2.22.2008

What Do You Want?

Try throwing four simple words into a conversation and see how quickly the party dies. Why is it that, "What do you want?" creates such mental trauma?

You are probably wondering where I am going with this...
Here we go, I may be able to wrap this blog up in a minute or it may take forever because at this point the thoughts in my head are playing ping-pong in my brain...

I've been writing on A Submissive's Journey and it's going fairly well, but then last night, Lord Draco asked Julia, "What do you want?" and maybe that was just too open ended of a question for her, or maybe as the author of this unfolding drama, it was too open ended of a question for me...because what a can of worms...

Julia's answer was that she doesn't want anything or rather she only wants what her Master decides she needs...okay, that's a respectable submissive answer...but she's also a living, breathing human being that somewhere inside her luscious body must have some unfulfilled desire, some need...some dream...

Or maybe that's just me, the author, thinking too much and I need my heroine to go back to being brainless and selfless...

Stay with me, I'm slightly switching tangents here...

"What do you want?" isn't that the ultimate pared down version of life's secret battle to find inner meaning and happiness? I mean it can just as easily be rephrased as, "What are you looking for in a career?", "What are you looking for in a home?", "What are you looking for in a man?"... isn't that the doozey? That whole "man-thing" gets thrown in and watch the fuck out!!
Because we all want Mr. Perfect don't we? And in the past our romance novels helped define the idea of who Mr. Perfect was...

Trust me, I could go off on a whole tangent in chronological order of how romance novels have influenced who we are as women and how that has influenced our mate choices...

But the bottom line for Julia was: What did she need to help her find her inner bliss?
Freedom?
Independence?
Career?
The white picket fence and two point five children?
Submission?
Restraint?
Control?
And the conclusion that maybe picking one from the list wasn't enough of a choice...that maybe she needed two or three items on the list...or maybe, somedays, she actually wanted everything on the list and that she needed a Master to recognize that and help her discover that being submissive doesn't mean being mindless... or ambitionless.

So what's the bottom line for the rest of us?
I used to think that I wanted wild, mindless passion superseding all else...and that's the way I went into relationships so that when the passion fizzled, I thought the relationship was over and ended it before trying to figure out where else it could go...

RF wrote a blog comment once that I wish I still had, challenging that very mindset, telling me point blank that if I was ever going to be happy...I had it all wrong. What nerve she had! That comment bugged me...for days...a lot, so much so that I was angry, but then, like all things that trigger an illogical outburst of anger, work was needed within and I recognized that... and thankfully by the time I was ready for the next relationship, I entered it not looking for passion exclusively...I was looking for intelligence, wit, companionship, and like-minded spirituality... I found an absolutely amazing guy... and as an amazing, unexpected, but thoroughly appreciated by-product found passion. Who would have thought? This guy, who I could talk to about social evolution, enviromental issues, theology, globalization, ancient civilaiztions...pub songs, became Sir Hotness...

This lady might have said that by taking my focus from what I really wanted (passion) and looked instead for what I thought I needed (until death do us part companionship) that I'd "Settled." Boy, has she missed the point entirely ...

That's why I am so thankful to RF for asking me, "What do you want?" because in the end, I got more than I ever knew I wanted.

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