Naked

It was the first time I ever let someone truly see me naked.

Not just undressed—but revealed.

Before him, I had been intimate, yes—but always wrapped in quiet apology.

Always half-turned away.

Always folding into myself like I was trying to take up less space in the moment,

and less space in their memory after.

I had learned how to disappear beneath sheets, how to turn my back to the morning sun,

how to tuck my body into the soft corners of a room where judgment might not follow.

Where imperfections could stay hidden in the hush of early light.

Men had touched me before,

claimed to know me, to love me even—

but it was always in the dark.

Always under covers.

Always with conditions.

The unspoken rule was clear:

Don’t reveal too much.

Don’t ask for softness.

Don’t let the light in.

And the truth is, I had never felt like someone who was made to be looked at.

I was always the awkward girl.

The one who laughed too loudly, who didn’t quite know what to do with her hands,

whose body never seemed to fit the way clothes were designed.

I wasn’t conventionally pretty.

Not in the effortless, obvious way.

Not like my friends—girls with symmetrical features and long legs, flat stomachs and tiny breast.

With an ease in front of cameras, in front of people,

in front of mirrors.

They were chosen. Admired.

Told by the world in a thousand ways that they were enough.

And I… learned to become the supporting role.

The funny one. The smart one. The good listener.

The one who would disappear so others could shine brighter.

So I kept my body a secret.

I hid it, apologized for it, made jokes about it before anyone else could.

I gave people just enough of me to keep them from asking for more.

My therapist once said,

“You can’t fully know someone until you both stand in the raw light of your flaws and choose to stay.”

I used to disagree.

I believed intimacy could grow in shadow.

That someone could love me without seeing the razor burn on my thighs,

or know my soul without tracing the stretchmarks on my breasts.

That my softness didn’t need to be part of the story—because it never felt welcome anyway.

I didn’t want my body to be a part of the introduction.

It had always felt more like an apology than an asset.

An afterthought, or worse, an obstacle.

For thirty-three years, I had survived by slipping through the cracks.

By staying just out of sight.

By becoming skilled at offering only the parts of myself I thought were palatable.

I knew how to curate my presence.

How to leave just enough to be see—but not too much to be remembered.

And then—he came along.

Just a friend.

Not a lover. Not a partner.

Just a friend.

A gentle soul with kind hands and clearer eyes than I’d ever known.

We had shared stories late into the night,

laughing with the sort of ease that only grows from safety,

from mutual respect.

From a kind of closeness that doesn’t ask for anything more than truth.

We had laughed, talked, drifted into silence, and always returned—unchanged, unshaken.

There was never a kiss.

Never really flirtation.

Just comfort.

Just trust.

And one night—when grief had worn me down to the bone

and I felt more ghost than girl—

he sat with me on the couch, held my gaze, and said,

“You don’t have to disappear to be loved.”

It wasn’t an invitation to touch.

It was an offering to be seen.

A mirror turned gently toward me, asking nothing but honesty in return.

And so, I left the lights on.

I let him see what no one had seen fully before—

not out of desire, but out of surrender.

To let someone witness me as I am,

not because he wanted anything in return,

but because I needed to know I could.

He raised my arms and lifted my shirt slowly,

always asking without words,

moving as if my skin were a diary

he would never dare to read without permission.

He unclasped my bra gently,

letting my bare breasts fall —not to admire or consume,

but simply to acknowledge what was real.

And then he held my hand.

Led me to the bed

There was no urgency, no hunger.

Just presence.

He helped me peel away the layers—pants, socks—

but never touched me like I was his to take.

He never crossed a line.

Never implied one should be crossed.

I lay there, afraid.

Afraid of what he might see.

Afraid of what he might think.

Afraid, most of all, that I might be too much—or not enough.

I braced myself for the recoil.

For the soft gasp. The quiet retreat.

But when I opened my eyes,

he wasn’t looking away.

He was looking at me.

Soft. Steady. Still.

As if nothing about me surprised him.

As if this body—my body—deserved to exist in the room,

in the light, in the story.

There was no romance in the moment.

But there was something bigger.

A kind of reverence.

The sacred act of witnessing someone in their entirety

and offering no shame in return.

In that stillness,

he gave me something I didn’t know I was starving for—

not validation,

but permission.

Permission to stop contorting myself into something easier to hold.

To believe that tenderness could exist outside of want.

To understand that intimacy does not always wear the clothes of passion or possession.

Sometimes it lives quietly in friendship.

In presence.

In the simple, radical act of staying.

He is still just a friend.

He never became more than that.

He never needed to.

Because whether he intended to or not,

what he gave me that night—

the quiet permission to be whole—

was a kind of intimacy I had never known.

It was an important night.

Not because it changed our relationship,

but because it changed the way I inhabit myself.

And now,

I prefer the lights on.

I want to be seen—

my face, my joy, my body.

Exactly as I am:

rolls, cellulite, razor burn, and all.

Not because someone wants me,

but because someone showed me I didn’t need to vanish to be worthy.

And I’ve never forgotten that.

I carry it with me.

In every mirror.

In every sunlit morning.

In every moment I choose to stay with myself,

exactly as I am.