Here we go again.
Before I let myself get going on spilling my thoughts onto my keyboard again, I wanted to say a quick thank you to those who liked, read, commented, and sent me messages on or regarding my first blog post. I created this blog on a whim, and it felt good (and admittedly strange) to know that people were reading, enjoying, and engaging in my inner thoughts.
That having been said, reading my blog is not the kind of reading that the title of this post is referring to.
Allow me to explain. Oh, and fair warning: this doesn't really have anything to do with BDSM. It's just me letting my inner toughts out of the cage in my head for a while.
I had a bit of an realization the other day as I was spending time with someone new in my life, and I keep finding my mind wondering back to what I discovered over and over again. Before I get into this realization, I feel the need to give a bit of backstory. Preemptively explain myself, if you will. I'm not going to get into details, so please don't try to ask me to, and I am not searching for pity, or misplaced apologies over what I'm about to say. I'm a different, better person now, and I wouldn't be where I am now if not for everything I've been through.
That being said, here it goes.
The latter part of my childhood was.... atypical, and exceptionally hard, to say the very least. The short, highly edited version is this; I was manipulated and abused for the majority of my childhood by someone I trusted completely, and I didn't realize the lies, manipulation, and deceit until they were (thankfully) gone from my life.
It is what it is; I just felt it was relevant for people to know before I share what I have to say next.
Anyways, my realization was this; I am exceptionally good at reading others now, and I am constantly doing it unconsciously. Reading a persons subtle tendencies: their avoidance of topics, their speech patterns, eye contact, presence or lack of movement, even the words chosen or not chosen in a text message. I find myself automatically analyzing all of it, and I'm not entirely sure when it started, or how I've gone so long not noticing that I was doing this.
I mean, don't get me wrong. There have been plenty of times that I've walked away from someone and said to myself 'Something about that was odd. Don't trust them. Don't listen to them. At least not yet.' (I'm sure every one of you who is reading this has had one of those moments before.) But I'd never been able to pinpoint exactly what it was that was causing me to reach that conclusion. I'd always simply associated it with intuition, or "just a gut feeling". It wasn't until I was mid conversation with that someone the other day that I've previously mentioned, and my mind was suddenly screaming at me 'That thing she just did! She's trying to manipulate you. Don't let it happen!' And after that moment, I find myself noticing that I'm doing this constantly; alwasy analyzing those around me. It's kind of jarring when I notice it actually, but I'm slowly adjusting to it.
But, the realization itself isn't what is keeping me up late once again, clicking away at my keyboard. No, it's the repercussions that are bothering me, and keeping my mind occupied late at night. I know that doing this is most likely just me trying to subconsciously (or now consciously, I suppose) protect myself from any unnecessary pain, as both my conscious and unconscious brain really don't want to go through being manipulated again. But is doing this actually helping me, or hurting me?
As a Dom, I think being able to read people is an exceptionally good skill to have, right? I mean, I find myself usually able to tell what someone wants from me within a few moments of spending time around them (or at the very least I'll have a mental list of all the possible things they could want from me). I'm able to gauge a persons response to things I could say or do to them with an almost scarily high degree of accuracy. For those that I've spent a decent amount of time around (friends, coworkers, etc.), I find myself able to predict almost exactly what comes out of their mouth in response to what someone else has said. Those are all good abilities to have, right?
But the troubling thing is this: how do I know that I'm right? I mean, as of yet I haven't come across any instance that I've been wrong, but I'm sure that I've been wrong about someone or something in the past. Plus I've only been paying attention to the results of my calculated assumptions for the past week or two (at most). Should I allow myself to continue to operate on this admittedly kind of ridiculous thing that I'm doing? Or should I be doing everything I can to try to stop this weird tendency I've developed?
I have yet to decide.
