With Doubt the Vicious Cycle

There's been a significant shift in mouse's thinking of late. In many ways she worries about these thoughts, and what others might think if she dares to say them out loud. While we exist nicely in our Master slave existence it has occurred to mouse some time ago that she's not really His slave, she's more like His property.  Master owns mouse. There's nothing wrong with saying it. 

Too many people today have their own ideas about what "slavery" is or isn't. TV and movies haven't helped with that perception, in fact it's probably coming more from them than the people actually living in it. Master will refer to mouse as his slave. That's how it should be. There are people who insist that type of dynamic is impossible to maintain 24/7 and almost seem gleeful when they hear of failures. Yet, when you consider the vanilla divorce rate is around 50% after 5-7 years of marriage, it doesn't seem to be outlandish that many Owner/property or Master/slave dynamics would also fail. It's just the reasons might be slightly different and mouse will not speculate on the whys.

There's this romantic idea too, like maybe saying the word, "slave" sounds sexier? Calling a man Master doesn't make him Dominant. Maybe the term slave shouldn't be thrown around so haphazardly? Does mouse really believe she's chattel? Yes, she does. Never before did she understand that though. Even on these pages mouse was guilty of saying that "being a slave doesn't mean a doormat." Yet, even then as she wrote that, she knew deep down that it wasn't true and that she wasn't being honest with herself. Instead she was trying to validate the confusion she was feeling about her role (summing it up wrong in the end) and the way other people usually, resulting to hyperbolic speech, imply that to mean.

We've all seen this shaming that goes on,"You can't be a slave! What if your "master" wants to sell you? What if he wants to cut off your arm? Or do you harm? What if something happens to him and you incapable of taking care of yourself anymore? You're just fine with that?" Said with a sarcastic tone, usually by a submissive woman, who cannot fathom why another woman would demean herself by being 'owned' by another person. Or of course, the other type of slave, who will assert with some authority that "my Master wants me to be highly opinionated because he values an assertive slave," What they're really saying is that their Master's idea of slavery completely aligns always with their own idea of what slavery is. May the gods have mercy on anyone who challenges her on that highly regarded opinion.

Owners don't have to make their property feel better about being property.

Yet, what mouse did mean with the "slavery doesn't mean doormat" remark, was that she still has her own ideas, her own voice and her own way of seeing things that is different from Master's way. It doesn't mean she doesn't get to bring ideas to the table or have a vote or say in what happens, but it does mean that He gets to decide if her vote or say counts. Master always gets the final decision and honestly mouse likes it that way. While mouse is completely dependent on Master, she's not going to forget how to pick out her own clothing if something should happen to him. If he does wish to wipe his shoes on her back as he would on the doormat so be it.

Even with the unpopular decisions he's made, like having a "pet" that he sees -- it took mouse forever to understand that this what His idea of slavery is and it doesn't mean that she's failed Him in any way or that she's not enough for Him. Now mouse understands it and accepts it and had she been humble enough to see that simple truth decades ago, she might have made a different choice, since a huge excuse mouse had before was that Omega always had lots of women in his life and mouse didn't want that.

Almost two decades ago, mouse was owned before and yes long-time readers know that dynamic was wrought with problems. In the end though, it was decided by the Owner (who was dying), that mouse would go to Omega as his slave/property. At the time, for a myriad of reasons and excuses that mouse doesn't exactly regret, she made the decision to not be his slave anymore -- although at the time she didn't understand that was what she did. Never once has mouse paused to consider the enormity of that choice. That was really huge. Certainly she could have gone to Omega and became His property. That was an option, since she couldn't remain her Owner's slave for obvious reasons. Yet, at that time after all the things mouse had been through she decided to leave it all behind her and mentally she was actually ready to do that. There was no or rather little blame. At that point, mouse stopped being a slave.

Eventually after many years she did return to Omega and for the most part she doesn't regret that either, save for the fact that she does wish she hadn't waited so long after we reconnected.

Marriage does slightly alter our Owner/property dynamic but it doesn't lessen the value of his ownership of mouse and it also doesn't place us on equal footing.