How you’re robbing yourself of intimacy

Simba said it best, “we are one.” Regardless of how much you may or may not disagree, community is important to us as a species. Tribes, groups, packs, gangs, teams, families, and cliques all consist of humans who have a sense of belonging. We crave for connection with one another whether it be platonic, intimate, superficial, or energetically.
I mean, why do you think solitary confinement exists? Being separated from social interaction has negative impacts on one’s psyche. The same goes for what I like to call “intimacy isolation.”
Intimacy Isolation-n. the state of one’s raw emotions not being shared or connected with consciously
Let me break it down.
Do you ever find yourself hugging people and simultaneously thinking about what what you’ll eat for lunch? Do you read articles and watch videos on social media of the most traumatic real life happenings, but keep scrolling to the next puppy video? Most commonly, maybe entertaining a full blown conversation while constantly thinking of eleven thousand other things. These are all symptoms of isolating ourselves from intimacy. Every now and then there will be something that completely lifts the rug you’ve swept all your emotions under, and they come wafting out like dust in an old attic. Death, a T.V. show, trauma, a song, or maybe the littlest thing pushes you over the edge. My body decided it was time to clean the attic last night.
I came home from a full day of work and went desperately reaching for a hug from my dad. I shrugged it off, “cool, maybe I’m just doing that hormonal emotional thing today.” I went to my bedroom, laid on the floor as usual, and found myself gasping for air through a sh!# load of tears that came from nowhere. I mean, nowhere.
I often forget that I do this thing of convincing myself that I don’t get sad often. I get so forgetful and wrapped up in handling business that I don’t even allow myself to acknowledge I’m sad. Heaven forbid, I admit it out loud to someone. Then I will refuse to take ownership of it because that means nobody can accuse me of it. That’s absolute bullcrap by the way.
Your emotions are like an extension cord. Once you allow yourself to plug into the wall source at your core, you can plug into creating some pretty meaningful relationships. Relationships with vulnerability, compassion, trust, care, kindness, and INTIMACY. Our emotions are what connects us to ourselves and others. We were given the gift of being capable of emotional intelligence and we try to desensitize ourselves to having a full range of them. We teach our boys not to cry, we teach our women to “get it together.”
We forget how to connect to our emotions, and really let things touch our hearts.
We forget how to allow love in.
We forget about our humanness.
We forget that we, need, each, other.
We forget, we are one.
Hold on to your humanity, love. You’ll need it to live fully.
From heart,
Rashida
