This has been a depressing week for me for a number of reasons. Some of those I can’t share here, but the one I can share is a big one: Lydia is retiring. Regular readers will be aware that Lydia is the domme I’ve played with for years and has been a big part of my development both as a person and as a submissive. I’ve documented a small fraction of our play on this blog (for example here, here, here and many more). Amazingly she was actually the first pro-domme I ever played with, almost 6 years ago now, and we’ve got together for 2-3 hours every couple of weeks ever since then. Hearing that she planned to retire, and possibly leave Seattle, wasn’t entirely surprising but it really shook me up.
From a purely selfish and practical perspective I’m going to miss the joy of playing with her. She’s without doubt the most talented domme I’ve ever interacted with. In what is literally hundreds of sessions that we’ve done together, I can’t think of one time where it felt like we were repeating something or simply going through the motions. Every time I stepped out of my clothes, and went to meet her naked and smiling, it was the beginning of something magical. Certain activities formed common starting points – piercing, corporal, bondage, breathplay – but each time she’d take our play in some new exciting direction.
Emotionally it has hit me pretty hard. Partly because I’m not sure how to process it. I’m not someone who ever had a problem with the professional boundary. I’m not saying I’d have turned down the chance to make it a non-professional relationship, but that was never anything I expected or particularly hoped for. I just enjoyed the relationship for what it was. Now its ending I don’t have a natural way to move through the change. I end other professional relationships all the time, but my realtor or doctor hasn’t spent hundreds of hours with me in very intimate and intense sexual situations. The closest analogy I can draw is to losing a very close friend. Someone important to you and who knew you in a way nobody else did, is suddenly no longer going to be in your life.
Fortunately there a few weeks left before she hangs up her whip (as a professional at least), and I have the chance to play with her a couple more times. It’ll be kind of strange. I almost didn’t want to play again at all. But given all the fun we’ve had together, it seemed like it’d be silly not to enjoy our last opportunity. I’ve never yet cried in a session, no matter how hard the beating. I’ll be kind of ironic if I end up crying when the beating stops.