intimacy is inevitable

in solitude, i am free... but not quite alive enough

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

yesterday was my one year anniversary on substack, which makes it the longest and most emotionally honest relationship i’ve been in.

ironically, i wrote my first article on intimate connection.

i am nothing if not contradictory. i write the truths i find most inconvenient in hopes that someone else might put them to better use.

cupid and psyche found me in a vulnerable state at the met on march 1st. i was experiencing emotional drainage from something that hadn’t yet taken a clear shape.

i borrowed symptoms from the surrounding display of ancient stories to diagnose the feeling: friction from pouring myself into an overflowing cup.

art gives us language for the emotions we can’t yet define. it captures stark nuances, like beauty and fragility coexisting in every portrayal of aphrodite.

my mind, suspended in fog, approached a truth i’d been wrestling for some time — like water running through your fingers, intimacy is fleeting and hard to hold.

considering the only anniversary i’m celebrating this year is between myself and my keyboard, i’ll double down on that thesis.

i’ve exhausted myself

solitude is a self-preserving luxury until you exhaust your own company. nothing gets in my way like needing someone or being needed.

independence is a rush – it’s a freedom in its own right, with the caveat that the craving for connection tends to linger in the background.

close relationships destabilize my sense of safety, but i don’t see the value of relating casually.

i gravitate toward people who don’t need me because connection without dependency is strangely relieving.

suspense is close enough to the solution – the mythical sweet spot between solitude and connection. isolating… but safe.

i am an insulated container of bottled up feeling. i instinctively absorb the emotions of the people that matter to me until i can’t distinguish them from my own. i create controlled spaces to connect authentically and autonomously because outside of them i’m a conscious guest in someone else’s narrative.

i’ve exhausted myself.

the cost of connection

i think we need each other to save us from our self-made safety nets.

only the right company could allow a writer to set down her pen. intimacy can make us surrender what we hold dearest.

we look for safer ways to scratch the itch. we find connection that sits on a shelf just low enough to reach and high enough to avoid. the mind plays clever tricks, but the body conditions toward attachment.

intimacy is a ceilingless room until you bump your head.

human connection can be chaotic, demanding, revealing, and unforgiving – we make mistakes and inflict pain until we learn to hold it responsibly. intimacy challenges our character and threatens our sacred sense of self, yet we’re left empty in its absence.

once you’ve developed a strong and harmonious relationship with yourself, intimacy shows up like a seductive home-wrecker.

in my solitude, i am alive and free… but not quite alive enough.

i’ve decided that soul-level connection doesn’t come from shared interests and values, or even deep understanding. it emerges from trusting in a safety net that exists outside of yourself.

loneliness is not solitude. loneliness is sacrificing self connection for a bond that doesn’t serve that function.

intimacy is inevitable

i cannot choose between the peace of solitude and the stimulation of human connection so i alternate between the two like a modern-day persephone.

do i really thrive in solitude, or is it the only place i feel safe without needing to ask for safety?

we crave connection. we claim to want to be understood, but what most of us want more than anything is connection without self abandonment — or at least intimacy that doesn’t leave us a little bit stretched, stuck, and hollow.

you may prefer the ache of solitude to the exposure of connection, but intimacy has a habit of returning.

i admired the cupid statue for nearly ten minutes through teary eyes. i circled it until i could connect every story told by every angle to form one coherent shape. i thought if i could understand the narrative then i could clear the formless fog growing inside of me.

tragedy… sacrifice… co-dependency… innocence…

inevitability.

intimacy’s promise lingering like it always does.

it was an incomplete shape, but enough for now. i exhaled, pocketed it, and walked away.