Taking the risk to be vulnerable and open, intimately, can feel like you are in free-fall — experiencing in that moment both exhilaration and terror.
To risk openness is to risk the possibility of disappearing before our very own eyes. Despite our intention to keep track of who we “thought” we were –
to remain our own individual self, in partnership with another, this determination (seemingly without our consent) gives way to the power of erosion. Inevitably there is a fear of losing others, leading to compromise oneself for love, too frequently losing them, and ultimately ourselves in the process.
Numerous trips down this rabbit-hole can end in a variety of ways – bitterness, redoubled determination and rigidity, walls and shielding, but it never occurred to me to consider yielding! Yielding into the fear; bowing into myself; leaning into the possibility of loss and beyond.
When all else fails — tell the ‘whole truth’, even if I don’t know fully what that means; this practice, coupled with the desire to discover my ‘self’ as I focus on my commitment to ‘remain true to’ me, inevitably led me to winnow out everything that is not me, and into who I truly am.