A NEAR-RELIGIOUS SHYNESS

Within me exists a shyness unlike any other. It has traveled with me through time and space, reshaping the contours of my romantic relationships and the very way I perceive myself.

Shyness has many faces. There is the kind that seizes me when faced with a mind greater than my own, when someone's intellect or aura leaves me awestruck and reduced to silence. There is a general shyness—an endemic lack of confidence that makes me feel infinitely small in the middle of the world.

But the heart of my inquiry lies elsewhere. It is a much more insidious, deeper shyness that demands to be explored if I am ever to understand my own blockages. It is a romantic shyness, severe and almost chronic, capable of severing entire chapters of life if one cannot find the strength to fight it.

I have been thrown into situations, each more eccentric and intense than the last. I have experienced love in all its forms. I know its nuances: the consuming, fleeting passion; the loyalty of friendship; the protective instinct of family; and even the lightness of play and seduction.

I have seen my own perception shift through contact with others. I modeled my actions on what was offered to me: time, energy, money, or simply the comforting silence of a presence. Every relationship and every moment of reflection has redesigned the way I function. Yet, from all these metamorphoses, a crushing certainty has emerged: I worship the person I love with absolute devotion. In my eyes, she becomes a divine entity, a jewel so pure and total that I no longer dare to even lay a finger on her.

This is where my mind fractures. During my youth, I approached sexuality without filter or restraint. I knew the addiction of "dirty" sex, the depths of dominance and submission, and even moments of trance born from a paradoxically gentle brutality. I made love to those I loved, and I slept with those I thought I loved.

Yet, in the shadow of these extreme pleasures, a small voice never stopped growing. A cognitive dissonance. I find these moments of sexual synergy completely wild; I hold them in immense respect and see in them an intimacy of rare depth. But how can I impose that on the person who shares my life? How can I place the being I cherish most in the world in a posture of submission or carnal degradation? Each time, a sense of shame overtakes me, whispering that it is wrong, that it is dirty.

I did not receive a strict religious upbringing. I forged my own values, plucking my beliefs from wherever they resonated with my soul to map my own path. But today, sex has taken on a new dimension—one that is almost mystical.

This shyness gnawing at me is so powerful it almost forbids me from glancing at my partner lying naked beside me, even though we have known each other for decades. Is this the ultimate form of respect? Or the symptom of a deeper blockage? It is a question I will have to delve into for a long time to come. All I know is that I refuse to see the woman I love tainted by situations my mind deems degrading.

There is a paradox within me that I cannot control. I believe that when I truly love, I marvel with my eyes, not with my hands.