Of All the Things I've Lost...

...I miss emotional intimacy the most. It is magical, in a way that nothing else in life is. It is a passkey, allowing you entry past your significant other's defenses, and granting them the same. It charges any touch with just the right level of significance, whether a simple acknowledgement, or making an embrace a superconductor of empathy, or desire. It liberates.

Children don't have the defenses we build as adults. They cannot conceive of the need for them. They simply love who they love. There are no conditions. There are no expectations. There are seemimgly limitless reserves. There are no slights and there is undeserved grace for mistakes and neglect.

Adults are different. Under the right circumstances, we'll drop the pretense, and the walls between us will evaporate, but too often it requires an emotional commerce. "You show me yours, and I'll show you mine." And if it is lost, it hurts. It hurts enough that we'll look elsewhere. The pain and fear of more will stop us from looking to the place we should, without regard for understanding what happened.

I've learned over time that when the human heart is involved, no relationship is beyond redemption, nothing is so broken that it can't be fixed. Both have to want to fix it, and be courageous enough to take it elsewhere and ask for help, but open hearts can accomplish more than ones that are hard and stony. I've seen it happen. Every journey begins with a step.