I had dinner with a friend who had recently been nominated to her first position of leadership within the kink community, a position which I had once held, not too long ago. We were discussing how we’d grown since first getting into the kink scene, comparing the steps that led us to be interested in the job, and the impact which assuming that role had placed on our respective Journeys.

Tangent: I’m making an effort to practice what I preach here, by discreetly leaving out names and identifying details except where they are necessary to the point I’m trying to make. It is just as tough as I knew it would be, and some of these thoughts may come out awkwardly until I get stronger at clenching that particular muscle.

I was intrigued by how such similar experiences yielded such different reactions. Taking on a position of authority within the community had made me feel anchored, secured, connected to a greater whole. For her, the experience left her feeling cast adrift from her previous life, disconnected to the vanilla world, lost to a way of life she had once cherished.

She described her emotional experience as a sort of final act of renunciation. In taking on the role, in agreeing to be someone whose job it was to Disseminate Knowledge, she was also agreeing to be frequently identified as someone who knows what is going on in the kink world. She could no longer pretend that she was a spectator, an attendee, a fleeting presence. This was not some detour she was briefly engaged in, this was a life she had signed up for, and as she signed on the dotted line, she looked back at the life she was leaving behind and wondered if she was ready to be done with it.

For me, the experience had been more akin to rebirth, to surrendering myself to the winds, to settling still. I had been involved in such roles since I was a small child. My earliest memories are of folding and addressing newsletters for my father’s temple. My 20s had been consumed in an act of rebellion against that culture, against both the culture of my religious community and the culture of competent project management which permeated my father’s house. I had spent that decade floating on the surface of the world, never wanting to connect, violently tearing free of any commitments I found myself making. My primary partner and my friends believed in nothing but their own inability to make a difference in the world.

I did not so much cast myself adrift from my previous life, as I put my foot down and stood once more on solid ground. I had already rejected my previous life, had spent the intervening years lost at sea, seeking safe harbor, wishing I could believe in something as fervently as I had in my youth. Now I had found a community where I felt that I could belong, could openly espouse the beliefs I had developed. Taking on a role of responsibility was, for me, a natural byproduct of feeling accepted and embraced.

Because of all this, it was very hard on me when I realized that I needed to let go of that role and focus on my financial career and my romantic life. It wasn’t long before I began to struggle underneath my self-imposed restraint, daydreaming about ways in which I might give back to my community, how I might continue to support my social structure, while still keeping myself focused on financial and emotional stability.

This is the balancing act of life. Or at least, of my life. There is such an intensely hungry urge to embrace each piece of life that I want. The trick is figuring out how not to let each moment engulf me, how to be attached to something without being anchored by it, how to be connected to every part of who you are and what you want out of life, all at the same time.