I was an owned and collared service submissive, in a lovely dynamic and relationship with someone, a pro dom, who called themself my owner. I was conditioned, in ways that were, at the time, all the time, beautiful. Then I was abandoned in a single message.

This is a love letter to other conditioned subs who have been abandoned.

>CONTEXT // I consented to the dynamic. I wanted it. I loved it. I hold what we built as meaningful and beautiful. I will not tell you who this person is. DO NOT attempt to identify or contact this person. I posted this earlier but deleted it when someone wrote something violent about my ex dom, please dont do that. Take everything I say with a grain of salt.

"We have to be careful. We are playing with tools of abuse."

The one who used to call themselves my owner said this to me early on, before the dynamic was formal. It was the sentence that brought down all my walls. They knew what this, handled poorly, would cost me -- and they were going to be cautious. These tools of D/s are weapons; they can carve me beautifully, but they can also cut me.

The basis of the danger was the ongoing conditioning that this person was consistently more intelligent and insightful than I was. It was Basic NLP / covert conditioning stuff, but done with enough regularity that I genuinely believed it.

This softened my resistance inside the dynamic, which was part of what I wanted and consented to. So there were safeguards, a consent document, something that would guide the dynamic.

>██████'s Blanket Consent

>" [..] You can brainwash me and condition me as far as you want to. Please make sure you don't make me useless without you. [..] Nothing that will leave me ultimately dependant on you, again please don't make me useless without you. "

And so the floodgates opened. We progressed. We loved each other.

Building on top of that conditioning, there was further conditioning on me that this person, who was so much smarter than me; knows what was right and good for me, and that they only do things to me that I deserve.

>"You might not like it, but it's what you need, it's what you deserve. I only do what you need."

I consented to this, too. It was fun, scary, but each time they demonstrated that the claim was true -- which reinforced the fact that they only did things I deserved. I loved this so much. It felt so safe to be seen and handled with care by someone who knew me totally.

I still believe the conditioning on some level. I know I’m not free of this, I still believe somewhere in my core that there is some purpose to what has been done.

They built other things in me too...

Nightly Ritual

It's benign, a nightly ritual to orient me towards them at the end of my night. A slutty selfie, of me taking my progesterone. But it serves a purpose, an orientation towards Sir.

The Bottle

I was struggling with a water task – which was to drink 1.6L of water per day. A task I agreed to, consented to and wanted.

One sentence, “You have my bottle. Every time you drink from it, you drink from me”.

What a pleasure it was to drink from them. My Owner, my love, the person I look up to, my collarer.

So I did. 1.6L almost every day, always from the bottle. It was amazing, every sip was from them. It was a self-conditioning loop, just like the collar. I drank. I thought of them. I submitted, until almost all I drank was from them

The Collar

"The lack of a collar around your neck is the collar. So when you are out, and you forget to put it on, and notice you're not wearing the collar, you will think of me, and through that, your collar is on."

Beautiful, amazing sentiment. With the impact of making me think of them every time I step outside, if I forget my collar. I'm reminded that their collar is on me, regardless of whether or not it was.

I loved that. It happened with enough regularity and reminded me I was always collared.

The Abandonment

Following a rupture, It took 48 hours to go from "we make a good team.", "I feel very protective of you" to;

>Dear Lucy,
I am cancelling [our trip] and terminating our relationship. You are no longer owned by me.

>This is the last time you'll speak down to me and project your insecurities onto me. I will cancel my accommodation booking. [...] You can donate the things I left behind to an op shop. Do not contact me on any platform or ask your friends to contact me on your behalf.

>I wish you all the best with your recovery.

>[name]

102 words, Delivered in the register of pronouncements and commands.

They had the right to leave, their reasons (which were they felt spoken down to/projected upon) dont impact the fact that they were allowed to leave. But this is about the abandonment -- The sudden and totalising abandonment via a single message of a collared sub on what was already the worst day of her life. The day I was diagnosed with ME/CFS.

