There you go … good boy. You can do it. Yes, open your eyes. I know it’s bright, but I need you to open your eyes for me. There you go.

You don’t know it yet, but you’re making me proud already. My Skippie. My dear sweet Skippie.

Oh, you look so confused. I can almost hear the thoughts racing through your mind right now… “Where am I? How did I get here?”

It’s always the same, but that’s OK. We’ve been here before. I’m here. Daddy’s here. I’ll hold you through it.

My Skippie. My dear sweet Skippie. How I’ve missed you. It took me so long to find you again, but I did.

I love this part. The moment when memory sets in, and I can see the look of fear in your eyes.I know I shouldn’t enjoy it so much, but I do. That feeling in the pit of my stomach, the familiar heat as I can feel a few drops staining my underwear, the ache in my groin.

Your eyes dart around the room, widening when they settle on my face. You’ve recognised me. I was careful, but despite all my precautions, you must have spotted me. Seen me as I followed you, making sure you really were my Skippie.

That’s OK. None of that matters now. I found you again. My Skippie. My dear sweet Skippie.

Let me sit beside you and gently stroke your hair. It’s brown now. I remember when it was blonde. Brown is OK. I like brown.

Ah, I see you’ve noticed your restraints. Yes, test them, feel how securely I’ve tied you. It’s for your own good, Skippie. Do you remember that one time, when I didn’t tie you properly?

No, of course you wouldn’t. You don’t remember me. You never do. You always forget your Daddy. That’s OK. I still love you. I’ll help you remember.

It breaks my heart when you say your name isn’t Skippie. When you deny me, deny how much I love you and how much I’ve done for you. Do you know how hard it was to find you? Do you realise how much this hurts me? Do you? Do you?

You’ll remember, I’ll make you remember.

I … I’m sorry Skippie. I’m sorry for yelling at you just now. When you said I was confused … it just hurt so much. I’m not confused, you’re the confused one. You’re the confused one! Forgetting your Daddy like that.

Those bruises on your throat won’t show so much once you wear your collar again. There, isn’t that better? See how nicely it covers those angry purple marks where my fingers gripped you? You really shouldn’t make me angry like that. It’s not fair. I don’t like it when you make me do things like that. When you make me hurt my Skippie.

Remember the last time you made me so angry? How you ended up all broken? I saw that image in my sleep for days, the way your neck was twisted at that crooked angle, bones sticking out through your skin. And the look in your eyes, frozen in that last moment. It was horrible to see you like that.

And then, I had to go out and find you again. For weeks, I had to drive around at night, until I finally spotted you again. Your hair was auburn then, and your eyes were green. I recognised you though. I always recognise you. I always find you again.

Will you be good if I loosen the restraints a bit? Then you can sit at my feet while I watch TV, as you always did. Right where you belong.

Your cage is all ready for you. A nice, safe place for you to sleep, where nobody can hurt you. A bowl full of your favourite food. Doesn’t that sound nice?

Here, let me just loosen … No!

Bad Skippie!

…

Skippie?

Skippie?!

Oh, thank goodness … I was worried there for a moment. I thought … you really shouldn’t make Daddy angry like that. You know what happens.

Here, let me see. Yes, that tooth is loose … let me just … got it! Oh, don’t be such a baby, Skippie. It’s just a tooth. You have plenty left. Now, will you be good? Yes? Good boy.

The next few days, I’ll put soft food in your bowl. Porridge, mush. Yes, I know you don’t like mush, but it’s good for you.

Remember when you were sassy and your jaw got broken? It pained me so much to see that. You wouldn’t eat the mush, and we needed to use the funnel. Please don’t do that again.

Of course, you don’t remember. Sometimes I envy you.

Now tell me, what’s your name? Speak up!

Yes, yes, YES!

Skippie!

You remember! That makes me so happy! I … I shouldn’t cry, but … you don’t know how hard it was! You not recognising me. Not recognising your own Daddy, who loves you so much, who worked so hard to find you.

Your Daddy who sacrificed everything, just for his Skippie. But it’s alright, all is forgiven.

