But what can I give?

"Explain her submission," the assignment begins.  This task is a special one, for me, on many levels.  The basic level:  my mentor gave me this assignment conspicuously close to a declaration I made, which means she can hear me and she understands my quiet terrors.  I understand submission in the general sense; my logical mind can parse a sentence and process the meaning of words.  But my gooey mind still suffered (at the time) from a destabilizing conversation I'd had with someone who kept asking me, philosophically, "Why?  Why submit?  Why dominate?  What's in it for me?  What's in it for you?"  (Let me emphasize, it was a philosophical discussion, not crisis or grief.)

Which was fine, at the beginning.  But afterwards, I began to wonder, myself.  Why?  And then, as is my wont, I doubted myself, my gifts, whatever it is I have to offer a Dominant when the time comes to offer to him.  Why would he want me?  What could I give?I begin as a plain girl.  I begin as a girl who dreams of something beyond what I have.  What I have is good; what I have is polished and fine in the real world.  But it is insufficient.  What I have means I can take care of the basic needs of survival in my life: it means I can feed and clothe myself, nurture myself, strengthen myself with experience and learning, discipline myself with chore and duty.  I have and know love.   I have these things.  I know these things.  I practice these things as a matter of regular, vanilla ritual and living.  I know who I am in real life.  I know where I'm going in real life.  I know where I've been in real life.  I'm even beginning to know what it is I want from my fantasies; what my needs are.  And how I can best express them.  I begin to transform; I begin to learn.

In my dreams I am more.  In my dreams, I see more; and I feel more.  I interrogate what I have always known as certainty until there are no more certainties, and it is destabilizing and thrilling and... insecure-making.  I used to believe that pain was to be feared, avoided.  Now, my skin itches to feel something rough against it.  Something sharp strike it.  Something virile push it.  In my dreams, there is a world of experience that I cannot begin to imagine without the guiding hand of a careful man who understands the difference between a hard limit and an inexperienced barrier composed of fear.  Who understands the role of a Master, not just a Dominant.  Who understands the ideal and the real, and the concept of striving.  There is a world to explore on my knees, and I need to know those dreams and explorations.  I began as a plain girl; and I emerge as a dreamer under a very careful mentorship at the moment.  This is why I recommend being mentored in the beginning:

Because when I feel insecure and confused, and I honestly state what it is that shakes my foundations, my mentor gives me a task that answers my anxieties with my own words and my own thinking.  "What do I have to give, after all?" I ask in despair, and my mentor's answer is "Look at the picture of the girl, and explain to me her submission."  And then I explain it.   And my own words come.  And the assignment shapes as it will, and that's very gratifying...  But the crux:  I begin to understand that what I have to give is an excruciatingly-tender heart that never forgets beauty.  I forget the ache of agony and loneliness and waste; but I remember beauty.  I hold up a mirror to Your face, a mirror that is my eyes, and I show You Yourself as the exquisite apparition, the bright and blinding Divine light as You appear to me.  I find beauty.  I find it, and I keep it, and I protect it, and I give it to You when You demand.  It is why I collect songs and stories; musical instruments; images perfected by my own hands; jewels and trinkets of adornment.  I collect; I keep; I then adorn and display for You, so that You are transported from the muck of this world into a realm of my own making to be enjoyed only by You.  Because, in my eyes, You are the most important being there ever has been.  And my God, how important it is not to give this away to just anybody.  It must be to You, when You come.  To none other.

This is what submission looks like to me.  And when You come, finally, I am going to savour, for a long long time, explaining my submission to You.