While the map may read: YOU ARE HERE, it’s only the beginning.

Hundreds more articles like this can be found

at the Kink Mentoring Archives… Spread the word!

---

Anonymous asked : Hey um I’m really uncomfortable with my sexuality. To the point that I go through extended periods of hating myself. Can you help me, daddy?

DirtyDaddyThings:

Bear in mind son, this is like asking a random person to paint the Mona Lisa using nothing but their breath and a sheet of steel. You’ve given me two pieces of information that are so generic I could write almost anything and it would sound like it was getting to the point, but I would be swinging blind and you’d know I’d missed completely but I wouldn’t. That, however, has never stopped me from tryingwhich is all I can do here without more information.



In the broadest of terms ‘being comfortable’ with one’s self is an intensely complex challenge. It’s up there as one of the ‘big ones’ like finding purpose, meaning, happiness or uncovering ‘destiny’. Even discovering this about yourself can be intensely emotional. I’ve seen boys breakdown because they weren’t ‘normal’, having just discovered a new kink or even an aspect of their sexuality they hadn’t explored yet, or that they were improperly gendered.

The revelation of ‘challenges’, which those things represent, can cause frustration, depression, self-depreciation, and much more as all non-’straight’, non-cis folk know well as all of us have experienced it first hand in varying degrees.

For the record: I hate labels with such a passion and fire that I do everything I can to dismantle them as thoroughly as I can because if there was a ‘demon’ in with the skeletons in the closet, it’s labels about who we ARE, what we ARE, and our value when what matters is that we ARE. To hell with those other notions, but that’s a much longer rant for another time.

Your ‘comfort’ is most likely, again speaking in the broadest/statistically common factor, the result of that kind of ‘challenge’. It represents you not being ‘average’ or ‘normal’ (insert angry bear sound at those words) and that means you have to either sacrifice being in the ‘normal crowd’ (insert laughter at the idea of normal crowd) or you have to do horrible things to yourself that have only one end: the destruction of any stable psychological/emotional/spiritual sense of self.



Upon discovering your uniqueness, the very first choice you are given is to be alone (which is untenable because of the nature of things) or to ‘end’ that self that is different. Is it any wonder we have such universal challenges like depression, anxiety, and the rest? We’re virtually neverwelcomed ‘into the world’ before the ‘world’ tells us we’re wrong. The truth is that none of that is real or true or both. This may sound a little counter-intuitive but I think that’s where we need to go here to find your answer: away from ‘cognitive intuition’ and into something deeper.

There is no such thing as those things that are pushing you to be different from who you are; They are the lie you’ve been told and accepted. There is no ‘normal’ person and if it does exist, it’s so rare that in 7 billion, you might find it every few generations. This person who is just like everyone else.. the idea frightens me really. A ‘blank’ who fits in everywhere wouldn’t be a ‘person’ because what makes us so is that we don’t fit in everywhere.

We aren’t meant to. That’s not how the universe works on any level so it’s rather deluded to assume that on our ‘level’ it does. That’s like saying you wouldn’t get drawn into a black hole because you’re made of ‘special atoms’ because you’re homo-’sapiens’. There’s no amount of ‘fabulous’ that can change the way things work in the universe. As much as we’d like to think so, you just can’t ‘out Queen’ a black hole.



The universe has some pretty simple rules: Everything has a place, everything fits and it all works when it is where it belongs. Please note that ‘getting it’ or ‘understanding’ really aren’t in those basic principles because what we do as humans (drawing lines, making connections between concepts and assigning value to unrelated things) has little to do with the universe itself and more to do with what we do in that structure.

Everything “Fits” :

There is nothing that isn’t created using the same template, a base code of atoms and chemicals and structures. It manifests in an incredible diversity worthy of the duality of it’s source because it is both simple and complex in the same breath. You are you because billions of atoms obey the rule of “Fit” and “purpose” set out by that ‘template’ that created the code that became the chains of color pallets known as DNA. Every single human has the same base code because we all ‘fit’ in that same sense as an extension of our ‘atoms’ fitting in cosmos.

