True intimacy demands uncomfortable honesty... that, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours," kind of openness... the raw, the vulnerable kind. Yeah, we think we're honest, but we lie by omission. We keep so much hidden from the ones we love. We hide our most intimate desires like a deep dark secret that if exposed would bring on a catastrophic event... those desires we think they can’t or won't fulfill, much less understand. We hide everything that we think will make them run. We hide who we truly are simply out of fear that we'll be left if we open up and expose our true selves. Yes. Abandoned. Funny, that we wind up blaming the object of our desire for not meeting our needs... those needs we refused to open up and share with them... those words explaining those needs. Well, the truth of the matter is, people aren't mind readers, clairvoyants, psychics, or whatever you want to call them. And no, they don't lose us... they don't even know who we are. We're the ones who lost... lost by hiding the truth. So, that thing we most fear, that abandonment thing... well, now it's become our reality. How truly sad, this thing we do to ourselves, over and over again.... and let's just blame it on human nature, shall we? Because that's so much easier than ponying up the truth to our special someone, let alone actually taking a good, hard look at ourselves, isn't it? -k.h.