Covarrubias is a licensed educational psychologist and lives in Bonita.

Have I always been this way?, I wonder. I ask my husband in order to re-orient myself. As I navigate my elder years, I note my changes. Is this my new maturity, clinging less to reminders of past events, more ease and contentment with paring down, or decluttering. Is this un-nesting, the opposite of arranging for a birth? Most significant for me: is this a flowering of intimacy with myself, and therefore with others?

Intimacy typically implies a close relationship that allows freer communication, a trusting of sorts, that we will be accepted, heard and cared about. In many relationships, however, we mask ourselves, especially those parts of ourselves infused with shame.

Intimacy is complex. Oftentimes I hear it expressed in sexual terms, “a truly good friend but we weren’t intimate.” Yet simultaneously I learn of less and less actual intimacy in sexual encounters, even among longtime partners. Casual sex is not intimate; we often still have difficulty talking about our sexual desires, wants and needs. We hide ourselves rather than risk being shamed or worse, unloved.

In the sexual realm, this is no wonder given the social forces that shape our knowledge and expectations surrounding sexuality. Consider that simply education about our body and its functioning is often fraught with controversy and polarization. Even more so are the nuances of healthy sexual development and expression. Shame and guilt still deeply influence our private lives.

Throw into this mix a scarcity of healthy, respectful role models, plus the pervasiveness of explicit and sometimes exploitative images on social and screen media, it is no wonder we may take lifetimes to scratch the surface of intimacy.

Unfortunately, nonconsensual sexual relationships and violence in general, especially early in life, frequently give rise to guilt, fear and anxiety in adulthood. But the intimacy avoided does not only bloom in sexual expression; it is manifest in personality adaptations that keep us hidden from others, and worst of all, to ourselves. Maltreatment often creates self-images of guilt — a way of explaining the harm as one’s own fault. These manifest as internalized notions such as something in me caused this, or this was due to something I did or did not do, or I cannot tell anyone. They can become behavioral and psychic patterns to control anxiety and fear in self-defense, to feel more in control. So we can go on.

Someone recently explained to me how assault warps us by saying “it comes out later, but sideways.”  We hide those aspects we are ashamed of, and therefore lessen the chance of deepening our most important relationships in the process. We express anger and blame much more freely, sometimes in misdirected ways, at partners no longer connected to our pain. That is how we know how to be, with habits established earlier. Or we withdraw and hide. We repeat patterns of pretense; we vent our frustrations in familiar cycles, often thwarting our own growth.

I am currently reading “The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human” by Siddhartha Mukherjee. In it, Mukherjee describes “an impenetrable sheet of privacy” which stood between him and a likely AIDS patient. He could only guess what influences blocked his patient’s communication about risk factors, thereby impeding the search for better medical assistance. After finding surprising complexity in the patient’s disease expression, Mukherjee marveled at the depth of medical mysteries. Yet more pertinent here was his realization that sometimes human mysteries are even deeper than medical ones.

As troubling as it may be, at the core of human endeavors lies the unknown.

What is comforting and simultaneously inexplicable to me is how medical and psychic health are truly one. We make the distinction between them to simplify and comprehend ourselves. The same pathways to health are involved:  eat nutritiously, exercise regularly, sleep well, socialize, balance work, stress and enjoyment, all in moderation. Years of scientific inquiry (education), fruitful insights (self-inquiry), self-corrections (implementing changes), and lifestyle adaptations support our understanding and evolution.

Perhaps this is my stage of life now. Life taking its course. The flowering of maturity and integration before my final decline. Perhaps it is the recognition of the immediacy of death, fragility, and mystery we embody that contributes to the paradox of our most intimate and resilient, expressions in life.