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A post shared by Elephant Journal (@elephantjournal) on Apr 28, 2019 at 11:00am PDT

Warning: naughty language ahead!

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As women, we need to stop saying, “I have intimacy issues.”

The issue isn’t with intimacy; the issue is that we are taught what intimacy isn’t.

We are bombarded with images and videos and words and advertising and catcalling and porn that claim intimacy is when a penis enters a vagina. We have been lied to. We have been bamboozled. We have been eradicated of our true essence of being.

We are taught that our sensuality, sexuality, sense of who the hell we are is wrong, doesn’t exist, isn’t ours to choose. We have been beat down with a lie that intimacy can only be shared between two lovers, that intimacy is purely romantic, that intimacy is sex.

Here’s the reality: intimacy starts with ourselves. Intimacy starts with our love and desire for our own sensual self. Intimacy starts by feeling the connection and calling of our own beating heart.

I always thought my heart was too afraid to open up, that my heart didn’t trust me, that my heart was damaged, broken, locked away for safe keeping. Tonight, I found out the truth: I was the one who didn’t trust my heart. She wasn’t hiding from me; I was hiding from her. I’m the one who put her in that box. I shackled her up, I boarded the windows, and I shut out the light. I shoved her inside and I tossed her aside.

She fought like hell to come out of the box, but I wouldn’t let her. I wouldn’t make room for her. I thought I was protecting her, but when I saw her, she was bruised, not broken. She was weak, malnourished, and sitting in a dark corner with puppy eyes, begging for me to love her. I did that to her. I pushed her under layers and layers and layers and layers and add 100 more layers of I don’t even know what.

I tell men all the time, “I have intimacy issues.”

Well, it’s time I woke the fuck up, because no the hell I do not.

My “issue” is that I’m not made for casual sex. I’m not made for meaningless fucking. I’m not made to be a puppet in your show. My desires are not made to be repressed. My longing for stimulating all five senses and then some is not made for being taboo. My “issue” is that I refuse to play a part in this God-awful performance any longer.

I’m made to fucking feel, see, taste, hear, touch with every cell in my body.

I’m made to find the soul within me awaken by your breath, your essence, your gaze, your presence.

I’m made to surrender to and play in this fire within me.

I’m made to scream and moan and cry and laugh and be silent all in one breath.

I’m made for a soul connection.

I’m made for intimacy that can be shared with all of our damn clothes on—and then wanting to take them off anyway.

I’m made for lovemaking.

I’m made for foreplay—foreplay that begins in January and ends in December.

I’m made for an experience, not an end goal.

I’m made for an orgasmic awakening, not a single orgasm.

I’m made for laughter.

I’m made for freedom.

I’m made for enchantment.

I’m made for magic.

And, it turns out, I don’t need a lover to feel any of this. But, oh, will a lover be lucky when my heart swings open her doors to allow them to feel the depth of intimacy I harbor.

Tonight, I was intimate first with myself, with a rose, with a blindfold, with the warm energy of my palms, with my hips moving effortlessly across a wooden dance floor. I was intimate with another soul through eye-gazing, through hand-pressing, through holding a piece of fruit between our foreheads and dancing intuitively to keep it safe, protected. I was intimate with a sisterhood of goddesses as we became bodies thrown—no, placed—lovingly together. I didn’t know where I ended and they began. My breath matched theirs, collectively.

My heart beat alongside the woman’s next to me. My extremities intertwined with names I didn’t know. My chest a pillow for her braided hair. My hand gripping a woman four decades older. We curled our bodies around one another, each giving and receiving equally in the most intimate experience I’ve ever allowed myself to feel.

I came back to myself and wrote a love letter from my heart, “Hi baby, thank you for finding me. I will never leave you. I am you.”

Intimacy: it’s most definitely not sex. But it can be, if you let it.

To find it? Put a blindfold on. Rub your hands together to build warmth. Hold a rose in your hand, blare music so loudly you can’t hear your thoughts. Be alone. Invigorate all of your senses. Let the heart lead the way. Give yourself everything it doesn’t know it is seeking.

Intimacy, it’s falling in love with every part of your being. Intimacy, in-to-me-I-see.

I see me.

And because of that, I’m ready to see you, too.

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