Intimacy isn’t stolen, it’s given. It isn’t forced; it opens from within. In a world where everything seems to be shared, exposed, and even commodified, discovering that inviolable refuge of the self is both a challenge and an invitation to grow.

To speak of intimacy is to babble: words are always insufficient, because they touch the deepest part of a person.  The ineffable

Distinction between concepts

Let’s talk about intimacy

Privacy is not confidentiality. Privacy is to things what privacy is to people. Private is a letter that isn’t opened unless you’re the recipient. You don’t break into a locked mailbox, nor do you snoop on someone else’s computer or phone. Privacy is protected by privacy: if everything belongs to everyone, nothing belongs to anyone.

Privacy custody sets a healthy limit: some spaces are not publicly accessible, which need to be closed so that the person is preserved and protected from curious glances.

Intimacy is not interiority in the strict sense, either. Interiority is our thoughts, desires, suffering, frustrations… Interiority becomes visible if we reveal it.  Intimacy is not interiority, but it is nourished and expressed through it.

Interiority is that dialogue with oneself, that mirror that reflects voices of encouragement or doubt, and that reveals to us what we carry within.

Let’s talk, then, about intimacy.

Intimacy, like that unlocked door…

Privacy is from another galaxy of stars. It demands finesse to peer in without invading and without invading us. Michael Ende, in *The Neverending Story*, expresses this with the allegory of the Unlocked Door: a closed door made of an indestructible material that resists the more one wants to open it. It only opens when someone manages to forget their intentions and doesn’t intend to invade…

Intimacy requires waiting, delicacy, and respect for opening times.

An inviolable redoubt

When I worked on this allegory with my teenage students, we discovered together that the door to intimacy only opens from within. It opens with freedom, not with force. Our most authentic selves reside within it.

I remember a friend who prayed every day: “Lord, don’t let me go crazy. Because if I go crazy, I’ll do crazy things.” He knew that in that intimacy lay his autonomy, that ability to decide with distance from events. Therein lies our uniqueness: we are unrepeatable, unique, with a dignity that no one can negotiate.

“Someone who is his own sole master, endowed with free will, inalienable. His value is not subject to contract and can never be used as a means…”

Mariolina Ceriotti

The philosopher Julián Marías remembered it with another luminous expression:

“The person, that corporeal someone, is free in that inviolable refuge that is intimacy.”

The body and intimacy

transparency and custody

Intimacy is not an abstract concept: it is embodied and expressed through the body.

We clothe our bodies not only out of social convention, but also to protect that intimacy that cannot be revealed from the outside.

The dress is custodian, transparency, mediation.

But when we lose this sense, clothing becomes a disguise. Instead of revealing, it conceals. Instead of adorning, it disfigures. Then the unity between what I am and what I show is broken: it is no longer the person who expresses themselves, but a character who intervenes.

Babbling and defiance

Intimacy resists being captured. It’s diffuse, dynamic, always new. Not even I myself fully possess it: I always find myself a little alien to myself, surprised by what pulses within. That’s why, when I speak of intimacy, I stammer.

And yet, in that babble, an immense horizon opens up: the certainty that within me there is an inviolable place where I am free, unique, unrepeatable… and capable of loving without masks.

The heart and intimacy

“The heart and intimacy are good friends.  Once that relationship is broken, the heart begs in the garbage dumps.” (The Self and Its Metaphors, Rosa Montenegro)

I know someone who, when drugs gave him bad trips, hid in a closet because the outside world scared him, and I keep his dark words to myself, so I’ll never forget them:

My bed: coffin, rented by the hour.

My room: a disgustingly cold city.

My clothes: the costume ball.

My parents: the world on your heels

Today I’d like this poem to reach you. It could bear your name, or perhaps many others, even mine…

 “There are screams that cannot be heard,

There are words that say nothing,

There are full silences

in your tears

Take them in your hands

You’ll see how they slip through your fingers.

Don’t cry,

Don’t do it quietly.

Because on your sidewalk there are a thousand magic wands

What will they do with your tears?

A mother-of-pearl necklace.

If you are brave

You will hear the silence scream,

Call without words,

You will know that in crying

There is always an anxiety of the soul.”

(Rosa Montenegro)