This means that from long before you could possibly have existed, you were ‘right with the cosmos’ and belonged here but you aren’t always aware of it or able to sense those things because you aren’t yet ‘where’ you (as grand component) fit yet. This happens at every level as well. Things come together, form shapes, change and separate making new bonds and forming new things but ultimately nothing remains ‘rogue’ for long at all. It just FEELS like you don’t fit because you aren’t ‘fitting’ at the moment. You’re not wrong but you aren’t right about the grander scale on which you do, and will again, fit perfectly. By way of this metaphor for life, nothing is a ‘universal’ fit because we all have unique bonds to make as part of creating a structure.



Everything has a “Place”.

You are here. Virtually every map in a building has this marker so you know where you start your journey. There’s no indicator, on said map, of where you’re going or a hint or guide of how to get to that place you have an idea of but no clue where it resides. You’ve got an idea that the world is a big place and that somewhere in all of it, there’s somewhere you fit and are happy, but no clue how to get there.

This is where ‘feeling different’ becomes a threat to happiness. A triangle isn’t going to fit in a round hole of the same size without being bent, turned or cut down to fit but it will NEVER be a circle no matter how hard it’s ‘shaped’, it will always be what could have been a triangle. That’s what we do to ourselves when we try to conform every part of our uniqueness to the ‘hole’ given to us at the start. That’s the thing though, it’s just the ‘start’ and virtually never does a piece begin and end in the same spot. “You are here” is only the first rung on the ladder you’ll climb and no indicator of where you’ll go or what you’ll do on your journey. Those are as unique as you are.

So why does the map exist at all then? It’s the result of people who have been before you but it’s not meant to say ‘this is the only way’ but it is the only ‘example’ you could be given: the result of someone’s journey who went before you. They weren’t ‘constructed’ like you are, weren’t meant to fit the way you will because they weren’t YOU.

Following the atomic metaphor a little further, atoms are passed along because of environmental stresses. Sometimes we come together to form greater structures and other times the bonds aren’t stable (read: aren’t the right fit) and so we break apart and then move along following that ‘ladder’ or ‘chain’ of elements as we move along searching for that ‘fit’.

It’s scary but the only way to truly find that ‘place’ is to be you. In the absence of a genuine sense of self, you can never find a sense of belonging because it won’t be YOU that belongs, just that version of you that was created (by you and outside pressures) for the sole purpose of fitting in. It denies the idea that you could fit in better somewhere else and that to one degree or another you must do so because that’s why you are here after all. Denying that creates false self of place that leaves us feeling uneasy, nauseous because it’s unstable, and we always turn to ourselves as source of that problematic perception. It is, again, a fallacy. The situation/place isn’t wrong and neither are we, but the fit is because you aren’t yet where you need to be.

Everything has purpose.

This one gets ‘sticky’ and is very messy because it can challenge everything else because it’s the big ‘debate’ in philosophy, religion and psychology. Do we have purpose? Does that purpose entail a ‘power’ creating that purpose? The questions go on and on but are a byproduct of assumptions about the universe that are entirely our own creation. They don’t ultimately have any impact on the fact that everything has purpose and that the purpose has no ‘value’ in and of itself.

What I mean by the last is that since we assign value, one of our many human traits, we create this sense of measure that one thing is better than another. We discriminate. It’s our nature.We choose left or right based on one of those being better because of experience/learning but as we are constantly evolving, those choices aren’t always the ‘right’ ones. We push concepts onto the fabric of the universe and somehow expect it to ‘agree’ with us but that’s not how it works.

We’re all the same basic things, a few different kinds of atoms being shoved around until we form shapes by Forces like gravity and such. So too with the nature of human existence. It has no ‘value’ in and of itself, but we create those things when we ascribe meaning and purpose to it which is why we so desperately search for something outside ourselves to give it to us: because we know we can make mistakes and being mistaken about our purpose feels like a terrible fate we want to avoid.