Come sit at my feet. Did you notice the little red light on your collar? It’s new. I made it myself. If you’re bad … well, see this remote? Setting one will give you a little shock. Setting two is for when you’ve been really bad… and setting three? Let’s not talk about that, OK? No need for that kind of bad, nasty business. You’ll never make me use it, will you? You wouldn’t to that to your Daddy.

Come here, come sit at my feet. That’s right, let me stroke your hair. Why are your teeth chattering? What are you afraid of?

You know that everything I do is for your own good. I love you, Skippie, and Skippie loves his Daddy, doesn’t he?

He does? Good boy. Such a good boy. We’re going to have so much fun together.

Are you hungry? I’m hungry. This has been such hard work. Here, stay in your cage while Daddy fixes dinner.

Skippie? I made your favourite! Some nice soft oatmeal for you, and steak for me.

Wait … why is the cage open? Skippie? Where are …

Skippie! Why??

Surprising Daddy like that, trying to get through the door. You ruined everything. The porridge is all over the floor, together with my delicious steak. My favourite steak knife now has a broken blade … and you got both of us covered in blood. Why did you have to struggle and fight like that? You knew what would happen!

Why do you keep making me break you?!

Here, let me see … take your hand away, let me look at … stop it! Oh dear, black blood. The knife must be stuck in your liver. Why, Skippie? Why did you do this? I’d only just found you! We could have had so much more fun.

I know it hurts … just close your eyes, it will all be over soon.

My dear, sweet Skippie.

Tomorrow, I’ll go back out and look for you.

I’ll find you again. I always do.

It’s been a year of big emotions and big changes. In January, I was still happily in a long-term committed relationship. By the end of August, we’d broken up, but that change did not come overnight.

There were months of arguments, counselling, working to come back together, and feelings. Lots and lots of feelings.

I won’t write about the specifics of the break-up, since I feel that is something that should remain between my former partner and me. It’s not my story to tell by myself.

What I do want to share, is some of my emotional journey in the past months, and how I dealt with my anxiety and fear.

I’ve written a little about self-trance before, how I tried the same induction on myself that I would try on others, and found that I could let myself sink into trance as well. At first, I mostly appreciated it for the sense of calm and serenity, but I soon noticed another effect.

I’ve always had a hard time reaching my emotions. They tend to reside pretty deep down in my psyche, kept in place by a thick layer of rationalisation. The thing I noticed about self-trance: it lets me sink underneath that layer.

All of a sudden, my feelings are much more immediate and clear, yet at the same time they lack that sense of intense urgency that anxiety often brings. I was able to see the underlying fears.

Now, in many ways I know what I’m afraid of. I’m scared of being abandoned or rejected, of not being good enough, not measuring up. I know these things from my past therapy. Still, knowing is not the same as feeling, and putting myself in this more receptive state helped to see much more clearly.

But then I tried something else.

Part of my therapy had been imaginary exposure, where you go back into past situations, and step in. Once I started learning about hypno and did self-trance, I noticed how very similar the experiences felt. So, I decided to try something.

I laid down on my couch, got comfortable and let myself sink deeply. And then, I pictured a little boy with bright blue eyes and strawberry-blonde hair. Me, aged somewhere between 6 and 8.

I sat down next to him, put an arm around his shoulders, and ruffled his hair. He smiled at me, but his eyes were filled with sadness. So, I started talking. I told him all the things I knew he needed to hear. How I saw him trying, that he was brave, how well he was doing. I took all my Daddy energy that I usually give to my partners, and poured it into that scared and lonely little boy.

I fucking broke.

I don’t know how long I cried, but I sobbed my heart out. Hearing these words, even though I knew they came from me: in that moment they came from a father figure (adult me) to the child that needed them so dearly.

When the sobbing subsided, I felt lighter and a little more healed. I was a little puzzled that me just lying on my couch with my eyes closed, imagining things … that it could feel this intense, this healing, but it did.

I still regularly talk to that little boy. He still gets scared, but his eyes are happier now. Small steps.

In the past, if someone would ask me to help them, I’d say: “sure, leave it up to me.”

