I am not a good listener. Oh, I hear everything, and I even remember and process and analyze it for later, but often fail at really listening. At sitting back and letting the conversation go where it will go. At letting my friends be as vulnerable in the conversation as I am.

I am a very closed, introspective person. I have a few beloved friends of the heart. I choose these friends carefully. Even with them, I don't share myself easily, but when I do, it is soul baring. I wear them--and myself--out with my intensity. I am terrified of losing them, so I increase my vulnerability. "No one could hurt this tender thing."

You see, if I really listened to them, if I let them be that vulnerable to me, then I would have to figure out how to receive that gift that I imposed on them. A gift that I am afraid of. A gift that I long for.

Once my walls have come down, it is far easier to continue bare my already naked soul to my friends than to have it reciprocated. Intimacy with them is a gift that I find myself not being able to stop myself from giving, but which I realize I don't know how to receive.

I need to be able to cover my nakedness more, while learning how to gaze with love on the glimpses of naked soul that my friends want to share with me. I know that they covet the exchange of this gift as much as I do.