Cruisin' for a Bruising...

For the last few months I've been AWOL from this blog, and quiet on other formerly frequent haunts across the kinkosphere. It's not that it's been a kink-free time completely; I could have written about what an amazing time I had at the Lowewood Academy boarding school weekend back in May, about beginning to dip my toes and make friends on the Australian scene or about starting to play with someone new. However, it hasn't quite felt right and I haven't been in the right place so I've stayed quiet. All in it's been a very tough few months with a lot of challenging trips overseas, a few unpleasant incidents over here, too many courses of antibiotics and a lot of emotional upheaval, a lot of which I haven't wanted or felt able to share.

Things are slowly changing for the better, bizarrely following something awful (that I don't want to talk about) happening last month. I was horrified, upset and a lot of other things, both by what happened and the reactions of others but then something good happened...I got angry. Angry at how badly things ended with my ex, angry about all the shit that's happened in the last six months, angry at how some people have treated me, angry at Australia, angry at the world. Somehow that flipped something inside my head and a part of me that's been buried for a while awoke and declared war, because letting all the shit that's been going down ruin my life would be letting the world win. And that is not Rebecca's way.

Don't worry though folks, I have resisted the urge to acquire a brazier and burn the place down but mentally have been feeling a lot better. I've been back in Aus for two and a half weeks now, which is the longest I've spent in one place since January and finally seem to have kicked the flu that's been snapping at my heels for so long. It's also given me a chance to get out and socialise and just enjoy simple pleasures like actually working in my office, getting into a bit of a pattern, and being at home for long enough to make it worth stocking the fridge.

I've also found a new love in roller derby, which I think may be the ultimate sport...it's a team sport, it's full contact and you get to wear cute outfits involving knee socks, fishnets and short shorts - how could this not be made of win?! It feels good to be throwing myself into something again, more like me than I've felt in a long time. There is something strangely comforting about the awkward feeling of turning up and knowing nobody, the physical challenges of starting a new sport, the camaraderie, the joy of being part of a league, the whoops of 'nice fall London' when something goes awry. Mentally I enjoy teaching my body new things and adapting to a new discipline and the subsequent sense of a achievement. I'm not sure jumping over things in roller skates is an essential life skill, but it is a lot of fun. Then there's the fear, the delicious pressure of upcoming testing, silently wondering if I'm better or worse than the other freshies, wondering who will be first to bout...I've missed it.

It has all got me thinking though that maybe for the last couple of years kink has taken up too big a part of my life at the expense of other things. When a recurrent injury stopped me rowing perhaps I should have been quicker to find something new - there was a spate of pole dancing, another of martial arts but nothing serious or regular. Perhaps kinky socialising became too much of a part of my life, I was still busy with work and panto and seeing vanilla friends but maybe the balance was a bit wrong, or maybe it's just that now is the right time to indulge in some shameless athletic masochism. It made me laugh that the shorts above I found on a derby website would also suit many of my spanking friends - it's all about the synergies in life!

Whatever, I'm just looking forward to feeling confident enough again to skate around in tiny hotpants! And hopefully getting a bit better at this whole jumping in rollerskates malarkey...

Oh, and there is more to tell about kink-plorations down under, but that can wait for another day :)