Moving to a new city with my partner has been hard on my emotional health. It's hard to be away from my old friends and distant from my other romantic partners.
I feel strangely hesitant to even talk about this because it feels like I am bragging or something but few things satisfy and nourish me more than intimacy. Having many loved ones nearby (be they friends or romantic partners) contributes greatly to my emotional stability. Right now I only have access to one person to share such intimacy with. It's less than I am used to. Don't get me wrong it's still an incredible gift and I am extremely grateful, but I want more.
I realized this last night after going to a poetry workshop. Which might sound a bit strange but I've long felt poetry as a shortcut to intimacy. This easy access to intimacy is part of why I am a poet and the reason creative processes appeal to me. They calls up a sense of closeness and empathy that strangers are usually not likely to otherwise share.
Poetry is my hunger for intimacy, or at least one of the ways I hunger for it.
Sharing artistic feedback, like I was lucky enough to last night, calls for levels of honesty and vulnerability that have become more rare in my life lately. I got more from that round of sharing and feedback than I'd thought possible.
This is partly because I aways forget how powerful I find working together with other writers. But it wasn't just that, I was reminded of what different intimacies tastes like.
I love my partner a lot. Our intimacy is unique, dynamic, and creative, but is always has a similar flavor. And I crave other flavors. This doesn't necessarily mean that I need to have a bunch of romantic relationships at all times, but that I prefer a variety in my diet of intimacy (which can come from friends, family, or even fellow poets and writers).
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