (although I liked knowing that they were pleased with me) but for the sole reason that I wanted to be useful to them. This was completely different than the “girl power” message all around me and I was beginning to think something was wrong with me.
The moment I first learned about submission—overt submission—is not a moment that I will ever forget: it was as though a secret door had been unlocked and there were answers to so many of the questions I hadn’t even known how to ask.
After my initial introduction to the world of dominance and submission I learned that it would still take time, effort, and understanding to really find fulfillment in being a submissive female. I was ravenous for this information, so I sought out every outlet the Internet could afford to get more. I learned that there was a lot of conflicting information to wade through, but there was a glimmer of something that felt right, and so I pushed on. I never bought into the “scene.” To be honest, it was really confusing to me. What I was looking for was something simple, with less fancy terminology and rules, more actual service. I didn’t want to be the glamorous slave girl who spent half her time in an alternate reality, and the rest in the “real world,” I wanted submission to be the reality I lived in. I did enjoy, nonetheless, having an outlet where it felt OK to be myself and interacting with other submissive females. I learned a lot from hearing their stories and I began to recognize that the females who best exemplified what I longed to experience in submission had one thing in common: Masters who understood that being a master was not just a role to play.
I realized, at some point, that I had become so distracted by everything the D/s community had to offer in the way of telling me about submission, that I had forgotten the thing that had drawn me in the first place: the idea of the truly dominant man. At that point my attention began to shift away from the shiny new world of D/s and settled back where it had started with that feeling of wanting to be utterly consumed. There had to be a man somewhere who could draw me to himself, trembling, and begging to be devoured.
Meeting Dominance
When I finally met real dominance it was an eye opening and life altering experience, as it should be! From the very first time I read something he’d written in the community we both participated in, I knew he was different than any other man I had come across and I wanted desperately to talk to him. I was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. There was something striking about the way he expressed himself. His conviction was so solid, he never hesitated to say the things that other men would only let themselves think. I felt compelled towards him, but finding the courage to actually send him a message was another thing altogether. It literally took months for me get myself to type something and press send and I don’t even remember what I wrote! I was certain that he got a million messages a day and that there could be no chance of him ever responding to mine. But I was wrong.
Under his instruction my life began to change drastically. I felt like I was finally able to focus and see clearly. I was happy and healthier than I had ever been, it seemed that my femininity blossomed under his guidance. Like the females I had wanted to be like, his dominance brought out in me real submission. It was such a natural response, I didn’t have to contrive how I would submit: it was an automatic response to his will. It felt right to let go of my own will and take instruction. Letting go of things I’d struggled to control and putting them into his hands gave me a sense of rest and security that I’d never known before.
I was so close to realizing the type of life that I should have been living, but unfortunately, I was less mature than I’d believed and wasn’t able to see the small things that I allowed into my head that would eventually lead to doubt. I’d gotten so good at trusting myself to know real dominance when I finally found it, that trust was the one thing that I didn’t know how to surrender. I had myself convinced that I trusted him through and through, but what I was really invested in was my own ability to predict how dominance would act.
This, of course, meant that the first time something I couldn’t have predicted came up, my whole world shattered and everything I’d found security in suddenly seemed unsure. I blamed him for having broken my trust, but the truth was the only person I had trusted was myself. I started to wonder if I had been wrong about it all, so I panicked and ran. It’s funny, I realized enough to know that I needed to be dominated by someone who knew his place in the world, but I couldn’t see that I wasn’t fully accepting mine. I had trusted myself so much to know what was best for me, but when I took submission fully into my own hands, it was a disaster. Without the balance and wisdom of a man to guide me, the very things that had been making me a better female began to destroy me. I was angry and I thought I was angry at him, but the truth was that I was angry at myself: I was grasping for things to control, but the reality is that I don’t want control and the effort to try to be in control was tearing me apart. The physical and mental consequences of my failed attempt at being my “own master” were appropriately severe, in fact, though there are times when I think they should have been worse. The experience taught me, however, that submission isn’t simply beneficial to me as a female, it’s essential to my femininity.
What I Know Now
The trouble with trying to run from submission was that no matter where I ran, it was still there because it’s a part of who I am. No matter how far I thought I had gotten from it, it still managed to manifest itself in all areas of my life, and I found that I was most happy when it did. I’ve learned that the “trust” that we talk about a lot of the time really isn’t trust at all. How can trust demand security with no risk? As females, trust is something we must learn to give as an act of faith rather than expect to have earned. We can’t give of ourselves completely until we can trust blindly and openly. Is that scary? Yes. Does it make you vulnerable? Absolutely. But if we can’t cross that line, face the fear, and submit our trust, we are regarding ourselves and not our masters as the ultimate authority.
Today I realize that the only way to find fulfillment is to truly submit without expectations about what the future will look like, except that whatever future comes I will face it as submissive female. No running, no hiding, no withholding—just humility.
When I was younger I wanted to submit because it seemed right, now I serve because I know that it’s right and that there is no other way for me.
