Crises at midlife and midnight

Is there a difference between my sudden embrace of kink and anyone else’s midlife crisis? I don’t believe so. I can’t be the only person to regret time lost or wasted, to claw my way out of a moribund state, of years-long depression and more than a decade fearing sex. Over the past year I have become capable not only of “extreme” and “perverse” acts and emotions but of acts and emotions PERIOD. I have rediscovered sociability, friendship and intimate relationships. I leave my house at night to spend time with people. (Weeks of tracking my insomnia show me that I sleep best when I come home from an outing and go straight to bed.) I have the peace of mind and confidence to reconnect with professional peers and my mother. I even started shopping again. Now that I am buying lingerie, sex toys and rope for my dungeon nights, a pair of completely unnecessary brightly striped loafers might seem like a comparatively conservative and practical addition to my wardrobe. (Reader, I purchased them.) These days I am lucky enough to be playing with a wonderful rope top, my first, with whom things are moving quickly. We’ve only played half a dozen times, but I am instantly aroused when he shows me a new paddle or approaches me with the first piece of rope in his hands. (I salivate like Pavlov’s dog…only not from my mouth.) It’s a dream come true, except for the weeks, days, hours and minutes that we are not playing and do not have a firm date for the next time. Turns out that acting on the mid-life crisis brings on new crises. I am distracted because I think about playing with him all the time, and I worry about all the reasons—not least his multiple play partners—that he might have to stop seeing me. I have tried to feed my appetite for rope by volunteering to bottom at workshops and by learning the art of tying. When that doesn’t help, I try to stop participating and learning because I fear that I’m feeding an appetite that I ought instead to quash or at least better control. And the evening social occasions that I enjoy so much also come with a price: a day of nerves and an inability to recall that each time I go out I relax and enjoy myself.
My anxiety also has me suffering from intractable insomnia. I wonder if I will have to exit the kink scene in order to end the sleeplessness. Going into my seventh week, I am still trying to avoid prescription meds by taking a (useless) megadose of melatonin. I am also now going to reduce caffeine, which I have always been able to consume right up to bedtime. Because light is “activating,” I turn on only one lamp in the evening and aim to shut off the computer at least an hour before bedtime. (Who on earth could break that addiction?) Because I find it pointless to hold a boring book before my eyes I am considering listening to books on line. Let’s hope that Helen Mirren hasn’t leant her voice to the collected works of Henry Miller. Laura Linney reading Thomas Piketty would be much more soothing. Apart from the whole income inequality thing, of course.

Credits
r2 A/D/E, gekka[M]black (comes with panties) (at Collabor88)
Maitreya, Mesh Body and hands
[Renegade] Ella – Black
Slink. Female Feet (AvEnhance) XXS – High
(NO) FrenchBraid Pigtails (resize script) – Pastel Purple (at Collabor88)
[CX] Arm Piercing (Gold) (pack contains multiple versions for ordinary and mesh bodies)
…:::Beautiful Dirty Rich:::… Applause (Hand Collar only)
DRD, Cables with electricity
Fleshtone :: Vanity Studded Cuffs (not available)
mijn.botique / studded earrings n.2 (Lear) – gold (not available)
Glam Affair – Lilith – Africa – Clean BL
Aberrant, Ouija tat (Body Art Hunt)
{S0NG} :: Chibi~ Abyss Eye
shot at Doomed Ship and Insilico