Everything changed when she left us.
Dad always said that she was taken from us, maybe that was a better way to look at it, but I could never see it that way. She was always so strong and such a fighter, how could anyone have taken her from us? Dad just shrugged and said cancer didn’t always care how hard you fought or how tough you were.
Cancer sucked.
Some days it was easy to pretend nothing had changed. She’d always gone into work early for as long as I could remember, and with Dad being the stay-at-home parent, there were some mornings I actually forgot she wasn’t with us any longer. Even months after the funeral, I could get completely out the door before I remembered.
It was harder for Dad.
Everything in his life had revolved around her and our family. When she was gone, there seemed to be a hole in his life that couldn’t be filled. He wandered around the house for days before he finally pulled it together. But even then, Dad would stare out the window or fixate on something like the couch and he’d just stand there lost in thought.
I wasn’t sure if I should be worried or just let him work through the grief on his own. All the adults in my life just nodded understandingly and talked about stages, saying shit like “time healed all wounds.”
About a year after the funeral, I remembered thinking adults were stupid.
Time didn’t seem to heal anything; it just made it harder to remember the man he’d been before. The happy father and husband who loved his family and had been completely content with his life disappeared. In his place was a man going through the motions but clearly lost. So lost that when I’d started applying for colleges a few months ago, I’d known immediately I couldn’t leave him. I think part of me was afraid of what he’d do if I wasn’t there for him to take care of.
Mom and I had always been the center of his world, but what would happen when we were both gone? Something about the way he looked at me when I’d started talking about colleges said my fear wasn’t unreasonable. So I’d changed every plan and every future what-if.
As I looked down at the letter in my hand, I smiled in relief but I hoped I looked genuinely excited. According to the beautiful piece of paper I couldn’t stop looking at, in August, I’d start my freshman year at a college about half an hour away and I’d live at home. They’d sent me the online notification the other day, but it hadn’t been real until I’d held the acceptance letter in my hands.
It was like a boulder had been lifted off my shoulder. Describing the fear and uncertainty as a weight would have been making light of the pain and heaviness that had been pressing down on me. The fear that I might not get in and he might make me go away to school had been overwhelming.
Crippling.
Dad had tried to push me to look at colleges farther away and had even spelled it out that he didn’t want me to put my life on hold for him. I hadn’t exactly lied, but I’d made up excuses about wanting to still be close and that I wasn’t ready to live in the dorms, packed like rats with tons of other kids.
The fact that the school actually had a top-notch business program along with several other programs that were nationally ranked made him feel better and he’d stopped trying to push me out of the nest as some of the neighbors had said he should.
They didn’t understand.
We had one neighbor, an older woman who’d kept coming around and visiting Dad long after everyone else had faded back to their own lives, who’d said that I was holding him back. She’d actually cornered me a few weeks ago when I’d been bringing in groceries and had accused me of not letting him move on with his life.
Evidently, Dad had told her that I wasn’t planning on leaving for college but wanted to stay close to home. She’d thought that was the most horrible thing she’d ever heard. How was he supposed to find happiness with someone else if I was always there? Even ignoring how insensitive and stupid the question was, she was missing the most important piece.
I wasn’t sure he wanted to be happy.
He’d lost more than his wife the day she’d left us; he’d lost the spark of what made him alive and I wasn’t sure if he’d ever get it back.
Jace
“How do you know if someone is a sub?” Word around the college was that they’d answer questions without me having to explain too much, and I was hoping gossip was right. The one professor I’d tried to talk to wanted to refer me to a therapist because he thought I was the sub in question.
I was not…and I was not going to therapy to talk about my dad being a sub.
With anyone else I’d have been able to figure shit out, but he was my dad and I wasn’t sure if that changed anything.
It should, right?
“We meet the weirdest people when we’re sitting at this table. Is it cursed or blessed?” The flirty one I’d see around campus was just as ridiculous as everyone had said he would be.
So maybe the other gossip was right?
“Cursed.” The past couple of years had sucked, so there was no way anything I touched was blessed. “Now can you answer my question?”
I’d tried looking online but I’d kept getting mixed up between BDSM sites and what the depression people said and what the mourning people said was normal.
I hated that word.
It was the most useless word in the English language.
“Sure.” Shrugging, he ignored the way one friend was turning purple and another clearly wanted to crawl under the table. The rest were just watching like they’d ended up in some kind of theater drama as extras. “Can I ask why it’s not obvious? It’s usually obvious no matter what people like to pretend.”
