Naked is.

What happened was nothing short of miraculous.  Call it a revelation or the discovery of buried treasure.  Simply put, it was the permission to be naked.

More specifically, it was the willingness to admit that the self abusive behaviors in which I indulge are not only pleasurable in their fleeting satisfaction or distraction, but also in the essence of their being destructive.

But if I continue to destroy myself, I can't enjoy just being naked. 

And naked is five years old, staring into a frog pond, waiting innocently for a friendly amphibian to break my reflection with the ripples of his surfacing.  It is the carelessness for my reflection, the concentration on the spry fellow, the anticipation and the sorrowful excitement when I try to catch it and miss. 

Naked is feeling the presence of something else there, interrupting my concentration.  A looming predator, desirous of me, just as I am of the oblivious frog.

Only I am not oblivious.  And I don't hop away.  I stay there because I'm scared and I think I'm supposed to do what monsters say and this monster, I happen to love.  Naked is giving myself to the monster because I think this will break the spell that has been cast upon it, the one that makes it need me.  So I give willingly, even though there is a voice inside screaming, "NO!  This is not okay!"

I ignore that.  And then I sit with the smelly beast, allowing it to hold me while I gaze back at the pond, pretending I'm still just catching frogs.  That voice is screaming, but there is another.  And this one (which I have hushed until now) says, "Hey, you're good for doing this.  You are giving yourself up for this damaged thing."

Do you know what?  It feels good - even if I am damaged in the end - it feels good to give myself to something.

Sitting here, looking at the parts of myself I have deprived of sunshine, exposing their pallor, I realize they are beautiful too.  I crawl into the damp memory.  The little girl is naked.  She scrambles desperately for a tee-shirt.  "If only I had been wearing something," she cries.  "It's my fault."

I walk gently up to her and smile.  "Tell me a story," I say. 

"Well, I'm just looking for my clothes, because when you're naked, the monsters come and get you.  I wasn't brave enough to run away.  I let it get me.  And part of it felt good and part of it felt really bad.  So I don't want it to happen again... But I like to be naked."

"Come sit with me," I say.  And I hold her in my lap and sing to her about the sunshine.  She cries a little, then starts to sing with me.  We watch the frogs jump around.