Safe-word, a codeword used mostly in SMBD scenes as a way for the bottom/submissive to stop the scene. A safe-word can be any word: yellow, Bush, Goosefaber or Mary Poppins. When the bottom speaks the safe-word, everything stops. Restraints are undone, actions are seized and the nastiest of pig masters turn back into caring partners. Such is the power of a safe-word.

It is almost like speaking magic. One word and poof: pain becomes sensitive, humiliation becomes affirmation, used becomes nurtured and cruelty becomes tenderness.

When we are young that safe-word is mommy. When we have a nightmare, we scream our safe-word as loud as we can and she appears. Our nightmare vanishes, a loving arm holds us and a warm voice comforts us, telling us it was only a dream, a bad dream.

We get married and find ourselves trapped in a situation that is abusive, neglectful or confining; now our safe-word becomes divorce. You no longer have to scream as loud as you can nor do you have to scream it alone anymore; attorneys will scream with you. And like magic, you speak the safe-word and marriage becomes separation, confinement becomes freedom, abuse becomes recovery and commitment becomes individual.

People that get depressed, or find themselves trapped in a corner of life, use the safe-word drugs. They speak the safe-word and depression becomes Zoloft, reality becomes escape, functioning turns into jonesing, loneliness becomes tripping and life becomes lost.

It is like working magic, one word and poof: what then was, now no longer is.

There are safe-words, safe-guards, safe houses, safe harbors, safe havens, safety nets and life savers. All created and meant to achieve just that one, exact thing: to offer security. To make us feel safe, to make us feel secure, whole, unhurt and to keep us out of harm’s way.

You can place safe bets, practice safe sex, play it safe, be on the safe side, you can even give your life savings to a bank for safe keeping. It is even safe to say……… what?

In one way or another, I think that we all are trying to define our individual safe-word.

Marriage, divorce, drugs, money, careers, homes, families, friends, retirement funds, burial plots, tombstones. They are all different variations, different interpretations, of the exact same thing: to be safe. Even when we are dead we seek for a way to be kept safe: buried in a plot with western exposure or cremated and kept in an urn. A grave with a tombstone or an inscription on an urn; both meant to protect, to keep safe, the memory of us.

Lot of magic in that one word: safe.

I have my own safe-word; it is as old as the 10 toes on my feet and as personal as my dreams at night.

The part that worries me though is that when I say my safe-word, there is no magic happening anymore. And that what is, remains to be.

I don’t know if I should trade it in, or if there is a way I can recharge the magic in it, or maybe I somehow managed to kick it in reverse.

You see, every time I say my safe-word; my world seems to lose yet another version of safe for me.

And I am starting to get worried, because there are only a few versions left that make me feel safe and secure from harm,

as if I belong.

My name is Sven