“Part of it seems obvious. He operates best when he’s given clear instructions on how to make me happy, and he’s lost when he has to focus completely on himself unless he knows doing that will make me happy.” I wasn’t sure it was healthy, but I didn’t care about that anymore. “He lost his long-term partner a few years ago and I don’t know how much is grief from that and how much is just not having a Dom.”
Every head at the table cocked and even the purple guy was going back to a normal color.
“Grief can take a lot of forms. Has he seen a therapist who understands the lifestyle too?” Somehow purple guy seemed to have turned into the most functional human at the table.
They really were just as weird as the gossip said.
“He tried therapy and I think that might’ve actually made it worse.” Somehow. “They started out listening to him and telling him to accept what stage he was at but then they started talking to him about the future and wanting him to make plans. He shut down again and stopped going.”
And then he’d started going backward again.
I’d caught him drinking lately.
It was never enough for me to say something but up until six months ago I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen him drinking growing up.
Mom hadn’t liked it.
His Domme hadn’t liked it.
Yeah, I’d finally caught up with the problem, although I had to admit it’d taken me entirely too long. But figuring that part out didn’t give me much of a direction to fix anything else. He’d only managed to go on one date over the past couple of years and that was a surprise double date that his supposed friends had sprung on him.
He’d come home a basket case, and from what he’d talked in circles around, she’d been a bitch not a Domme and his friends hadn’t been able to tell the difference. The fact that they’d told someone about his needs hadn’t helped any, and it’d taken him a month to leave the house after that disaster.
People were morons.
I was really hoping the weirdos in front of me weren’t morons.
“Can I ask what part of town his therapist was in?” When Purple Guy who was now Thoughtful Guy frowned, it took me a second to realize he was thinking. “I’m not being nosy in general. I work for a therapist in town and I don’t want to jeopardize your privacy in any way.”
Oh.
They just kept getting weirder and weirder.
“I’m the randomly nosy one.” The flirt smiled and raised his hand. “He’s only functional when work is involved.”
Now that I could believe, but I was too polite to agree with him.
“Ignore him.” Thoughtful Guy sighed like they did this routine on a regular basis. “I really just want to make sure I can give you a good answer.”
It couldn’t hurt.
“Over by the interstate…on the far side of the intersection where all those doctors’ offices are.” There was at least a dozen different therapists and doctors over there, so the chances of him narrowing it down were slim.
“We’re good then.” Sitting straighter, he kept getting more and more functional and it was crazy to watch in real time. “I think part of the problem is that most of those offices just focus on people in very vanilla relationships. They’re mostly competent doctors from what I’ve heard, but they have no idea what to do when anyone is more…colorful.”
The way everyone at the table nodded and some even rolled their eyes said at least a few of them had gone the therapy route.
“I can give you the name of a doctor who doesn’t specialize in grief but who is in the lifestyle and can’t be shocked by anything your friend went through.” Thoughtful Guy glared at the flirt when he snickered. “Behave.”
That was not going to happen and everyone at the table knew it.
“Staying on topic.” Thoughtful Guy paused and glared at his friend again before turning to me. “It sounds like your friend was more of a lifestyle sub with his previous partner. I think he’s more lost than the people around him realize.”
I wasn’t surprised by his answer but I’d been hoping for a different one.
“I don’t know how to help, and while he’s not at a hurt himself level, he’s so unhappy I don’t know what to do.” He was functioning but barely. “He’s living in this painful limbo and can’t get out of it.”
As Thoughtful Guy frowned, another one of the group members who’d been studying me with a general glare spoke up. “Will he let you be his Dom? From what you’re saying he trusts you and he’s responding to your needs.”
Me?
He hadn’t sounded nearly as pissed as I thought he would.
Maybe resting bitch face came in resting angry face too?
Wait.
“We don’t have that kind of relationship.” I was not going to spell that part out, but what could I say? “We’re just friends. His partner was a woman.”
They all went quiet instead of just throwing out random shit, but it was slightly unnerving until the flirt spoke up again. “There are lots of different kinds of friendships and lots of different kinds of Dom-sub relationships. Your relationship with him doesn’t have to be sexual. It’s a more common situation than most people realize.”
It could?
