I struggle with letting others in. It has always been this way. I fling wide open the doors of my lobby but rarely grant access to others to the upper floors. I want you to linger in the lobby and be content. And, I have found, a lot of people are very happy to spend some time there but no one ever wants to stay in the lobby, no matter how attractive, fun or interesting it may be.
I have been working on intimacy, well really all my life, but most especially for the past five years. Trying to figure out how to let others in, and to participate with them instead of holding myself aloof and outside the circle. I have never felt safe enough...never.
I am making progress I think...I now have some people who have made it the elevators and have actually made it to an actual floor and have been able to walk around and get to know the interior of me better. However, I will say that I still have been holding back...I didn’t know that I was. It was really just revealed to me this morning. As I sat processing a disturbing dream that I will write about later...I realized that intimacy can only happen, truly, when I have spent the time “in to me seeing”. How can I share with you, that which I do not know about myself?
It is a journey to be sure, but one has to be willing to do the work and also be willing to reveal yourself, all of you, perhaps not at once but not have large parts of yourself that you cling to saying “mine! Not yours!” Who wants to be intimate with that? There cannot be large parts of your life that you are unwilling to share...and yet that is how I have always felt. My life, parts of it, were mine and I wasn’t really willing to share them with anyone, they were mine. And I can see now that is an issue. Would I want a partner that was unwilling to share parts of their life with me? No. Not a good deal and it would leave me feeling cheated and alone. But I didn’t see that that cut both ways.
I have a friend that said one time that he has always experienced a low level of depression when he is in a committed relationship. And as soon as he said this, I was like “OMG ME TOO!” And I have realized now what that might be about for me...
I think that I feel this low lying depression because I am holding back this part of myself that I either can’t accept about myself, that I am sure that if I share with a partner, they will leave. Or there is a desperate longing by me to keep some part of me I don’t like out of the relationship. So then because I am not really all in, I feel depressed because even though I want to feel connected to this person, I don’t completely.
Into me see...is really first about me. Seeing into myself and all the ways I put up walls and barriers and blockades - all designed to keep me in and you out. But intimacy is about letting down those barriers, slowly over time, the goal being that you someday, if we continue on the path together, will see each other more deeply and wholly every day and love each other more, even about the parts of ourselves that we feel are most unloveable and sometimes not even likable.
Into me see - is a two way street, me looking into me, while also looking into you. But you also have to be looking into you, to allow me to really see anything at all. I cannot share with you that which I do not know or cannot reveal about myself.
So I struggle...but I have to say that the struggle is less today than it was six years ago, six months ago and even six days ago. A window has opened and I can see more clearly than I have before, my own reluctance to see what I am really willing to offer.
The work will never be done but today I am grateful that I see more clearly than I did yesterday, that I am seeing into me in a new way at parts that I have allowed and encouraged to block me. They say in recovery that the same woman will drink again, and I also believe that the same woman will be the same woman. And I want to be someone different, me. The whole, unadulterated version of myself that you can see and decide “no thanks!” Or “maybe...” Or “Fuck yeah, sign me up.” And for your reaction to not change me fundamentally, holding steady and fast to my own inner journey and allowing you to be who you are while I go deeper into who I am, and offer you an opportunity, should you want one, to see into me too. Because I can only reveal that which I know...I cannot give to you something I haven’t got, and I see today, that I have been trying to peddle a me to you that was lacking.
So I will keep working on “into me see” so that I can understand and accept this Erin person in a more whole and loving way, and do the work that is mine to do, so that I can free up time and space to dedicate some time to “into you see” when the opportunity presents itself...practice, practice, practice...still.
