Get Real. Get Naked. Get Better.
For some of us, getting or being naked is a gruesome fear dredged from the deep well of insecurity, vulnerability and exposure. We anxiously lag behind others in the gym locker room, as if the delay will give us the mental energy to send subliminal messages and clear everyone out of the room or build a protective invisibility bubble around us. When we need to put our bra on or change a shirt with a friend, family member or lover are in the room, we turn around hoping beyond hell they are not looking to see our back fat. Making love or the act of sex is only to be had in the dark (or maybe one dimly lit bulb or candle way across the room)… and this is only when we have beat them in the room, whipped off our clothes and are trying our best to look seductive under the covers we just scrambled under.
Yes, physical nakedness is scary enough…but what about mental or emotional nakedness. Where can we hide from what makes us us?
Hiding from emotional or mental nakedness is less obvious than concealing our physical selves; but we do it is such subtle ways. We see a community acquaintance in the supermarket and spend three isles worth of mental energy trying to justify why we acted like we didn’t see her. Or come up with story after story in our head for the ready, incase we see her further along in the store. At work, we know damn well that suggestion or new process the boss just came up with will not work, will be counter-productive and a colossal waste of time…but, we say nothing. For a number of reasons; fear of confrontation, need to get on the bosses good side because Sally in accounting was earning too many ass kissing points last week and we need to even the “I’m a good obedient worker” score…or the very real possibility of losing our job. For what ever reason we say nothing and lose a bit of ourselves every time.
Romantic relationships can be a breading ground for us to pull every cover over our heads in effort to hide our true emotional/mental selves, and not the person we pretended to be while winning them over. Or we lay down millions of miles of road called anxiety and worry tying to simultaneously run away from and romance our father’s memory. Some of us spend many of our greatest years alone, so we never have to truly share ourselves with a partner…but we spend hour after hour searching the online sites wondering why it all feels so illusory. We lose weight, gain a lot of weight, hide behind out weight, change our hair color, pack on makeup, and even have plastic surgery to conceal our fear.
Hiding from emotional or mental nakedness is less obvious that hiding behind our clothes or outward roles we play in the adult world. It maybe less obvious, but can be much more damning. Bit by bit we learn to cover our needs, wants and feelings to keep the peace, go with the flow or even survive. Everyday we live our lives under the veil of going to and from, worry, guilt and fear. Dreading someone will find out what we know for sure…we are frauds or worse… we are not worth it. We take our depression meds, put our work clothes on, send our kids off to school, put on our game face and muster through the day…totally sick to death of being what we have become, but scared shit to become what we have dreamed. Sometimes we don’t even give ourselves permission to dream anymore, we are so petrified of exposing the real us. Who ever that might be.
I propose we need to get naked. We need to get raw again, get in touch with the fear that runs our lives and determines who we are. Get real with its power and influence it has taken of our individual lives and those of our society. There is a saying, “We are only as sick as our secrets”; What if the biggest secret we keep hidden is our potential or unconditional love, or the fact we wanted to be a ballerina and we settled for middle-management. Get better, learn to dream again and cast away the fear, doubt and insecurity that keep us bound to inaction.
Lets get real, get naked and get better.
ã 2008 Jodi Mathieu, Published by Unlocked Communications, LLC
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