“I read that somewhere but it didn’t seem real.” Or reasonable. I’d visited some questionable sites in my quest for information that would actually be useful and a ton of it had been stupid. “How would that look?”
I probably shouldn’t even be considering it, but we’d long passed healthy decisions and I was just looking for anything that would help.
Thoughtful Guy spoke up again. “You would provide structure, nonsexual touching in some cases like long hugs or holding his hand if you’re both comfortable with that…it can even be a hand on his shoulder. Subs usually need rules, and rewards and consequences that are associated with breaking the rules. Most subs need praise and someone to build them up. We think of that stuff as sexual but just praising them for completing their chores or rewarding them for doing something difficult is important.”
Rules.
Structure.
Rewards.
Praise.
I could do that.
“He thinks he’s being subtle about the sub thing. He’s not but he thinks he is.” I’d just been kind of a naïve kid, so I hadn’t thought to look for anything like that. “I have to actually bring this up and confront it head-on, right?”
They all winced but heads bobbed around the table.
“It’s not very ethical to Dom someone without their permission, even if they need it.” The flirt shrugged and gave me the impression he’d Dom someone without their permission in a heartbeat. “I think it’d be a good idea to give you the number for the doctor we know…just in case the conversation goes bad?”
Fuck.
Thoughtful Guy started digging out his wallet before I could decide how to respond. “If you call, let him know that we talked and then I can quickly catch him up to speed. I won’t just randomly start telling him about the situation, though.”
Good?
I wasn’t sure anymore.
I took the business card he handed over, though. “Thanks.”
“He’ll help without judging if you need it. Your friend might need someone to talk to who understands and who’ll listen.” Thoughtful Guy looked like one of my professors when he wasn’t sure how to answer a question that’d gone slightly off track. “For a lot of subs, it’s feeling lost and alone that makes everything else worse…and for a lifestyle sub who has to suddenly take control of everything it can be overwhelming.”
Blinking, he looked like he wanted to shake off whatever he was thinking. “It seems like he’s not a danger to himself, though. But if you think it’s getting to that point you have to call someone.”
Agreed.
I just hoped I could read the situation right if it came to it.
“I think we’ve moved past that point. I just didn’t understand everything completely when he was at his worst.” I wish I had…even if I still didn’t know what I would’ve done. “Nothing screams that kind of bad decision at the moment. We’re mostly at the slowly sinking kind of problem.”
That seemed like a slower trip to terminally bad decisions, but we weren’t there yet and I wasn’t going to let it get to that point.
“So talk to him and at least let him know you’re there for him and you want to help.” The flirt was behaving himself for the moment. “Offer to help give him structure and take a baby step in being his Dom until he’s steadier and tells you he wants to go back to being friends.”
Baby steps.
Offer structure.
“I can do that. I think I’ve been doing it for a while without realizing it.” I just hadn’t been doing enough. I was pretty sure I’d been teasing him with it and that might’ve made things worse. “I was treating him like a sad friend, though, and not a lost sub.”
If I’d been able to figure it out, how the fuck had his therapist not seen it?
“Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help.” Thoughtful Guy frowned again. “Sometimes just hanging out with people in the lifestyle can give a Dom or sub a boost. It feels good to know you’re not alone.”
“You’re not alone either.” Glaring Guy surprised me again with how neutral he sounded. “But just remember that a good Dom comes across confident but not angry, they communicate clearly, and they do their best not to react no matter what their sub says.”
Confident.
Communicate.
I could do that.
“There are also a lot of good groups who’d be happy to hang out with him…some of the professors and locals in the lifestyle have a dinner thing a few times a month.” Glaring Guy almost smiled when I blinked at him. “There’s a big community here and there’s a range of ages and types of groups…all a mix of Doms and subs that are mostly in long-term relationships. So there won’t be weird pressure.”
I’d mostly just thought about the campus stuff but that wasn’t the right place for him.
“I’ll think about that. Thanks.” Dad hadn’t been out socially in longer than I could remember, so there was no way he was still involved in any of the groups that Glaring Guy was talking about. “And thanks for the help.”
“Anytime.” The flirt behaved himself as everyone nodded and offered to talk anytime I needed help, but I was ready to escape and kept my response vague.
Talking to them hadn’t been my first step in trying to fix the situation but it’d been the biggest and I needed time to think.
Not that I thought it would help.
Nothing helped and it hadn’t in a long time.
