Collars, Symbolism & Ritual

Edit: I started this post several days ago.  In the interim there has been a subtle shift in W’s…attitude about? Or appreciation for?…my “chain.” I think…he actually likes it. Like in more than a “Hey, that’s hot!” way.  Like maybe…maybe he likes the symbolism of it too.  Or maybe he just knows how much it means to me.  Anyway, I’m not going to change anything I wrote here before I sensed this shift…it was all real and part of my feelings and my experience.
Read on.
I wore a (sort-of) collar over the long weekend while I was in Vegas.  I say “sort-of” because W doesn’t really believe in “collaring” as such, and, although he knows I would love to wear some symbol of our relationship, he doesn’t seem to have an interest in having me do so (although it sounded like he enjoyed me wearing my chain while I was in Vegas…)
Anyway.  I really wanted to wear something special that symbolized our relationship while I was away. So…I made one for myself: a chain and padlock.  Not actually a “collar”…we don’t even call it that to each other.  We call it my chain.  But…I like that, too: “chained” to him.
That sounds a bit pitiful, maybe, having to make my own collar.  And honestly, at first it felt a little like that. After all, this should be something that comes from him, right? How can it mean anything if it means nothing to him?  And yet…
Wearing it, feeling the weight of the lock against my throat, seeing it every time I looked in the mirror, watching people’s eyes drop to it when they saw me, feeling it under G’s hand several times throughout the weekend…it did mean something. It meant a lot. Maybe–no, certainly–more than it should have.

It made me remember how much rituals and symbolism mean to me.  Being in a relationship in which those things are not part and parcel of what we do makes it hard sometimes, and makes me sad sometimes.
I know that is foolishness.  Wearing a chain or a collar or any other symbol doesn’t mean a damn thing to the reality of our relationship.  But while I was wearing it…for those few short days…it just felt so good. So right. I felt W’s presence with me all the time. I felt…owned. Surrounded by him. Held by him, even when it was someone else holding my neck. Someone else’s lips running across it. Someone else’s body that I pushed it against as we snuggled. And especially as I knelt at G’s feet, with the whole of Vegas lit up behind us, and felt that chain around my neck as I took him into my mouth, the lock striking me gently with every thrust of his cock into my throat.
Especially then.
Wearing that lock I felt the enormity of W’s possession of me.  I felt deeply owned – in some ways more than I had ever felt before.
There’s part of me that snorts at that. That scoffs at the idea that I can feel all that, when he didn’t even place it there, or want it there, or care if it was there. But that is what I felt.  I wasn’t wearing it to get hot or to get off. And for the most part, that wasn’t what I felt when I thought of it.
Except…when I was with another man.  Then it did make me hot.  There was just something about being with one man while wearing a symbol of another man’s ownership, something about being turned on by someone else and turning on someone else, all the while feeling so damned owned.  Knowing my body and heart was still his, even while I was with this other person.
Something else that can’t be overlooked is how I felt in relation to the vanilla world when I wore my collar that weekend in Vegas. While the people at the conference were all certainly open-minded and accepting, I still felt their eyes on the lock around my throat. I want to say that all I felt was pride, or some kind of “in your face” bravado about it, but the truth of the matter is that sometimes? What I felt was…strange. I wasn’t wearing it to be in anyone’s face, I don’t throw my lifestyle choices in the vanilla world’s face, so it was…a little discomfiting to be so out about it. And yet…that very discomfort also enhanced my feelings, sharpened them, somehow. It wasn’t something that was so out there that it couldn’t be thought of as decorative…and yet it was definitely a statement of some kind. “I’m proud to be his,” was what it mostly said (to me.) And I was, and I am.

The morning we got back from Tryst, looking through some pictures, I saw this one in which I was wearing my chain (I wore it to Twisted Tryst as well.)

When I saw that picture my hand hand flew to my neck, to the place that the lock nestles, right there in the hollow of my throat.  It wasn’t there, of course. I can’t wear it at home, where the kids will question, or at work, where it will draw odd looks, so W removed it last night when we pulled into my driveway.  And I felt such sweet, piercing sorrow as his hand drew it away from my skin.
The more I wear it, the more it means to me.  I can see how quickly wearing it, and the act of having it placed around my neck by W, could become an important ritual to me.  And honestly? That worries me. I don’t want to place more significance on it than he does. (I know, I know, I already do.) Just acknowledging that makes me feel…a little silly. I mean, it’s just a cheap piece of linked chain that I went and bought for myself at Michael’s, right? Still.
Still.