How to be Naked.
Shedding clothes is easy. Peeling away the layers of your soul and baring it to someone else is hard. It really means being naked. Conversations without fillers, without imbibing. Without whiskey truths and Absolut forgetting. Can you do it? Have you done it?
I’ve stumbled home drunk and incoherent, traded secrets in smoky rooms and found fast friends amidst laughter and sticky bartops. I’ve carried half-remembered conversations over hungover brunches and retained pictures with ‘best friends’ who come out at 2am, when my lonely fingers press “send”.
I’ve never been naked.
I’ve tossed aside clothes and left behind tokens as I scrambled to do the walk of shame. I’ve spent long, perfect days with someones I’ve never gotten the contact of, and I’ve talked about the scars on my soul, unburdened my being over omelettes in bed and midnight deliveries.
I’ve never been naked with someone who mattered.
It’s hard, to show the innermost workings of your mind to someone who will stick around. I’ve bared it all to strangers that I know I’ll never run into again. Shared the things I should’ve shared with my lovers, instead, because… Being really naked is easy with someone who won’t remember or judge.
When I made the decision to be single, it was an easy decision. Single means being able to choose who I share my nakedness with. Single means the time to face the brokenness within and to examine the thoughts I’d filed away for “later” that never comes.
Lately, single has become lonely. The kind of lonely that is easy to fill with work and busy schedules and catch up with friends. The kind of lonely that settles in the middle of your chest, compressing. Filling up.
I want conversations so good, they make your toes curl. I want warm arms curled around my mid-section as I lie awake at night, counting sheep and breaths. I want to cook food without leftovers. I want someone I can shed layers with, to be vulnerable and afraid, as I discard clothes and secrets. I want to be ashamed in the morning light and have their warm arms curl around me tighter, telling me that they’ve listened, but they choose to stay.
I want to hear their pasts and shames and bury it within my self as they strip naked for me. I want passionate fights over who emptied the coffee maker last and long silences as we sit in passive-aggression after repeated, “what do you want for dinner?”, “I don’t mind, what do you want?”’s.
I want to be so, so afraid of losing them because this sort of love couldn’t possibly be mine.
I want someone who will choose me.
I want to not be ashamed or afraid to admit all of these things.
