It's not all doom and gloom

Yup - I'm happy, opening up to others as regards my inner life, more in touch with my anxieties (it's not a bad thing)'n'everything. Sex keeps getting better and better, too, probably due to me being more in touch with myself.

I'm not exactly the girl I thought I was.

Or I am. It depends. It depends on which period of my life one takes as a reference. If one takes my early-to-mid twenties as a reference point, I'm not really the girl I thought I was. For starters, I didn't want to think of myself as a girl. The thought was way too scary. Yeah, it intruded every now and then, but I pushed it back.

If, however, one takes me as a child as the reference point, yeah, I think I can see the similarities. I'm the introspective, shy, sensitive girl I was back then. I cry easily. I like to play, probably in all senses of the word. I'm lighthearted at times - although one might prefer scatterbrained, too: while I'm very much together in one sense, I'm not quite the polished, untouchable package I tended to think I was - or at the very least, the package I projected myself to be for others.

I still project quite a lot: I probably seem a lot larger and a lot louder than I actually am - it's rather scary to allow myself to be the size I actually am, to allow my borders and limits much closer to my skin. On the other hand, me distancing myself from other people led to too limited a life, other people being too far even for my comfort. This doesn't mean, of course, that I'll be allowing every comer up close and personal, but this hopefully means I can let my nearest real close, and my spouse to my skin.

Because that's what I want. I want another person up close and personal. I want skin on skin. Come to think of it, I probably haven't had skin on skin -like intimacy ever, not knowingly, at least. The times I've approached it, I've had to distance myself from it for fear of disintegrating - disintegrating the projection, that is. I think I am ready now, and if I'm not, perhaps my fear won't make me run away any more. Perhaps I'm brave enough to face myself for real.