Intimacy means laying oneself
bare to another, to let the other see you warts and all. It's what
we both desire and fear most in relationships. It's more a process
than an event or state.
Depressives fear intimacy more
than most people. We put on masks for the world, because we believe
our true selves to be shameful, unworthy. With practice, we can
keep our masks up all the time, so no one ever knows what we think
we're really like inside. We can fool everybody into thinking we're
loyal, honest, generous and caring when deep inside we know it's
an act.
But if you keep up an act like
this all your life, who are you fooling? Who is the real you? Is
it the one that people love, or is it the secret self inside? I
submit that the real you is the self you present to the world; this
is the self you are responsible for. The inside self is an artifact
of depression, guilt, and shame, no more than a trick of the mind,
but one that can dominate our life unless we let people know about
it.
If we just open up and let
our loved ones know about our secret fears, our doubts, our inadequacies,
we can grow through the corrective emotional experience of being
loved and accepted despite our guilty secrets; as we do this the
gap between our public self and our secret self diminishes; eventually
it may disappear altogether so that we are just one congruent person.
No secrets, no shame.