“What one has not experienced, one will never understand in print.” -Isadora Duncan

I began my journey into D/s and BDSM in online chat rooms; namely those on IRC (BDSM-Net and Bondage.com). I knew nothing of what the lifestyle would be for me, only the fantasy that I lived when I got home from class or work; it was a retreat from the everyday hardship that I was living with. I felt the control release and the pleasure of making someone else happy. I loved the creative talent it afforded me in my poetry and writing, the scenes I participated in. It became an art. I fell in love with the fantasy of it. Even when I accepted an online collar I thought that there was no way I could really love this in real. The activities I participated in, the rules I followed, the tasks assigned to me all seemed a part of the fantasy.

I didn’t understand why those that were ‘real’ shunned the way I behaved and looked down on my personae as one that would be trapped in online play for all my life. I didn’t understand what they were talking about when they talked about service and hardship in surrender, about the pleasure of being there for their owner, about serving and the pride in the words, “good girl”. I never understood the reality of what I was playing in.

Until one day I started asking a lot of important questions of myself. I wanted to experience the SM for real. I wanted to be tied up and see what the draw to my pleasure senses was. I wanted to know what it was like to kneel and serve someone. I wanted to hear “good girl” for something I had done. Was it going to remain a fantasy? I seriously didn’t know. I thought that maybe it would just lead to kinky sex and I was okay with that also. I really didn’t know what I wanted nor could I have imagined that my life would be as it is now or where it will be in years to come. My surrender was not easy and there are parts of it that I still cling to; a part of my independence that Master is allowing me to hang on to.

I’ve known submissives that can only experience online or long-distance relationships(LDR). I do not shun them as I was shunned. I know the desire and the pull to live it in any form you can. I was lucky, I guess and left my husband to explore the part of me drawn to BDSM, the service and surrender specifically.  I’ve been able to embrace the relationship I am in and am so very thankful for the role I played online to test the waters.

Online is no substitute and you can’t learn all that there is to know about living this life from essays and forums. You have to experience it to truly know. Every journey is different but I am grateful for my online VT beginnings. Without them, I would not have met my Master. Now we live happily together.

But even now I can’t see how to explain how my life is to someone online. I don’t know how to put my service to him in words that someone with no experience or ability to experience would understand. I don’t think words like that really exist.

What do you think? Can you express what it is you do for service to someone who only knows online D/s and has them really understand?