These days, I’ve been trying to cultivate something I like to call “Grizzled Sergeant Mode”. The name kind of came about at Ampersand, where I helped with logistics, but wasn’t part of the core team.

GSM is where I basically say:

You’re in charge. Tell me what you need and I’ll give you options. If you want something in a way I hadn’t considered yet, I might ask questions to make sure I understand it, but I won’t argue with you.

I’m here to help, to make sure things get done, but not to take over. It’s your job, it gets done your way.

In the past, I’d be more likely to say: “What do you need? Sure, here… let me do it.”

In itself, helping someone by just doing something for them can be kindness, but it can also rob them of their agency. It centers you, instead of them.

The realisation that made me change my style was this: I was taking over because I was insecure and eager to prove my competence and worth. Admitting that I hadn’t considered something made me feel ashamed because of imposter syndrome.

The thing is though: I really don’t need to show off. Because …. drum roll … my worth is not determined by what I can do.

My worth lies in who I am, and the kindness I show to others.

It had been a while since I’d written that out, so here it is. A little reminder to myself.

I never gave it much credence, yet I always set out food and drink for those I had lost. Doing so made me feel a bit silly, but even if it was all just a story, it felt good to honour the people I’d loved.

My grandfathers both got a shot of their favourite liquor, my dad got a beer, and I’d set out a glass of that cloyingly sweet wine she used to love for my mum.

And cat treats. Always a bowl of cat treats. Mitzy had been gone for over two decades, but she’d been family, so she got treats.

All of this went in the window-sill, and when it had all been set out, I’d light an orange candle and whisper the words I’d been taught: “Be welcome”.

I used to do this every year, back when I still could. When my hands still worked, when I could still walk. A single moment changed it all. It was late, rain was pouring down. I drove to fast, didn’t pay attention.

The next thing I knew, I was here, in this hospital bed.

Rationally, I knew my body from the neck down still existed, but I could no longer remember what it had felt like. What it had been like to taste something else than the tube down my throat, breathing for me.

That hateful tube which kept me tethered to this existence, holding me prisoner in my body. If my hands still worked, I would have torn it out long ago.

Time no longer had any meaning, yet I clung to my inner clock. Counting every night, checking off the days on my mental calendar. I had counted two thousand, three hundred and five of them. That meant tonight was October 31st. Samhain.

I heard someone enter.

That was odd. The lights had been off for an hour, and the night nurse wouldn’t do her rounds again for another thirty minutes. I tried to see who it was, but they never entered my field of vision. All I saw, was a sudden glow. Warm, flickering light.

A candle.

The door closed again, without them having said a single word. They’d just lit that candle and left.

There was no food or drink set out, no ritual performed, but I found myself reciting the familiar words in my mind. Be welcome. Be welcome. I slowly drifted off to sleep.

An old familiar sensation woke me. A warm, gentle pressure on my upper legs. And softly, ever so softly, a low rumble. Purring.

My groggy brain wanted to discount it. It’s just Mitzy, I told myself, she snuck into your bedroom again. Go back to sleep.

The thought jolted me wide awake.

I blinked my eyes, but the feeling was still there.

I felt it. I felt it.

I lifted my head as far as I could, and there she was. Purring in my lap, as if nothing had happened. There was a ghostly quality to her, she was here, yet she wasn’t.

She opened an eye, gave me that slow blinking stare I knew so well, and settled back in.

I was still processing this, as another sensation hit me. The warmth of another person’s touch coursed up my arm, connecting straight to my heart. Someone had taken my hand, holding in theirs. I shouldn’t be able to feel it, yet here it was.

I looked and my mother was there, smiling at me, stroking my cheek.

She nodded, and I found that while my body couldn’t move, I could.

I sat up and looked around the room, filled with faces I hadn’t seen for so long.

Realisation dawned.

Tonight, the veil was thin.

Tonight, I got to come home.

Once I had managed to regulate again, one of them told me “Just in case one of those voices in your head is now piping up, nobody even noticed apart from us.”

I mulled that over for a moment.

The old song popped into my head, “Een man mag niet huilen” (A man isn’t supposed to cry) by Jacques Herb.

