The covers by which a book is judged

LJ cuts be bothered, I can't be arsed. If you don't want to read me talking about my body and emotions stop now. This is really just to remind me later.

We use the word "naked" to suggest that something is presented in its real, unadorned, unaltered form. We use phrases like "naked truth" to indicate that something is as honest and true to reality as possible. This is predicated on the idea that our bodies are entirely representative of us. This isn't always the case.

I have a thin and fragile veneer that I wear as a mask. It's constructed of clothing and shaving and a wig and shoving parts of my body about to present myself as I wish to be seen. A mask is usually something used to hide one's true self but in this case it's fairly representative of who I really am. Call it trivially truthful. It accords with my inner self, the identity that I've worked and sacrificed to tease out and understand and which is really who I am. Call that the non-trivial truth.

Between those two layers though is a persistent and nastily compelling lie. That would be my body. It's all the more insidious because the idea that our bodies accord with our gender is ingrained so completely in our culture. I hate seeing myself naked in the mirror. The lie is so compelling that it still catches me out and makes me recoil. I realised recently that I'm truly scared of being intimate with someone because of this. This idea of presenting someone with that lie and asking them not to believe it is incredibly confronting. I know that on some level they will internalise it as truth and the mask will forever after seem just that.

So I have a profound internal conflict. I want someone to be attracted to me as I am; to be able to resolve those deep dissonances in my physicality and still find me desirable but at the same time I want those dissonances gone (which they will never entirely be) and I want not to have to present the lie to someone I want to be close to. Whenever I find myself attracted to someone the thought "Oh god, what if it doesn't work out?" is immediately followed by "Oh god what happens if it *does* work out?" I try to convince myself that it will all be fine but I've discovered that it's all to easy to follow that into projecting desires and thoughts onto someone else which is fair on nobody and leads to me having stupid internal hissy fits which are entirely my own fault.

Should I simply decide that anyone I want to be that close to, I should be able to trust to deal with this or am I asking too much? I resent this. Other people have body image issues to deal with but their bodies don't actually make them appear deceitful. How much disclosure do I have to run through to avoid someone looking startled and slightly put off in the middle of what should be a moment of abandon?

I suppose this is one of those things that will have to be worked out on a case by case basis. I still have no idea how presentable I truly am though. I have friends all around me who tell me how great I look but I've heard those sorts of comments thrown around a lot and they're effectively code for "I like you and care about you and want to be supportive of you." which is nice but not informative. They're also generally produced by people who are safely disinterested in me.

Bleh. That's that train of thought written out anyway. Hopefully that will give me a base to build on.