Life continues to be a mixed bag over here. Got some stresses at work but nothing I cannot handle. I was running late this morning and didn't have time to get my coffee together and I don't really like the coffee at work that much. Meh. And why was I running late though? Putting pictures on fetlife. I'm really trying to work on feeling better about my body, so that's part of the project. Getting photos I can look at and feel good about, and being brave enough to put them out there (even if some I still do as "friends only" since I do worry about who might see them sometimes, otherwise.) I got the photos from Photo Night at the club back, and I looked at them, and had so many criticisms. Some I won't share. I had one idea I wish I hadn't done, because I just look like an evil, malevolent hag in those shots. The photographer thought they looked evil in a cool way, but... Well I thought I would edit the shots I was going to share, and I did get permission from the guy to do that, so long as his watermark remained intact and credit was given to him. In the end though, I only did a very minor bit of editing to one of them. I honestly wonder if it would be noticeable to anybody but me, what I did there. But I figure if it made me feel ok about the picture and more significantly, myself in it...
So we've got a bit of a situation on our hands, I guess. The girl I had my little emotional dust-up over... I still have complicated "she's so much prettier than me, and everybody knows it and everybody likes the young, adorable girls and I've been bumped to an undesirable lower rank behind them/her" feelings. I'm coping as best I can, I know it isn't an attractive mindset to have, this envy. Lack of confidence and self esteem, in and of itself, I think, makes one (me) a less attractive human being. I get scared that even thinking/talking this way, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I feel less attractive, I whine about it, I make myself less attractive by being whiny. It's part Zen and how he feels sometimes and part things like, on Photo Night, I could barely snag a moment here and a moment there with the photographer, I don't feel like I was good at....being pretty enough for anyone to even want to take pictures of. But there were like many times over as many pictures of that one young woman, and a couple of others. Hers/theirs were cute, cute, gorgeous, sexy...mine where malevolent, blobby, gross, gross...in my eyes. I had hoped that the very talented photographer who runs those events would be able to get some shots that would...help me to feel pretty. Instead I felt like he didn't want to be bothered with me but he was willing to squeeze in a few seconds in between the pretty girls he really wanted to shoot, and the results showed it. Oh but he did say one of the shots was "neat and busy" and I get that the composition and texture and detail in it, at least redeemed the fact that he was shooting ME. I don't know if I want to try again. It bums me out, honestly. I just was not prepared for the fact that very suddenly upon hitting 40, literally just this year, my world would get turned on its head and I'd feel like this.
But dear god though, I did not intend the thing that has happened.
Zen and I did a sensation and wax scene with the young woman he likes, the one I've struggled with all these nasty self-comparisons with, on Saturday night. We co-topped her. And I know that one thing is not connected to another, but the way I've felt is VERY much contributing to my feelings of guilt about it.
Somehow she ended up with some pretty scary looking wax burns on the underside of one of her breasts. I say, "somehow" because these candles are MADE for this kind of play. They are soy and paraffin, they have been used on other people, myself included, same bodily areas included, and there have been no problems before. Yet somehow... I have been trying to think, think, think, why would this happen? Like perhaps, though I tried to be very mindful of keeping the candles at a goodly distance above her skin, my attention (or Zen's) waned and my pour drifted down too close? Or did, perhaps, the wax damage her skin in ways no one could see or tell at the time, but her next partner do any rough play with her breast that the skin was too delicate to handle? I just don't know. She is not upset. She said she felt no particularly intense pain there at the time, she says that she wants to do it again, even! She shared photos in the spirit of "yay I've got marks!" but I'm scared half to death that these burns could actually scar her. We've recommended aloe but I'm going to look into topical solutions meant to reduce or eliminate scarring. At the time, too, I went over her stem to stern up close and personal to remove the wax, and I saw nothing of these burns, they seem to have appeared later.
I feel absolutely awful.