I never took it to be prescriptive. To me, it always sounded like a man lamenting the cage that being a man in the 70s forced him to live in. Never to show weakness or grief, to always be strong and steady. Stoic, even when the worst happens.

There was a time in my life when I would indeed have felt deeply embarrassed to be crying in public like that, but I found that I really didn’t care any more.

These past weeks, my tear ducts have been getting a thorough work-out as I processed my recent breakup. I’m human, I have emotions, and sometimes they need to come out.

I cry. Deal with it.

It can still be hard to reach my emotions sometimes, as they do like to bury themselves deeply under a thick layer of rationalisation. But, at least in that moment at Booty Call, I felt completely safe to express what I felt.

As I wrote about before, the Department of Toxic Masculinity still writes plenty of memos in my brain, but I’m happy to feel that at least this particular desk is no longer manned.

When I first started working, smoking in offices had already been banned. Officially, you couldn’t smoke anywhere in the workplace, yet the director of my first job still regularly walked through the building puffing on his cigar. Rank has its privileges.

I remember one of my very first clients, a small software company. Their office was the typical soulless building, done up in light shades of blue, a sad plant here and there. In that building, despite the rules, there was one room always filled with blue smoke. It was a dim, tucked away space, shared by two men in their 50s.

They were too set in their ways to change, and too valuable to the company to let go, so a compromise was reached. They got stuck in a far-away corner, away from the rest of the staff, where they could keep on doing what they did.

I sometimes feel like I have a corner of my brain which is like that office.

I’ve taken to calling it the Department of Toxic Masculinity. Basically, it’s where I keep all the ideas I was brought up with, which I know no longer serve me, but I haven’t been able to completely evict.

So, they’re stuck in that corner, basking in their own toxic fumes, mostly raging at the world and furiously writing memos. Those memos generally start with “A real man should…” and go downhill from there.

Most days, these memos get tossed straight into the shredder without so much as a second glance.

Every now and then, the poor sap driving my brain gets tired and overwhelmed, and he lets the intern take the helm for a moment. That’s when one of those memos might get read. Usually, it stops there. I feel shitty for a bit, but I recognise the memo for what it is.

And then, there are days when the memo gets read. The intern goes “looks good to me”, and it gets implemented. Those are the worst days. They are thankfully rare, and they usually end with me eating a lot of crow as I apologise for acting like an asshole.

So, why don’t I just kick these guys out of the building? Evict that nasty, smoky room and build an indoor climbing gym there?

I wish I could.

The thing is: these old ideas, they’re a part of me. I was brought up with them, and they shaped who I am. I can challenge them, I can choose not to act on them, but I don’t think I can ever truly rid myself of them, because they’re too ingrained in me.

Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Toxic masculinity still rules this world. Fighting it is up to us men. Me still getting those memos means that at least, I know what they say. I know what their views are and why they ultimately hold no water. This helps me counter those views, but more importantly: it helps me have empathy with those that hold them.

If you’re a man born last century, you have an office like that somewhere in your brain. Whether it’s still front and center or tucked away in a corner depends on how much work you’ve done. Maybe it’s even in a little annex outside the main building. No matter how much effort you’ve put into getting rid of them, none of us are completely free of them.

So, I’ll keep reading their memos and put them aside with sigh, but I’ll also remember that that department isn’t evil. They’re just deeply misguided. They’re trying to help me move through a world that no longer exists, and never should have existed in the first place.

Those two men in their smoky room have long since retired. Maybe their counterparts in my head will do that same one day.

It’s been a rough year so far, in several ways. I might write about that at some point, but right now I want to focus on this: the age-old question of “what the hell am I going to do with my life?”

The past few years, I’ve worked as a freelance software developer / consultant. It’s by no means my dream gig, but it is something I’m good at, and well … it pays the bills.

With changing legislation, that road looks to be coming to an end, though. I always intended the freelancing to be a stopgap, but now I’m suddenly faced with making some hard choices.

I’m standing at these crossroads, wondering where to go next.

