On Loss and Mourning a Pet

I know it's been two months. Let me explain the silence.

As you know if you've been reading, I lost one of my beloved Chosen to offline and non-D/s life needs a few months back. It happened shortly before NEEHU, while my life was insanely busy with family and cons and new job.

Then right after NEEHU I got my current non-D/s job, and I put hypnosis on hold to get back into having a 9-5 again. (And it is 9-5, two days of the week. The other two it's 9-9. It's just pm-am instead of am-pm.) And that was an easy call to make, because I didn't want to hypnotize anyone except my Chosen and a couple of other people.

I beat myself up a lot over this, but over time I've come to realize that I hadn't allowed myself to mourn the loss of one of my best friends. I didn't want to write. I didn't want to trance.

Then I got the package he sent with his hypno-stuff, and that was an emotional (although not malicious!) gut-punch. His under-pillow headset for listening to files. His files, all carefully labelled. And the saddest part of all was my Valentine's gift to him from a couple of years back: a cross-stitch that said "Be Mine."

It sounds so silly. We'd joked that we all knew it was a command, not a cheesy statement of cliched romance. But love was what it meant.

I hear so often that Dommes don't love their subs, they only use them. Nothing could be further from the truth. My Chosen are family. They are lovers. They are loved.

I had known him since 2000. Staring at the snow-white cloth with red flowers and letters, I felt the loss brutally keenly.

I still completely support him. I trust him to do what he needs to do. But admitting I missed him while shoving the feelings away didn't help.

This last week, while dealing with unrelated strong sadness (don't worry, everyone is fine), I came to realize why this fallow period has been so strong. I miss my Seran, my star. It hurts.

I just want him to be OK.