Let me tell you a little about me as a way of illustrating this point. I have chosen to move, to follow the ‘pattern’ and to ‘drift’ a little now and again. I go where I am ‘needed’ rather than where I feel like I ‘should’ go because I know that should is an expectation and not a reality. The reality is that where I am now is a byproduct of being tugged at by a situation, a need in a specific area, or just a sense that ‘this’ is the new ‘place’ for a time. I’ve migrated my whole life and what I’ve learned is that I belong everywhere. I’m far from ‘normal’ but what I do and who i am IS needed virtually everywhere I have landed.

I build connections, create community, strengthen bonds and heal rifts. I weave things and mostly spend my days ‘healing’ the fabric around me. It’s what I do here on tumblr in spite of my original intention of just being a dirty old man since that wasn’t a side of me I got to really express in my day to day because it didn’t ‘fit’ with that situation. Instead my natural tendencies came to the surface as reflex because they were needed by people like you who felt alone, lost or just frightened.

When I was younger I tried to take my own life because I didn’t feel ‘connected’ didn’t have a ‘group’ I felt I ‘belonged to’ because my sexuality made me feel ‘different’ and that in discovering it I had become disconnected. The terrible truth was that I didn’t ‘belong’ anywhere.

In.

Particular.

Where I was at the time, the place and social groups, were made of disparate ‘isolated’ elements that came together around me. I brought those like me together, the ‘isolated’ lost and ‘cast out’, and formed communities. Eventually I found myself drifting away from that and to a new place where there was ‘nothing’. Only to repeat the process there.

How do you find “Purpose” when you have no “place”? You come to understand the illusion of those things while accepting that it was your understanding of them previously that created the illusions. The truth is, I belong wherever I am because I am needed there. Time will come, as it always does, that I will ‘move’ again. While I may yearn for the ‘quiet life’ of house, fence, kids and dogs, my ‘purpose’ is to ‘create spaces’ as I do here and to share what I have learned of being ‘place-less but with purpose’ because it allows me to form ‘greater’ structures around me than you might if you had a perfect fit in a particular place. My place, it seems, is the whole confusing, complex, crazy, thing. 

Anywhere. Everywhere. Right here and now because you reached out to me.

It is why I so desperately try to engender a simple understanding in others: that you are critical in your natural state. I don’t mean ‘younger you’ I mean the real you, the deeper true you, because that is what bears purpose and can help find or create place. I may have tried to be an artist, danced my way through years of my life, and been a warrior who defends those at risk around him, but those were never the real me. The real me.. you get to glimpse him here. None of this would exist if I had continued to fight the fact that I was endowed with my unique tool set and that with that came a ‘purpose’ that didn’t ‘fit’ everywhere.

You’re struggling with ‘fitting in’ and understanding why you are the way you are, but the struggle isn’t really with those ‘facts’ about yourself: it’s with the way they ‘fit’ with society and your environment. While it can be a survival strategy to ‘conceal’ those parts of yourself you must explore them safely. I don’t mean go out and do everything your sexuality entails, I mean explore: read, discover that you’re not the only person out there with your sexuality and that in such a discovery find community and get to know what it’s like when people with a shared trait create such a space together.

Remember to breathe. Give yourself a little time. Discover the borders of the pieces of your ‘self’ that don’t ‘fit’ where you are and the discomfort they create and then set yourself on the journey of finding that ‘place’ and ‘fit. It could be as simple as fitting with just one other piece with complimentary borders.

While the map may read: YOU ARE HERE, it’s only the beginning.

I know there’s much more specific you want to ask me. This was, you could say, a primer for what comes next. Ask me what you will and I’ll answer as best I can, but remember I’m the kind of person that will write a book in an answer because I feel you are worthy of it and because what YOU are enduring is a battle other people face daily and if I can ‘double down’ on what my work can do, I will do so.

Tell me what is truly bothering you about your sexuality and we’ll go from there but remember this lesson as a ‘square one’ “you are here” moment. The next steps we’ll take together and see what road opens for you that you might not have seen before.

Until then, you have my best wishes.

-Daddy