Photo Credit: Peter O’Kelly’s Reality Check
I meant to get this out earlier; but life just go tin the way. Now that I am home from work for the day, showered, and relaxed; I can finally put my thoughts about what happened between me and Miss down. A day or two after our conversation, Miss and I exchanged several emails, further expressing our thoughts on the situation. One thing Miss wrote made start digging deeper into the motives behind my feelings of fear, distrust, frustration, and panic; or in short, my feelings of “unsafeness.”
Miss wrote “For me, today was a glitch and once I had decided my new course of action I truly did not give our exchange a second thought. I did not even consider it all that tumultuous pet; even after I realised my error, even after I realised just how much of a contradiction I had made. This was really just a minor moment and yet it rattled you extensively…” And she is right. I agree, that what happened in our conversation was a glitch, and that glitches will always happen, and that they are no big deal.
So then why did the conversation leave me so discombobulated? Well let me tell you.
Looking back, I see this little conflict as two separate parts.
1) The communication glitch between me and Miss, the act of Miss contradicting herself and then not explaining her contradiction.
2) What that meant to me, in terms of being obedient and ding what I was supposed to do.
The first part, the communication glitch itself, did not send me into a panic. Miss and I have had communication glitches in the past; so it was not that that bugged me or caused me to feel “unsafe.” What did affect me greatly was the second part of what happened, what it meant to me.
From Miss’s view, I can completely see how this would be “no big deal” for her, and why she probably did not understand why I was getting so upset. Let me be clear in saying that conflict itself does not rattle me a lot, but what the conflict means does.
In this particular instant, I was feeling “unsafe” because it seemed like it was absolutely impossible to do what Miss was asking of me. Let’s try to break this down.
Essentially, Miss gave me an order: “Once I have explained myself _once_ I expect you to “get it”. And if you do not, I expect you to ask. I will not ask you if you understand. You are expected to understand or to ask.” So what she said translates in my mind to “pet, if you do not understand what I say, it is my expectation of you to ask for clarification until you understand.”
Because of Miss’s refusal to discuss the topic further, after I had pointed her contradiction out, I was not obeying her previous order to me, because I did not understand what she was saying. It felt like I was between a rock and a hard place, because I was trying my best to ask for clarity, but she was not giving me a clear answer. When it comes down to it, if Miss does not want to discuss a topic, then we do not discuss it. Case closed. I just had to deal with that; however, there was some internal conflict because the whole reason behind Miss’s frustration with me had to do with my assumptions. in this case, since Miss was not answering my questions, I had to go against what Miss had just said to me about not assuming, and assume in order to get some sort of an understanding of what Miss was saying.
If this was a one-time deal, I would have been able to shrug is off quicker than in this case; however, Miss had stated at the beginning of the conversation that she was changing her approach and that “from this day forward, until [she deems] otherwise,” this was the way things were going to be.
THAT was what caused me to panic. If you have been following my blog, you would know that I have been riddled with a lot of doubt, insecurity, and uncertainty. My last visit with Sir and Miss did its job to reassure me, that I was doing the right thing, that I belonged in this relationship; however, when I had this conversation with Miss, all of my doubts came back, thinking that this was the way things were going to be.
I have come to accept that life as Sir and Miss’s pet is not necessarily a fair world, but to me, telling me not to assume and that I was expected to ask for clarity, and then not giving me clarity, thus forcing me to assume in order to somewhat understand is just unreasonable. I could not imagine my relationship with Sir and Miss continuing if that was the way things would be.
What I want, have always wanted, in terms of my relationship with Sir and Miss is to be a good pet, the best pet that I could be. I do not often back down to a challenge; however, if Miss was going to be “unreasonable,” I no longer saw a point in trying to be obedient. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I believe that it is important to not get what you want on occasion; however, in this case, I weighed the pros against the cons and realised that if I could never be “good” for Miss, if I could never meet her expectations, and if she was the reason I could not meet her expectations, I would just be setting myself up for failure. I could try as much as I could to ask for clarity, but at the end of the day, if Miss is not clear, then I will not get the clarity she expected of me.
What pulled me through this, even before Miss left a comment on my last entry, was my overall thoughts of Miss. I know that she is not an unreasonable person. I know that she would not have an expectation of me and then intentionally see to it that I never meet her expectations. I do care for Miss and I know she is always looking out for my well-being. But at the same time, there was a tiny speckle of doubt about these thoughts. Miss had stated herself that this was not her natural approach; so it was only natural that I asked myself, “What if this is the way Miss intended things to be? What if this is truly the non-natural her?”
I got scared. I got scared, and I panicked, and I went into emotional breakdown mode. I cried long and hard; not about the conversation itself, not about our conflict and communication glitch, but what this conversation meant about the future of my relationship with Sir and Miss. I was frustrated because I really wanted to do everything in my power to make this work. I really wanted to be that good, obedient pet. It all really just sucked that the person i was trying to please was also the person making it impossible for me to be pleasing.
After reading Miss’s comment, after getting that clarification, and after reading Miss’s email saying that for the most part, she had heard me, and that my thoughts were not being ignored, I felt a little better. My other thought was that i am very grateful for this blog; because I know Miss reads it regularly, and that even though she might not be willing to discuss a topic with me directly, that if I put my thoughts down here, they have a relatively high chance of being read by her.
In all honesty, I still feel a little bit hesitant to speak with Miss directly, because I am scared of having a communication glitch, not having it explained, and then not being able to discuss it personally and directly with Miss. I have always valued the openness and bluntness at which I was able to share my thoughts and feelings with Miss. Let me be clear and say that Miss has not removed my privilege to speak with her. That is my choice. I am going on a gut instinct.
I guess an image of my situation is like a cat and a mouse. I feel like I am a mouse who wants to approach a cat for a chat; but I also have no guarantee that the cat will not snap at me and eat me. Right now, I do not feel comfortable with approaching Miss for a conversation. I will talk to her if she talks to me first, it would be rude not to; but somehow, I have managed to take one bad experience and let it cloud the openness Miss and I once had. I would like to state once again, that none of this is Miss’s doing. She has not said “pet, you may no longer speak with me.” This is just a feeling of uncertainty, non-confidence, and irrational caution that I have.
I am trying to put our past conversation behind me; and I know that one day, I will just get up and decide that I am being silly, and that I just need to get back into conversing regularly with Miss again. While I have had almost a week to shake off my bad experience, I think I need to find that self-confidence again. I need to convince myself that talking to Miss will not always land me in a frustrating situation.
Miss may not understand it, Sir may not understand it, my readers out there may not understand it; but quite frankly, no one other than me needs to understand the motive(s) behind my feelings. I know that I have trust issues with Miss; and while they do play a part in the instability of the relationship with Miss, I am hopeful that it is recovering from emotional conflicts, such as the ones I had/have that make a relationship that much stronger.
Okay, now that this topic is over and done with, analysed as thoroughly as I would like, and has ripped a jagged path in my emotional frame of mind, it’s time to put it away and not let it take over me. I know that I may very well not be over this for a while more; but to me, the important thing is that I grow and continue to work through my emotions. I am not willing to let this conflict get in the way of me being (or at least trying to be) a good pet for Sir and Miss.
!
The last two months, perhaps even longer, have been an emotional rough ride for me. In the process of working through my emotions, I seem to have last some of the playfulness, the pet-ness that I once had. In short, I had lost my barking voice, literally.
