“The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it.”

Stephen King, The Body

I’m going to start with a confession. In 6 months, I shall be 30 and my 20s will be over. To say that I have wasted them is an over dramatisation as they’ve been pretty awesome…but I have been single since I was 19 and, other than a few one-night-stands and a couple of short flings, have been essentially celibate. And this bothers me – how can someone of my age have never had good sex? Do I really even know what I’m doing? What happens when I do meet someone I really like and all of these deficiencies become evident? It weighs me down. I feel awkward and uneasy, and always fear that the eventual end of the fling is due to my not being exciting enough or sexy enough…it becomes a vicious cycle.

I have, however, come to the realisation that that awkward and shy girl is actually not me. The self-conscious and inept part of me is very real and plays a significant part in my romantic liaisons – she is my shadow from which I struggle to escape – but she is only my shadow. The rest of me, the real me, The Other Livvy, is much more fabulous!

2014 has been an enlightening year – I have applied for and achieved the job of my dreams, which has proved to be significantly harder than I expected. I have dated two men who both reminded me of how much fun dating is and how much I have been missing out. I have started running and rediscovered that my body is actually incredible.

But I started this with a quote that sums up my main problem…

I took the Myers-Briggs personality test several years ago and, to my surprise, discovered that I am ridiculously introverted. This was not what I expected – I’m not shy, I will generally have a go at anything, my job involves talking to all sorts of people about complicated and sometimes horrendous subjects, I have a ridiculously loud laugh that has got me shushed in more than one cinema – but then I realised that it is painfully accurate. For all my outgoing charisma, I don’t tell anyone ANYTHING about myself. I can count on one hand the people I can talk to about subjects that are important to me…and that list excludes many people I count as friends and some close family members. I can’t talk about love with a man I love…I can’t tell someone I like them…I can’t tell someone how much they’ve hurt me…it’s all so locked away that I can barely admit it to myself…the more important it is, the less I am able to speak of it. As the quote above so aptly describes, what if my revelation is misunderstood or trivialised? I’d rather not say it at all and then it isn’t real anyway…

This secret side of me knows the truth…about who I am, what I want, what I believe, what I need…everything!

So I’ve decided that it’s finally time for The Other Livvy to have a voice and step out of the shadows. I’m hoping that once I am more comfortable speaking my secret thoughts out loud (or as out loud as an essentially anonymous blog allows!), maybe I can break the divide between the two parts of me. Here goes…