rayne's never had any real interest in Belinda Carlisle and the song "Circle in the Sand" annoys the bejesus out of her but since she got up it's been playing over and over in her head. So she looked at the words.

Sundown all around
Walking thru the summer's end
Waves crash baby, don't look back
I won't walk away again

Oh, baby, anywhere you go,
We are bound together
I begin, baby, where you end
Some things are forever!

Circle in the sand
'Round and 'round
Never ending love is what we've found
And you complete the heart of me
Our love is all we need
Circle in the sand

Cold wind, tide move in
Shiver in the salty air
Day breaks, my heart aches
I will wait for you right here

Oh, baby when you look for me
Can you see forever ?
I begin baby, where you end
We belong together

Circle in the sand
'Round and 'round
Rising of the moon as the sun goes down
And you complete the heart of me
Our love is all we need
Circle in the sand
Circle in the sand

Baby can you hear me ?
Can you hear me calling ?

And suddenly it dawns on her. The song speaks of her love for Master.
He's the yin to her yang, the right to her left, the sun to her moon,
etc. etc. blah blah blah. All that cliche stuff lovers say about each
other.

she just poured our coffee (we're night people
now, thanks to His job) and she's staring at our coffee cups as she's
thinking about this damn song. And it's even in the things we own. His
coffee cup is black on white and rayne's is white on black. His clothes
are casual and professional and hers range from slutty (though mostly
only the ones from when she was much thinner) to semi-punk.
Morbid-comfy-casual is what her mother always called it, because she
rarely wears anything but black shirts and comfy jeans (the more
interesting, the better, though she hasn't indulged that addiction for
some time) and Mom says "Wearing black all the time is morbid and
depressing. Add some color to your wardrobe and spice up your life!"

We're so opposite and it makes for such perfect balance. It's the glue
that holds any good marriage together, you know. Balance.

Last night, when this one was mudding (text based rpg), we were
chatting (one of the people rayne muds with and rayne) and the old
server came up (the one that just died – we were able to replace it by
some miracle of the technology gods). This slave said something like
"It was at least as old as our marriage, if not older, so it needed to
be replaced." She, teasingly, said rayne should be careful what she
says unless she wants to start evaluating her relationship on the same
standards she was evaluating the server on. rayne retorted with,
"Whereas computer equipment ages at twice the rate of dogs, marriages
age at least half as fast as people. How else would my grandparents
still be together in their late 80s?" And she truly believes it. The
ones that age faster (you know the ones… when people say "We just
grew apart.")… they weren't meant to be anyway.

So
those of you who've "failed at love" take heart! While it doesn't erase
the pain, the fact of the matter is that it just wasn't meant to be.
You couldn't have failed because you weren't meant to succeed in the
first place.

As to "what's eating rayne"…

It's what she's not eating that's eating her. she has an eating
disorder and boy is it a doozy. It's not the "Oh god i'm way too fat! i
must throw up everything i eat!" type of eating disorder. And she
doesn't talk about it much because people who constantly talk about
eating disorders, cutting, suicide attempts and drug addictions are
seen as attention whores (rayne admits to being an attention hog – she
would plant herself right in front of Master and soak up every
millisecond of His time if it was feasible and He would let me – but
she doesn't whore attention from everyone else she comes into contact
with). In any case, she does have one and she doesn't pretend it's not
there either. she just tries to fight it.

This
particular disorder (damn if she can remember if she's mentioned it
before) ranges from her eating everything in site (for whatever reason
– hunger, depression, boredom, etc.) to her having little to no
appetite and/or being made nauseous by even the thought of eating.
Like, picturing a fork sliding between this one's lips with a huge glob
of something that will skip every important part of her body and attach
itself right to her stomach and/or thighs makes her want to vomit. And
she hates vomitting. The thought of vomitting makes her want to vomit
(rayne knows – she's hilarious).

she's been doing
pretty good at avoiding the former. she tries to watch what she eats
and she's even making a conscious effort to stop eating when
she's satisfied (better to eat 7-8 small meals than to engorge herself
at 3-4 sittings). Suddenly, the angry monster of the latter has reared
its ugly head. It's gone unsatisfied for three years and it's pissed.

One of the first rules Master gave His slave was that she must
eat at least two meals a day (sometimes she was lucky to eat one meal a
week when in the throws of the disorder). So she's eating… she's just
not eating much (example: whereas when rayne makes roasted chicken, she
usually eat 2-3 slices of chicken breast and a serving each of taters,
mac and cheese and stuffing, last night she ate one slice of chicken
breast, a serving of stuffing, about half a serving of taters and
barely half her mac and cheese). And she's battling the urge to spend
time with the toilet every time she eats, an issue she's never had
before.

rayne is slightly depressed, though she
denies it. But her depression stems from her self-image and nothing
else. Which is probably where this new development in the disorder
comes from. So long as she's forcing herself to eat and refusing
herself the reprieve of force-fucking her throat with her own fingers
till she purges everything she just swallowed, she should be okay.
Here's to battling demons.

Oh… and for the record, just so no one's confused, rayne loves Master way more than He loves her. That's just how it is.