The Rabbit-Hole of Other People’s Expectations
I’ve been struggling to read a novel about a service submissive for over a month now, and if you know me at all, you know that I can read several novels a day and get my writing done, so this book is slow going.
This particular story is about a service submissive who knows what he wants and is out to get it, but his dom wants him to go to college and he’s resisting. (It’s well-written, my struggle has entirely to do with myself, not with the story.)
I’m taking my time reading this book because the conflict is very personal to me.
As a service submissive myself, I easily could have skipped the whole college thing. I’m glad I didn’t, it was good for me. But college didn’t help me achieve any of my personal goals and it saddled me with a bunch of other people’s expectations. (Like finding a “real” job, because “real” biomedical engineers work for big pharma or medical device companies, they don’t become herbalists.)
For most of my life I have been proud to be weird. I’ve had friends try to convince me to call myself quirky instead, but I’ve found that doesn’t fit me as well. Weird is one label I’ve never struggled with.
That being said, last fall I spent several months whining to my friends: “why can’t I just be normal?”
