Fear

There's a new blog out there that I'd like to point you in the direction of. Freshly Spanked is written by two freshers off to university, Smudge and Irelynn, and so far they are proving themselves to be great writers. Smudge wrote a post about how a childhood experience with a cane (not BEING caned, I hasten to add!) had given her a lifelong fear of them, and how she was now plucking up the courage to ask Abel, from The Spanking Writers to give her a "proper" caning, in a sort of kill or cure scenario. I am absolutely full of admiration that she has the courage and maturity to try and overcome such a deep-seated fear.

Reading her post made me think about how I should react to my much more recent 'fear generating' experience with that stupid hairbrush. I wrote in that post about having basically had a bit of a meltdown after the hairbrush had been used, and having to stop everything. What I didn't write about was how much it affected me afterwards. The whole experience completely threw me. I cried on and off for two days. I don't know what it was that got to me so much. Was it the reaction to the hairbrush? Was it having to stop afterwards with the crop? Was it the feeling of failure, or that I couldn't understand how I could take so much one week and so little the next? Was it instead the feeling of having completely lost control, both in a physical sense to someone else, and an emotional sense with my reaction? Whatever it was, it put me into a pretty bad place for a couple of days. And it still puts me into a bad place thinking back on it.
We've met up since then, it's been fine, painful, but lovely ;-) I've had 20 with a tawse and six with a cane one evening, without having another emotional meltdown, so I know *I'm* back, and that this is what I enjoy.
But... I still can't put that evening out of my mind. The idea of that hairbrush now doesn't just scare me, it makes me feel sick, terrified, wanting to cry. Actually crying. The emotional associations with it now are not pleasant, and I have no desire to go back to that bad, dark place, and I wouldn't imagine he has any desire to take me back to it. I've told him that stupid piece of wood is *completely* off limits, and is staying that way. He seems to have accepted that. For now.
Reading Smudge's post made me think though. If she can be that brave to face her fear head on, and deal with it like that, maybe I should be doing the same thing. Instead of letting the hairbrush be associated forever more with the dark place, maybe I should get it out and give it to him again and see whether things are different this time. Maybe they won't be. Maybe it will be a disaster and I'll spend another two days lost down my own little rabbit hole. Or maybe it won't, and it will turn out that this knot of fear I've built up inside me is completely unfounded and it's not a big, bad, scary piece of wood. It's just a hairbrush.
I'm not making any decisions just yet, but it's food for thought, so thank you Smudge.