I’m a nerd, and I deeply love writing software. I still do it for fun. I’m still passionate about programming languages, learning all the weird edges and corners. I thrive on deep knowledge. At the same time, the type of work I’ve been doing has often left me very understimulated. There have been plenty of challenges, but generally less of the “we have this hard problem” variety, and more of the organisational variety.

I crave meaning, and meaning has been in short supply.

I’ve learned a lot about myself in these past few years. I found my passion for writing again, both in fiction and in blog posts like these.

I found that I love to teach, both in my professional and personal life. One of my partners has been encouraging me to do a workshop on connective impact play, and I considered doing that at an unconference-type event.

Ultimately, I didn’t feel quite confident enough to do the impact workshop, but I did facilitate a session on ADHD, and played my Consent Game as a group activity.

I absolutely loved it.

I love the energy of being in front of a group or crowd. I’d love to do more of that.

Designing games also seems to match with how my brain works, so suddenly I have another new thing I want to explore.

I’ve been talking to a friend about teaching a course on software engineering at a local college (HBO), and that sounds like something that would make me happy. I’ve been working on a libre / open source platform for authors, and that also gives me a lot of joy.

But well, I also have bills to pay.

Now, I realise this is pretty much “First World Problems the Blog Post”, since I have options. This isn’t so much “how will I eat”, as “how will I spend my time and energy in a way that’s meaningful to me, while still making a living?” Definitely not the bottom rungs of the Maslov pyramid.

I’m not asking for answers or advice, I mostly wanted to share where I’m at. I won’t spurn wisdom offered, but I also know this is ultimately my journey.

Who knows? I might meet a well-dressed stranger at those crossroads who will offer me all I desire, for the mere price of my soul?

More likely though, I’ll do what I’ve often done. Choose one road, see if I like it, and if I don’t … I’ll just backtrack and choose another.

I’ll get there in the end.

She asked me if I’d mind changing the bed, and I told her I would.

As I was changing the sheets my mind went “In poly, everybody talks about the hot sex and the emotional labour, but nobody ever mentions the amount of laundry!”

I chuckled to myself a bit, but also noted how I felt in that moment.

It was a simple, cosy feeling. Making sure my meta would have a nice, clean place to sleep, that he’d be comfortable and happy. It’s a special kind of compersion, to do small acts of kindness for your metamours, knowing that you share a bond through loving the same person.

That small, happy moment got rudely interrupted by my brainweasels, saying “You should hate this.”

Now, that made me pause what I was doing.

I know my brainweasels are in a real sense just a part of me, but the things they like to whisper in my ear are often the things I’ve been told when I was young.

In this case, the message was that I shouldn’t feel happy and content. I should very grudgingly accept the fact that “my woman” sleeps with other men (because of course only men count!), only because it allows me to sleep with other women. And I should make damn sure I’d have at least as much sex as she did, or I’d be a laughing stock.

I quit making the bed, sat down for a moment, and took a deep breath. I let the feeling wash over me. These thoughts were so toxic they were nearly laughable, yet they made my gut clench.

They weren’t really mine though, so I did my best to treat the fear with kindness.

I’m her Daddy, she’s my kitten. It’s a cute dynamic, but there is also a deeper truth underneath it. Cats are only yours as long as they choose to be with you. You don’t truly own a cat. If you treat a cat badly, it will wander off to find a better home.

But also: once you’re a cat’s person, they’ll stick with you. They’ll comfort you when you’re sick, they’ll offer support when they can. And cats may love to go on adventures, they always come home.

That’s us. That’s always been us.

I don’t own her, nor would I ever want to. That voice from the brainweasels, it’s just my upbringing. It’s my dad’s ghost telling me that I’m a naive idiot who needs to learn that people are out to get you, that they’ll take advantage of you the moment your back is turned.

Most of my growth over the past few years has come from me accepting that actually, I’m OK as I am. I have flaws, I have stuff to learn, but at the core, I’m a good person trying his best. All these “lessons” in how I’d need to change to survive: they may have been well-intended, but ultimately they were just harmful.

I don’t want to spend my life looking over my shoulder. That’s not a life worth living. So, I’m choosing to trust.

