Stretch Goals You measure your life out in the rituals and habits that you punctuate your time with.

Stretch Goals

You measure your life out in the rituals and habits that you punctuate your time with. The precise moment you shut off your alarm before the racket really kicks in, the side of the bed you get out of. The pillow you use. The coffee you drink, the route you take to work, the exercise you do. How long, how far, how hard. You turn yourself into an amalgamation of activities until you feel like you’re properly defined. As if, through the expression of habit, you can feel out the edges of your personality.

And every time you step outside of those habits, life becomes a little less certain, and a little more unpredictable. You become a little less certain and a hell of a lot more unpredictable. You surprise yourself, surprise the rigorous outlines that you’ve established for yourself, and push and break past the boundaries and borders that you once thought were so very well maintained. 

You find yourself with your fingers around the handle of a knife, when you swore that that wasn’t something you were interested in. You find yourself waking up next to someone when you ensured yourself you were going to take it easy for a while. You find yourself somehow able to let it all wash past you without falling apart, without having the edges of your personality burst, and your very selfhood come gushing out in a great tidal wave of anxiety. 

So much of D/s is about bolding those outlines, shoring them up nice and tight and using protocols and habits reassure you that you are who you say you are, your tastes lie exactly where you thought they did. And so much of it is about exactly the opposite. Pushing, pulling, twisting and contorting you in all the ways you never thought you might bend, until you’re barely recognisable, and yet completely aware. And it’s those times that really define you, that really show you who you are. It’s not about the affectations but the effects, how you handle things not how you’ve learnt to allow life to handle you.