“There’s a difference,” I mused, while furiously scanning kinky profiles to find a couple of dozen that meet the insane criteria for my Nefarious Corporate purposes “…for me there IS a difference between being obedient and being submissive.”

This gets the attention of Mo’s Internal Committee for a moment. Today we’ve had some shit rolling around that, in retrospect, really dug itself in yesterday but has been simmering for a couple of years. I am not super adept at managing my emotionality on multiple fronts, so the past 6 months or so have been…challenging.

“So, uh…what’s the difference?” the MIC finally begrudgingly responds. Like starved squirrels on a pack of peanuts they’ve been worrying over the same shit for a while now, so a change of pace is a nice relief.

“Unfortunately I have to dedicate a lot of bandwidth to external shit like…oh…work…so I don’t have much room to process this fuckball right now.” I reply to the MIC, wincing at the florid overwrought prose of a self-styled “Master_Sir_Mucketymuck” demanding the submission of every nubile slender single female reader of his profile.

The MIC grumbles snippily “You can’t bloody well bring that shit up and then claim work-impunity here. Don’t fuck around with us. We’ve gotten you on the brink of tears TWICE today before 2:00 PM PDT, so it isn’t wise to be a fucking smartass.”

I back off, because yeah, we’ve been at it for hours now.

“Fair enough, Committee.

What I’m hitting my head against is this.

I often am obedient. I do what I am supposed to do, follow the rules, smile and nod, but still try to maintain integrity.

And sometimes it is second nature.

And sometimes it is insufficiently contained, barely-restrained, sociopathic crazymaking energy.

Obedience I can do. I click into it. Submission is another animal. No, not another animal…an animal and…a parasite? A symbiotic…no, no…wait…”

MIC waits patiently as I fumble this one out. Kinda patiently. My Id is idling now, feeling stabby and ready to go back to gnawing at the ragged feet of my self-esteem, hobbling under the weight of a metric fuckton of guilt and pride. But they, unlike, me, have All/None of the time in the world. SO they wait.

I take another breath.

“What I think I’m trying to say is that Obedience is the part that I can do, even when it sucks, but I don’t have to like it.

Submission is the part I do even when I don’t like it, but it becomes something I DO enjoy…because the submitting feels right.”

The MIC mutters, and Bubbles, of course, knows what I’m talking about. Being the part of me that is addictive, she knows all about doing what you don’t wanna do for the best and the worst reasons.

After a few minutes of confabulation, the MIC has an interim verdict.

“You,” they proclaim “are a hot mess. And you probably have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“I don’t,” I reply “and that is why I’m writing this right now. I’m taking the 15 minutes I need to disgorge this cud and swallow it back to another stomach for continued ruminations….”

The Committee waves the yellow flag

“Your Analogies are fucking grossing us the fuck out. Please. Just…just stop. Yellow.”

I back off again…mostly because I have lots of work to do but also because the Office Whistler is making it impossible for me to think.

“Oh and doofus, do not fucking post this on your blog,” they add “because someone will sure as fuck, and rightfully so, advise you see someone about that MPD you have going untreated there.”

I don’t listen, of course.

But I do wonder, in the back of my mind, in a small cage with a smaller hamster, running running running…why it is so easy for me to be obedient but so hard for me to really deeply submit…