In the mirror I see my naked body. On my naked body I see scars. When I read back through events that are only fragments of memories I see scars. The glimpses I have through my hazy memories show me scars.
It seems I am a mass of scars, physical and mental.
Physical scars
On my body the scars are various. Some are tiny and raised, white, slightly shiny pieces of flesh. Others are larger, maybe 2cm, and look to have been made with a blade, some are tears perhaps made by teeth. Some are burns, possibly made by cigarettes or cigars. I have a brand in the shape of an M, probably put there by my deceased Mistress to display ownership. None are painful at all, not physically at least. I’ve been in contact with a doctor who has told me that with skin grafts, the bigger of the scars may be permanently erased. I wonder should I do it or should I keep them? If they are scars received in ‘battle’ then they are earned and mine to keep. Really, I don’t remember. The ‘M’ brand I will have removed for one reason, I belong to me now.
With the help of fawn I have counted my scars. They number twenty-seven altogether, mostly the tiny ones but six are larger and two, about 5cm.
Don’t feel sorry for me. Something I do remember is that I enjoy receiving pain so at the time I received those scars, it must have been a joyful experience. The sharp pain of torn flesh must have been intense and thrilling.
If my body is scarred again it will be because I choose it.
Mental scars
Apart from some clear memories of situations I have been in and the faces of a few people, the past is what I have read in this journal, and that only goes up until the time I became effectively the property of my female pimp and then as the real property of Mistress. It doesn’t include the ‘dark times’ as I call them.
The early days with uncle that continued up until the holiday I took at the beginning of this journal, are only recalled in what I wrote in Six Months in the Edge. From reading though, my scars, those in my mind, must go back as far as when I was nine.
Part of me wishes so dearly that I could remember everything, every detail of my life, in the way other people do. Another part is glad that those parts of memory, almost all of my past up to the last few weeks, have been blasted into pieces by the de-programming that brought me back to myself from the slave I had been.
The person who performed the de-programming has told me that memories are unreliable at best, in anybody, but in me they were lost as a part of the procedure.
Because memory, she explained, is mostly unknown, it isn’t always possible to just remove selected parts of it. In some like those who join cults, a new identity is layered over the existing memories and it can, often, be scraped away during de-programming, to leave the original personality and memories intact.
In my case, she explained, a large part of my original programming was to destroy all identity with all memories, to leave a clean slate, devoid of any personality aside from those natural properties, like intelligence that can’t be removed. Then, on top of the drastic removal of personality, identity and memories, the ‘clean slate’, a new identity was constructed that focused on service to Mistress as the only reason for existence. No personality was constructed because none was considered necessary as an object with no worth. This left me empty, like an empty glass, to be filled, imprinted, with whatever properties suited the Mistress.
I asked my therapist how, when so much of me had been stripped, could I retain the learning of language. English is not my native tongue and while I must have studied it at school, presuming I went to school, it would not have been at a very high level, and yet here I am, able to write like this. She told me that intelligence is unaffected by the programming/de-programming process. Sure, the intense learning of English I was forced to undertake, according to the journal of Mistress I have read a part of, was undertaken during my ‘enslavement’. But through some mysteries science does not yet understand, maybe because language exists in a different part of the brain, certain things are retained.
Some questions still trouble me. 1. Could the part of my old personality that allowed me to become, at least partly, a willing slave reassert itself? 2. Is my current feeling of dominance and desire to harm an extreme unconscious rejection of old programming? 3. Are my current feelings of intense hedonism temporary, a kind of adjustment, or permanent? 4. Is keeping fawn wrong? 5. Should I grant her freedom or would that harm her more, like an animal raised in captivity?
My therapist answered my concerns this way:
1. With any ingrained condition of long-standing it is possible to fall back into old ways. The only way to fight any such feelings if they occur is to look hard at my present life and to consider if losing that freedom of thought, movement and expression, would be worth the total surrender of slavedom. Not the weekend, play-slave, but the total, no-choice, no me, slave.
2. It is very possible that in my unconscious mind, its way of readjusting my psyche is to go hard in the opposite direction. She feels that the adjustment time, though unpredictable, will probably be roughly equivalent to the time spent in that mindset. She clarified this by saying she meant the time in the service of Mistress, since the programming, not since age nine or that would have meant another decade of adjusting.
3. As with number 2, it may be an adjustment, a reaction, or it could be permanent. The only way to know is with time. My own personality can influence the effect though.
4. “By common societal standards, yes. In a black and white world it is absolutely wrong, especially when the person kept is unwilling. When the person is willing however, the answer is not so clear. Such moral judgments are beyond the remit of a therapist. Psychologically, the history of the subject and the part of the psyche affected by events in their history, have, most probably, contributed to their present condition and as such, de-programming could be worth trying. In this specific case, where fawn differs from Nina is that Nina was stripped of her personality and had it rebuilt through a specific process, despite some level of pre-conditioning. Fawn however, appears to have been conditioned, virtually since birth, to be what she is today. There was no programming performed as such, at the hands of Mistress, only an apparently forced process of attachment. As this attachment appears to have shifted to Nina, there seems to only be a continuation of fawn’s ‘normal’ life. In one such individual, the life fawn leads is simple life, not something imposed, at least in her psyche.” My therapist’s words to me.
5. “Releasing fawn by, presumably, giving her an amount of money and sending her on her way, as an individual with all the freedoms of an individual, would most likely result in a breakdown of her psyche necessitating confinement in an institution or her falling prey to an unscrupulous individual. Fawn’s mind has been conditioned from very early to only serve with no discernible personal desires of her own. As such she can only function when provided with a set of rules and duties which she then performs to the best of her abilities. The recent ‘naughty’ behaviour such as deliberately dropping a tray, etc, is mostly likely a reaction to stress caused by the death of her Mistress and being re-acquired, by another Mistress. The punishment received from her new Mistress will cement the position of the new Mistress as fawn’s ruler and the aberrant behaviour should cease as her basic personality stabilizes.
Release may be achieved, as a part of a very long process, by integrating fawn into daily life and giving her choices, very small at first, then increasing in scale until she feels comfortable in choosing for herself. She may be further individualized by sharing tasks with her and, very gradually, treating her as an equal with individual rights. Behaving as a ‘flat-mate’ would be a near-final step to release. If, over a long period, fawn does not or cannot make choices, even the smallest ones, it might prove beneficial for her to remain as she is at present. If, to her, service and punishment are how she conceptualizes and realizes her life, taking it away would be far more cruel than a life as it is.” My therapist’s words to me.
So it seems that I’m not the only one with scars. Maybe everyone has them. For now I will keep Fawn as she is but trying some of those ‘choice’ exercises to see if she responds. Her name will be capitalized in my writing at least so I remind myself that she is not only a possession. If I eventually can’t release her, for her own sake, at least I can take care of her and treat her as she expects to be treated.
Maybe sharing scars is a way of removing the pain from them.
