Bittersweet and anti-climatic ending

It's official.  I am legally a divorced woman.

Actually, I should have been a divorced woman a year ago, but my ex-husband's attorney is retarded and ignored his pleas for any updates.  My official dissolution date was September 2nd, but I didn't receive the paperwork until a week ago, since the paperwork was sent to my last address.

I called my ex to tell him the news.  He answered back with little emotion but I can tell he was supportive.  He wanted closure as much as I did.  We met for lunch last Monday to...celebrate? No, that's not the word.  To acknowledge, perhaps?  During lunch, he couldn't look at me, choosing to play with his food.  We made small talk, and I inquire about our friends.  I asked him if he was Ok about all of this, the divorce coming through.  He reiterated that he was fine, "It is what it is" he said.  I did tell him that I never regretted marrying him; although, I almost said "but things changed" after that.  Thank god I didn't because he looked surprised that I said that.  A good surprised.

Curiously enough, he asked me about my work, and about M, talked to me for the first time as a person, and not his wife.  Normally, he would go on and on about his work, about friend's drama, things of that nature.  But not that day.  I saw it in his eyes, it was over for him.  After almost 4 years.

I confided to M that it was a bit sad and anti-climatic, my divorce.  After all, I moved on and lived my life as a single woman since the first day of my separation.  M and I talked about how relieved and bittersweet he felt about his own divorce was, how he and his ex-wife stayed friends all of this time.  I had hoped to have something similar with my ex, but it would require extraordinary work on my part to keep it up, something I had hoped came naturally instead of some heroic measure on my part.  Perhaps?    Don't know, but I've learned not to count on anything.

Whether or not the ex and I will remain friends, one thing is for certain: it's unfortunate that of the divorces I knew of, mine was among the most amicable.  I've been subjected to my friend's divorce that dragged on for months because no one could agree on anything.  I suppose I should be lucky, neither one of us had anything of value to fight over and there were no children involved.

Still, a chapter has ended in my life, and another has begun.  I wish my ex luck happiness and luck and I hope that we can stay friends.

Complications

Some posts write themselves.  This is not one of them.

I've been playing more than writing lately.  While that's usually a good thing, my kinky parameters has expanded too quickly than what I can process at the moment.

Case in point, I have been exploring my dominate side for the past few months now.   Not only have I enjoyed this role, but unlike my submissive side where certain conditions have to be met before I get to that space, my dominance feels natural and unforced.  I find it strangely creative, and the more I do it, the more confident I feel.  At the same time, I was unprepared to deal with all the crap that came up as I learned more about this side of me.  Namely, that I had a dark side and that I have a complicated love/hate relationship with control.

I experienced top drop for the first time a day after I had my first private scene with my submissive.  It consisted of me crying in the basement because I though I was evil.  Don't know about you, but I think everyone has a dark side.  We are conditioned to sublimated it, hide it, get rid of it because it's evil and who wants to be evil.  I could blame my Catholic upbringing or unrealistic expectations put upon me while growing up of what a girl is suppose to act like, but I would be obfuscating.  Intellectually, I can see the concept of having a dark side, but to actually hold up a mirror to yourself and look at it was a frightening concept.

Dealing with my dark side was nothing compared to dealing with Control.  You see, I have another confession to make...I've been addicted to control, or rather, the illusion of it for a very long time.

Even in my submissive state, I never truly let go of it, except with M.  Since dominance is about harnessing control, it was as if I was given crack and told to smoke it. I'm keenly aware of how much I needed to be control of everything, despite the fact that this need of mine have pulled me in directions I didn't want to go, simply because I was too arrogant to admit I was wrong.  But total control is an illusion.  Erroneously, I thought in order to understand this illusion, I had to let go of control.

Going through all of the pain I went through a few years ago was part of that journey.  The other part of it was, I thought, accepting my truth.  Well, accepting that truth meant having to deal with my control issues.  I mention the pain, but if it wasn't for my ex-husband who forcefully insisted I had more control in the relationship than I was admitting (that is, before I was ready to admit that he was right), did I truly understand that I had this power over people and situations, and that I needed to take responsibility for it.  Being responsible does not mean ignoring the consequences of your actions, nor does it mean denying that I had any part of it.  And how could I let go of control, if I never honestly dealt with it.  I'm not going to say that I have a complete handle on this at the moment. I can say that OK its out in the open and I'm not going to hide it any longer.

In the meantime, I will continue to dominate/top M when he wants me to, and get a better feel of how my submissive wants my dominance to manifest with him.  I'm also not going to neglect my submissive side since something tells me I will seek it out more often now.  Just another thing for me to integrate into my life.  Let's see how good of a juggler I am.