And if anybody would indeed laugh at me? Well, thank you for showing me you’re not the type of person I want in my life.

Pretty quickly, I noticed several changes. I had much less executive dysfunction, more energy and most importantly: I regained my full range of emotion. I hadn’t really been aware of it so much while I was on methyl, but once I switched to lisdex, I felt really happy (and really horny too!) again. It was like the top 10% of my emotions had been missing on methyl, and I’d now gotten them back.

So, the switch itself was awesome, and I’m still very happy I switched. The big challenge however, was that getting my full emotions back also meant getting the full force of my anxiety again. Well fuck.

Now, I realised this would be the case and I made a conscious decision to go ahead anyway, hoping that the tools I’d learned in therapy would help me deal with the deeper parts of my anxiety. I’m happy to say that I was right in that estimate. I’ve had some shitty moments, but in general I haven’t descended into the depths of despair like I used to. Yay therapy!

Most importantly: I felt like my old self again in many ways. My brain felt like I remembered it, pre covid and pre burn-out. I felt like I had my old mental acuity back for the first time in a long, long time.

But that groove from the title… what’s the deal there?

Well, turns out that my first response to feeling like I had something resembling my old capabilities back, I slipped right back into heaping too much work and responsibility on myself.

At first, it felt good to be driven and inspired again, but after a while I met that old friend: the feeling of constantly failing, of not doing enough.

I felt that I should be writing more, both fiction and essays. The world was on fire, it needed my voice! I’d started building a platform to publish my own fiction on, and that morphed into a hugely ambitious plan to host a federated platform for all authors.

So, I slipped back into that familiar old groove. I tired myself out.

Luckily, I wasn’t completely relapsing. I felt myself tire, and I decided to take some downtime, and work hard to make it actual downtime.

I got myself a little cottage for a few days, by myself. I brought my laptop and bicycle. I cycled, journaled and wrote notes. More importantly, I logged out of all social media platforms, and only stayed in touch with friends through phone or messenger.

I read a lot, and took the time for my mind to slow down. I confronted a bunch of poly anxieties I’d been having, and I took stock of what I was doing, where I was putting my energy.

At some deep level, I still feel that my worth lies in what I produce. The things I write and create. But it doesn’t.

My worth lies in who I am, how I treat those around me. If I never write another essay or story, that does not diminish me in any way. If from now on, I just do my job and never publish another open source project, that still doesn’t diminish me.

I often joke that I write these kinds of posts as a reminder to myself, but I really do. This is in part to remind future me that it’s enough to just be.

Time to once again climb out of the groove. I hear the view up top is nice.

Isaac suppressed a yawn and looked out the window, but all he could see was his own reflection. It was still pitch black outside, and it wouldn’t be light for at least another two hours. If it became light at all.

He poured the coffee, spilling some and scalding his hand in the process. For a few seconds, the pain was enough to jolt him out of his stupor, but then the fog descended on his brain again. Waking up this time of year seemed nigh impossible. It didn’t really matter how many stimulants he poured down his throat, his brain felt like an old car with a stuttering engine.

Dark, bleak, cold, wet.

Seasonal Affected Depression they called it, but really they should just call it NFJ: No Fucking Joy. Rationally he knew it was just the lack of sunlight, but it felt like there was a black cloud in his head, a thick smothering blanket suffocating him. It felt like the whole world was moving too fast, like everything cost twice the energy than usual.

Isaac struggled through the day, doing his work to the best of his ability, trying not to bite anyone’s head off. A few more days to the solstice, a few more days until the light would come back, and the curse would slowly start to lift.

When evening came, he dragged himself to bed and fell into a deep sleep, dead to the world. A sleep so deep that he never heard the large figure that materialised in his bedroom. Never saw the red and white outfit. He might have recognised it, though the reality was so much more nightmarish than the pictures showed.

He turned around and murmured in his sleep, but he did not wake as the figure bent over him and drank his blood, seeping his life-force.

Refreshed, the figure went on its way. In a few days time, he’d have a long and busy night, so he needed all the energy he could get.

Good thing he had the Naughty List, or as he liked to call it: the Snack Menu.