The message arrived at midnight after two days of silence, sent with an immediate block, on the very day I was diagnosed with my chronic illness. One of the worst days of my illness ever. I was blocked everywhere you could possibly imagine. They would not have to see what would happen to their abandoned, collared, conditioned sub.

The Floor Dropped

I don't remember much of what happened in the next 24 hours, but I remember how I processed it, flipping between.

• Oh my God are they okay?
• If I'm a good puppy, and I submit and obey, they will come back.
• This is what I deserve, it's part of my training, there's something here I can't see.
• They did something they didn't mean and I should wait till they come back.
• I deserve this.

None of these was that I might've been simply abandoned by someone I trusted, loved, cared for and felt safe with.

The Conditioning Continues

It took me half an hour to remove my collar, physically.

I stopped drinking from the bottle. I think I drank some tea and some juice someone gave me, then I stopped drinking and eating entirely.

I didn't drink or eat for 52 hours.

Everytime I went outside, I found my psychological collar remaining attached.

Every time I went to put myself to bed, I thought of them as I had learned to.

I could not escape the grief, the ownership, or the pain.

It was consuming, it was built to be consuming.

It broke me.

Aftermath

The first thing I did, once I was out of the grief enough for it to stop colliding so hard with the conditioning, was write down what had been built. The Bottle. The Collar. The Nightly Ritual. The conditioning to receive without resistance. The conditioning to receive Sir's judgment as truth. While the architecture was unnamed, it operated invisibly. It had to be named.

The architecture was built on top of things that already belonged to me, and part of the work is sorting which is which. Not everything they touched is theirs. I am still a puppy. I am still submissive. Those are mine, and they were mine before them, and they will be mine long after..

Every day I make choices that go against the conditioning. I drink water that is not from the bottle. Some nights, I can take my progesterone. None of these choices feels like freedom. Each one feels like a betrayal of my collar, of someone I loved, of who I committed to.

But I remind myself.

• Someone who can discard someone they own like that, is not worthy of the title of owner.
• Someone who can discard my submission like that is not worthy of my submission.
• Someone who can leave me like that isn't worthy of the sacred parts of me.
• I am worthy of love that doesn't disappear.
• I am a good puppy.

Dear Reader

If you are reading this from inside the cage built for you; The pull to stay is not weakness. The conditioning worked. It was supposed to work, and the fact that it is still working is evidence of the craft, not of your failure.

You can leave anyway.

Slowly, badly, messily. The cage does not have a single door through which you can leave. It has ten thousand small doors, and you open them one at a time, and some days you will go deeper in and close a few again, it's okay.

You will get through this.

As for me, I still don't know what to do with the pain of having this done by someone I trusted with my soul -- someone I will never see or speak to again.

I emailed twice and sent one message on Instagram after they left so abruptly. They never responded or acknowledged in any way, not even with a block. It left me in a void.

The trauma of having someone delete themselves entirely from my life is genuinely horrific.

Now, two months later, I have these sensations of being choked every night now, it starts at 7pm and continues until I collapse in bed at 3am. It's intolerable. It's agonising. I can't stop it. It has nothing to do with them, and it has everything to do with what they did.

I see a psychologist weekly.

--

All the evidence that is left that this was a real relationship, they really existed; the message logs, their shoes, an AirTag, a shirt, socks, and a water bottle in my cupboard. And my collar.

████, You told me one week before you left that you were proud of me, that I was a good puppy, that you would tell me if I needed to improve, and that there was no test, that you loved me. I believed you. I trusted you with my whole heart. Then you administered a test without my knowledge and deleted yourself from my life during the worst week of my life. You disappeared the day I was diagnosed with ME/CFS.

I served this person well. I showed up in every way I knew how, with all of me. I was a good service submissive. I was a good puppy. That I know is true.

So, two months later, I am saying it here, for myself:

Red.