Punishments often come with a myriad of emotions. Frustration. Ambivalence. Fear. Intimacy. Love.
Tuesday's punishment for several days of missing my bedtime included all of those. A. had told me the night before he was going to sort me out the next day, and I woke up Tuesday with that familiar mixture of excitement and fear. But also a great deal of ambivalence.
I've been having a lot of pain in my pelvis/coccyx every since a bad urinary tract infection two and a half years ago, and it's been flaring up off and on lately. Despite a CT scan (to rule out a kidney stone), two cystoscopies (to rule out a tumor, stone, or Interstitial Cystitis), and an ultrasound (to rule out anything wrong with my reproductive organs), my doctors and massage therapists are still baffled as to exactly what's causing it. And I always worry that spanking is making it worse. I mean, I don't think it is, as the pain is there whether I get spanked or not. But do I think it's not making it worse because I don't want it to be? And when there is an impending punishment, do I think more about the pain in order to get out of a spanking? (A. has always made it clear that whenever I don't feel up to it, to just say so and any spanking is off.) But, as much as I hate punishments, it's what we do, and I hate missing out on that.
Plus, I felt frustrated with the limitations a bedtime imposes. I hate having to just stop everything at some arbitrary time. Okay, it's not totally arbitrary. I was the one who chose the time. And it is good that I'm getting to bed at the same time every night. I really do like that. But, still, it just feels frustrating, not to mention annoying that I failed to get to bed on time, and that left me feeling ambivalent as well.
But then I got the following email from A. with "Your punishment" in the subject line:
I will be calling at 1.30am my time to administer your punishment.
Be in your PJs, and have a hairbrush and wooden spoon ready by your bed.
As much as I shuddered at the very mention of the wooden spoon, I really wanted to do this.
So, I was in my PJs when he called with the wooden spoon and the hairbrush nearby. To be honest, I hadn't ever put them away after the last punishment. And he made me make lengthy use of that hairbrush -- well over a hundred strokes -- as well as eight strokes on the top of each thigh with the wooden spoon. By the end I was tearing up (it was all I could do to actually manage those strokes on my thighs - oh the pain!), and when A. said, "okay, all done...big cuddle for my girl," I started to lose it. Except a few seconds later he began talking about plane fares and dates, and I needed to compose myself in order discuss coherently this most important topic for us, despite wanting to cry even more when it was looking like it would be several more weeks before he'd be able to come.
Swallowing my tears was like swallowing my own vomit. I still felt icky 45 minutes later when we got off the phone, and I got into the bath. My ass felt very bad too when, being the brilliant one that I am, I put a couple of cups of salt into the bath like I normally do without remembering this was post-spanking. Um, yeah. Talk about rubbing salt in my wounds -- d'oh!
Afterwards I curled up in bed with my...yes, teddy bear, and hoped maybe now I would finally let all those tears out. But I didn't. Just lay there with all those icky feelings trapped inside. Finally I thought to tell my little girl self that it was okay to cry now. My eyes moistened a bit, and then finally the memory of the pain of the spanking and the frustration about my failure to get to bed on time, as well as being sick and its impact on my spanking kink, and the god-awful agony of A. not being there in person to cuddle me all came out in a torrid of tears. Now, if I would only do that when he actually is here to cuddle me.
Epilogue: A. booked his ticket today and will be here on January 8th thanks, in part, to a short-term loan from a family member and some help from a few generous readers of my spanking blog. I burst into tears today when I got the email that he'd booked the flight. Last night when we were looking at fares online, they kept changing, and I was so afraid that all the bits and pieces we'd scrounged together were still not going to be enough by the time he finally went to book it. But they were, and in 18 days he'll be here to cuddle me in the flesh. ::big smile::
