Explanations–My Year

I have been gone for a long time, I know.  I know that some of you have worried, and some have just been puzzled.  It is here that I will tell you the story of my year.  This is rather personal, more personal than I usually allow myself to be in this blog.  This is the only time I will write about this topic with this amount of candor.  But I feel like there have been a lot of question marks around lil miss natalie that need to be made into periods.

Photo by Michael Helms

First of all, I have chronic fatigue syndrome.  I don’t publicize it much, but some of my patrons know.  I’ve had it for roughly 6 years and had gotten to a point where I was pretty high functioning.  However, January of 2015 was one of the most stressful months I’ve ever faced.  I consequently got sick…sicker than I ever been with this illness.  I spent much time bedridden and was in a lot of pain. After about six months of grave illness, I was finally able to start reintegrating back into my home and life.

I assumed that I could dive right back in, but this was a vast overestimation on my part.  Honestly, coming back from being so sick has taken emotional resources I never knew I possessed.  When I started pro-subbing four years ago, I learned to handle life and work with my illness slowly, step by step, as I built my name and my business. However, this time not only were there more external demands and stressors happening in my life than I’ve ever experienced, nothing had waited for me.  I had a backlog in pretty much every aspect of my life, and I was still recovering both physically and emotionally from being so incredibly ill, which itself was a huge stressor.

Every week I said, I just need to take care of this, this, and this and I will start working again.  But the number of “this’s” didn’t stop for a long time, longer than I ever could have anticipated.  Looking back I think that, to a certain extent, I let the “this’s” take precedence in order to give myself space to work through the PTSD I was experiencing as a result of my recent health struggle.

I know that I have been flaky.  I have not answered emails or phone calls in a long while.  I’m sure some patrons have left and moved on, but a lot of you have stayed, which means the world to me.  Please know that I was never flaky because I didn’t care, or out of a lack of respect.  There were months were I was too sick to even contact my friends.  And as I recovered through an extremely overwhelming period, I did what I needed to do to take care of myself.  Which meant focusing on other things than my emails and phone messages.  And, honestly, I have done things very imperfectly because, well, I’m human, plain and simple.  I apologize to anyone who has been either frustrated or worried.

Photo by Michael Helms

I am now in a much, much better place.  I am working with a program geared toward helping me through the emotional trauma of what happened, and that has very much allowed for a massive amount of growth on my part in much vaster areas than what I’m discussing in this blog entry.  It has been the hidden blessing.

And I’m finally ready to dive into my job again.  I’m ready for the mutual exploration again, the pain, the pleasure, the darkness, the laughter, the orgasms, the fetishes…everything, I’m ready for it.  There may be some changes in my scheduling, but other than that, things should be the way they were before I was sick.  And I’m working out of an amazing new dungeon, which I will write about in my next entry.

Please be aware, this is the only time I am opening up about this.  I will not be answering questions about this part of my life in sessions, emails, or phone calls.  Anyone who asks will be directed to this blog entry.  I will, however, answer any queries that relate to our session experience.  For example, I am probably less flexible than I was a year ago and some bondage may have to be modified, although I will be starting a comprehensive stretching program so that probably won’t last long.

I look forward to what all of you have in store…