A few months ago, I came across writing on Kinky and Popular called “An Uncollaring Ceremony”. The title caught my eye so I clicked, and I am so happy I did because this writing resonated something inside of me and caused me to think of my submission. It made me think about walls that we, as submissives and slaves, and I’m willing to venture that this even applies to the big letter folks, the walls that we put up to protect ourselves and how those walls keep us from reaching our full potential in the lifestyle.

Before I go any further let me give you a brief summary of her writing(I’m asking though if you can, check out the full article because I know my summary does not do it the justice it deserves).

A young woman, jenn, finds herself lost and damaged after leaving a polyamorous D/s relationship. During the relationship, she found herself caught up in meeting the needs of her partners, that her needs and wants didn’t matter to her, believing she didn’t have any needs.

After some time and with some help from her future sir and others, she was able to transform and learn how to take care of herself, how to stand up for herself. During this time, she collared herself as a symbol of dedication and devotion to her personal transformation, to remind herself to love and take care of herself.

The relationship between her sir continued to grow and later in their relationship, she found herself struggling with being an obedient slave, and the entire relationship was rocky and neither one could figure out why. Despite her desire, her craving to be obedient, she couldn’t figure out the why.

After she attended a presentation on spiritual M/s, when another attendee made a comment about how she had served herself and community since she didn’t have a master and the lightbulb goes off for jenn. She realizes that even though she has a master, she has still been serving herself and with serving herself, she can’t fully submit and turn herself over to her master. This is what had kept her from fully submitting herself to her master. Once she was home, she removed the collar that she had used for herself and realized that she is safe in her master’s arms.

I actually found myself crying while reading this because there are times where I still feel like jenn had, that I’m still serving myself in some form. This kills me thinking like this. There are so many times where I find myself wanting to be an obedient slave to Daddy, but there’s something at times going on in my head telling Daddy to go fuck Himself, that He doesn’t care, that other things are more important than me. While my head is having this conversation my heart is telling my head that it is full of bullshit, that I know there is nothing out there more important to Daddy than me and then starts listing all the examples and reasons about why my head is full of shit. I think the reasons why I have this particular conversation more times than I really fucking care to admit is because I feel like I need to protect myself. That I need to keep myself from getting hurt because so many people who I have counted on in the past have hurt me, and even gone as far as to leave me when I needed them most. Even after everything Daddy and I have been through, there is still a part of me that’s scared He will be one of those people. So, there’s a wall there, that’s keeping me from being the slave I want to be.

Recently, I had a moment. And it was a glorious moment! And, I am not being sarcastic here either. There’s been a part of my past that’s really, really, been haunting me. Haunting me so much I wanted to go find a rock to hide underneath, even though I had no reason to go hide. I saw something and with seeing that something, the gears inside my head started to click and my thinking about this thing that’s been haunting me(sorry guys, I can’t name specifics here. I’m not being vague because I want to be an asshole!), was seen in a different light and then no longer haunting. I literally felt like jenn had, I realized that this thing from my past that I have carried around for close to three years now, it’s no longer there, I have finally put it down and walked away.

We all have something that holds us back. It may not be something that’s there all the time, but stuff comes up and it can and will hold us back, make us feel like we need to put up walls to feel safe because we believe no one else can make us feel safe but us. When we find ourselves getting into this state of mind, we need to take a lesson from jenn and uncollar ourselves from whatever is going on and put our focus on what matters the most.