And while I know that this was 100% an accident...and I never wished any ill upon her at all... You know sometimes in a cosmic sense, it's like if anyone I had felt jealous or envious of had some misfortune, I feel an oddly exacerbated sense of guilt for it. I would feel that way even if this had happened and my hand hadn't been pouring the wax. I am not superstitious enough to believe that my feelings or thoughts had anything at all to do with it truly. Hell, my feelings were not really negative toward her, but rather myself. Anyways, it's just all part of a muddle in my head right now. I've apologized, reached out to our resident wax play expert, offered comfort and care, and I offered to bring her some burn balm (I have some pretty good stuff) and Zen has talked to her as well, and so has the wax guy who she has also played with in the past (just not with wax.)
She was reassuring to me that she had a great time and wants to do it again, but did not express any desire to get together for me to bring her the burn remedy I've got or anything.
But when Zen messaged her, she suggested he come over to put lotion all over her body. Also, during the scene and at other times when we have talked, I just have this feeling like she isn't that into me, but she is into Zen. She will talk to him about interacting with me, I think because she knows it piques his interest, but I feel like a prop in a Zen-and-girl scene, thinking about it sometimes.
So I just... I want to make things right for her. But I'm just not sure about topping, right now. I'm feeling less than confident about it on a few different levels. Bottoming, assuming whatever risks on my own person, felt safer, AND it really fulfills me more. I realized recently too, that maybe it's just service topping I don't like that much. It could be different if I had a connection with the person I was playing with, that the energy they were expressing were directed at me. But yeah. Feeling like a serviceable prop in someone else's scene, that's how I've been feeling. All of the intimacy is between the other people, and I'm putting energy into it but it isn't flowing back to me.
I don't know but I may need an actual relationship of some kind, with someone who wanted to submit to me personally, or at least had a strong attraction and seemed jazzed to be playing with me in particular, in order to feel enthusiastic about topping. And running into a hazard that I didn't even see coming, didn't even expect enough to negotiate for the risk and possibility, has me shaken.
It's so odd, too... I'm interacting with a few very attractive (to me) women, including one co-worker I'm very fond of, and I would like to see something more come of a connection with such a person. Yet with men, I always know, beyond a doubt, when they have enough desire to act upon, when I could have them sexually if I wanted to. I always feel so uncertain with women. This one woman has sent me what seem to be many positive signals (not the gal Zen plays with, but my coworker I'm talking about now) yet she says on her fet profile that she is "straight" and I cannot tell if she's just the kind of straight woman who enjoys flirting with her friends. But at least, I did tell her that I'd really like to play with her once she feels comfortable playing at parties. I wish it did not always feel like, "You say you like me, but do you LIKE ME, like me?" with women.
Though I am encouraged that she says she is interested in the Dominant side of the slash, because I really feel so much better being a bottom/sub, I think. Or at least, it makes me feel worthwhile, because I feel like people wanting to top you means you're attractive, desirable. The pretty girls "get" that kind of interest. So part of my difficulty has been with people telling me and telling me that they see me as this badass Domme woman means they're telling me I'm not pretty enough to be desirable as a bottom or a sub. I'm the wicked old lady now, I ought to just accept I can't pass myself off as the pretty/cute/whatever that anybody wants in a bottom/sub type. I can give the deserving pretty girls what they deserve that I don't anymore.
I know that is not true, don't think people intended to say that, but when they urge me to step up and be that, my heart takes it that way.
Anyways. I'm sharing my own stuff, but lest anyone think it, I am not self centered, it's not that I'm over here bitching when I've hurt someone and they should be my real focus. I am focused insofar as what I can do about it, which is to say I've taken responsibility for the accident and for not knowing that this was a risk, consulted with people I deem more knowledgeable than myself, offered apologies and care and comfort and advice about healing. I don't know what more I can do for her, and I feel I'm doing what I can there. The rest, is just me processing (as usual) and trying to figure out where in the hell I'm going from here.