Greenstorm's Journal

Yesterday I said something to mom about clearing along a particular stretch of fence, close to the pigpen, and I pointed and gestured. When I came around later that day she'd cleared the bottoms of the spruce trees that blocked sightlines from the long straight stretch of road by my driveway into my front yard. I was upset, I told her not to touch the trees in my main yard, just the ones past the side fence along the road. I took her and pointed out more than once which areas were ok.

Today I just got home from work and she's cleared the evergreens that give three sets of neighbours a straight sightline to my back door, which is completely on the opposite side of the property from where I said it was ok to clear. I've been trying to brush up and block those sightlines for five years now. Those trees won't grow their bottom branches back, so they will never block those sightlines until they maybe get very very old and the branches sag, but they also are still alive so their roots are soaking up water and nutrients to block anything I might try to plant there.

One of my strong pushes on this property, especially lately with so many new neighbours moving into the area, has been to block off my neighbours' view so I don't have to dress up to monogamous sidewalk standards to leave my house and go out into my yard. Now, in 24 hours, I've lost a lot of that hoarded privacy to both my front and back doors.

I am livid. Angry, violated, and for some reason I've come up to my bedroom to type it out rather than kick this person off my property.

Honestly I do not know what the fuck is up with my mom. She's always been like this: last time she was here she took up my toilet to put in flooring late at night the day before she left, when I had to work the next day, so we were up late putting in flooring and then she yanked on the filler hose to the toilet and it leaked and I had to handle that on a low-sleep workday; she always breaks something or wrecks something or decides something is wrong and just enforces her will on my space and then is like "I was just helping" and doesn't seem sorry at all. This goes back even before she threw all my artwork into the garbage along with my passport when I was seventeen, "oops, wrong box" and I thought I had it handled. I thought if I gave her a long enough list of things to do she would stay distracted and not wreck anything but here we are. Dammit. Goddammit. And now I'm going away for a couple days and she'll be housesitting, what else is she going to destroy? I don't have the money to replace *things* she wrecks, and I don't have the fortitude to emotionally handle irreplacable things like my garden or my artwork or gods know what else.

I've explicitly told her not to bring goose eggs or eggs from under nesting ducks in, and she definitely brought in goose eggs the other day. The likelihood that one of them will be rotten and actively explode in the house and be impossible to clean is really high. But honestly her sheer creativity in making my stuff unusable is so impressive, I can't even guess what will have happened when I get home this time.

Plus the "please take this stuff to the thrift store, but bring back the bin, it's important, please bring me back the bin" and she, surprise, forgot the bin that she primed me with. I usually have to budget $50-$200 to replace and fix stuff when she's gone. Is this normal?

I am not ok right now. This is not ok.

It's also the epitome of kind of guilt-tripping me not to be angry, because she's done so much work and worked so hard, and- ugh. I hate this. I hate it.

I guess tomorrow I'll set her up to replace the decking on my front deck and, hm, muck out the goose shed? I need several days' worth of stuff to keep her busy. Maybe stain the side of the house, but that actually sounds super perilous, she'll probably paint over the windows or pull the new roof off to get it done. Honestly is there anything here that doesn't require supervision if someone doesn't have common sense?

Now I just want to cry again. My few safe spots on the property where I felt ok going out and not being watched, gone. I don't know what to do.

( Seriously, don't do it. This storm will pass. It just hurts so much in this second, in this hour. )

Right. Anger. It illuminates boundaries and gives the energy to enforce them.

An interesting situation has arisen lately.

I've been pretty toppy of late. This means I've been not only scening privately, but also kink-flirting in a million subtle (and I do think it's stayed relatively subtle lately) ways which draw complimentary folks to me in everyday life.

I'm good with being in this space right now. I enjoy this dynamic with many folks, I've enjoyed it in the past, and it's good to be able to explore it a little more right now.

I've also been thinking a lot about consent, coerced consent or consent under duress or pressure, assumed consent, and non-consent in the last six months or so. Much of kink definitely involves entering an altered mind-state, especially (if I'm doing my job as a top) the bottoming end of things. Well, no, when it's intense it's just all altered. So it's important to me to have a framework for consent around my play that was created outside that play, in the unaltered state.

So on the one hand, I feel like there is a large act of communication about what's consensual within a scene and about where that scene begins and ends that is in itself an act of consent; it is necessary but not sufficient for clear, uncontrovertable, and explicit consent outside scenespace.

On the other hand, when I think about the concept of ownership, of another person giving themselves to me, I think in terms of enthusiastic consent from second to second. Submission or surrender is not a single act: it is a series of moments of choice. It is not one gift, but a gift renewed every second. I find this gift infinitely moving, precious, and intimate when it comes from someone who has enough ownership and knowledge of themselves to actually *give* it. The alternative, someone who doesn't have their own hand on their rudder but instead drifts around hoping someone can grab it for them and give some sort of direction, is somewhat distasteful to me.

But so much of the conversation I've seen, and the automatic concern in this kind of power-play, does talk about the consent of the bottom or submissive partner. It's a real concern of mine; I worry that even in vanilla relationships my strong personality tends to create a dependence or sap my partner's sense of volition or selfhood.

It's only very recently I've come to realise that giving consent as a top is much more complex than saying: yes, I will engage or no, I won't engage. And of course I realise this in a situation where I suddenly realize I am not giving what I feel to be full consent.

I met a potential new play partner over the internet very recently. He's enthusiastic and, on meeting in person, we get along very well and have a bunch to say to each other and the chemistry is there. He's also, if this means anything (I'm not sure it does to me) a 99% on my okcupid profile. We've been discussing our boundaries and interests in scening; he's been presenting his to me in a very submissive way, as though we're already in that type of relationship. This should be great and exciting, but instead I'm feeling deeply uncomfortable. I'm pretty sure I feel uncomfortable because I have not agreed to be in this space; I haven't agreed to receive the surrender he assumes has happened. We're discussing the terms, but that must be done in straight space for me, and further it requires me to take his measure and find him capable of what I consider to be meaningful surrender of his volition.

Then, having discussed terms and learned who he is some and figured that he *can* do what I want, I must actually *want* him in this very deep and personal way: not just for sex, which can be a lovely fun close collaboration, but for an entire experience that I can create and control.

I certainly have not come to this point with this person. And so when this stranger is ultra submissive and eager during our communications, my hackles rise and I get uncomfortable. I think, is this person capable of standing on their own feet? Are they good at it? Do they understand that my control of their experience is a gift, as is their submission to it? Why won't they speak to me as an equal outside the situation?

But I also think, angrily, that I will not allow this precious sharing thing I do with people to be taken from me. It can't be manipulated or coerced out of me. I absolutely will not allow it to be taken. And it's that anger that I just figured out, that I just came to understand through this writing. That anger is my response to my nonconsent. And, having figured that out, I think I have an email to write with some boundaries.

Thanks, guys. So good to have some space to figure this out.