So many of the words I am choosing for the A to Z challenge are known better for the *other* meaning. The one which makes an eyebrow rise in a question mark or a nose to wrinkle due to the foul stench that fills the room when "that" word is written. This is how it is for Intimacy.
Lately I have looked at intimacy from the perspective of closeness not in a sexual or sensual sense, but in a depth of what I am willing to expose to others, those matters which are seen as personal or private that we are uncomfortable sharing. Intimacy includes connection and trust combined with a willingness to expose oneselves (culturally ascribed) vulnerabilities or weaknesses.
I am remembering in days past, when cancer was a word that was whispered or we didn't speak aloud certain unmentionables like disabled or homosexual nor did we refer to undergarments unless we had a strange desire to be scandalous. Lately it seems part of my modus operandi is to expose more of what is unsayable so people may gain comfort with speaking what they long to speak yet don't feel as if they have permission to speak it.
When Samuel was first diagnosed with autism, I could barely say it.
When my daughter was stillborn - when she died as she was born - I couldn't speak it.
When I first believed I might be suffering from depression it was so unmentionable a roar entered my ears to silence the very thought.
Now I can speak passionately about all these subjects without inner debate, without fear of judgment, without self loathing because I have become intimate with the subject matter and more intimate with myself as well.
I haven't piled on the meanings that keep us from intimacy, things like "If Samuel has autism, it must mean I am a lousy parent." or "If my baby was stillborn, my womb didn't work like it was supposed to so I am failure as a woman" or "Only crazy people in other families get depression, not normal people in my family."
I have also discovered I am more likely to want to spend time with people who are willing to be intimate with me: those who are willing to share from their weaknesses which then become strengths. I am more engaged by those who show up, dirty and torn as well as sparkly and polished. That dirty, torn, broken mirrored reflection is so much more interesting than the other option, fresh and whitewashed just off the assembly line of "conventionally acceptable."
This doesn't mean everything must be covered in grunge to connect with me.
It is like this morning: I woke up to grey skies with that marine layer feeling of damp, wet, full with sludgy air. I walked through the door into the ominous dampness. My nose sniffed "not so great" which gave the go-ahead for belly insects to mutiny in my gut. What some people call "butterflies in the stomach" became a sure sign a not-so-Magical-Monday was rising to greet me.
Yet when I turned to face morning's arrival in the Eastern sky, I saw something completely different.
Face-to-face and belly-to-belly with morning's arrival, my worry was silenced in a flurry of greetings. Cloud trumpet players, an entourage of a Shakespearean messenger, played a tune of laughter as it proclaimed this day mystically "just right." Lavendar and orange, peach and petal pink did graceful pirouettes, flirting and giggling at their insistent joy.
Wordlove took me by the throat and by my hands and I wrote, pencil-less as I drove, playfully combining this metaphor for that metaphor, this image for that image....
I arrived at my writing porch destination and opened the door, the scent of lilacs my hosts to the day. Now it was my turn to laugh.
"It was YOU in the sky!" I whispered. "It was YOU in the lavendar, glitter tutu!"
I never would have had any of this experience if I wasn't willing to be intimate with the morning. I never would have been able to write these words if I didn't have a close relationship with the heartbeat of the morning, the drumbeat of THIS exact, precise day drumming alongside the previous days of being 100% alive to the grunge, the grit, the glitter the gumption it takes to walk a little bit differently than all the others rolling off the assembly line marked "expectations of others."
Oh, intimacy is joy-filled, it is passionate, it is awake and alive and sometimes it hurts like hell yet we know, in the end, life is so much sweeter because we elect to live nose-to-nose with it rather than hold it safely at arms length.
I is for intimacy.
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Julie Jordan Scott
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