It wasn’t until I was 27 that I went skinny dipping.
Out in the Bay of Dragons in North Vietnam, my head swimming from Bia Hanoi and cheap rice wine, I finally took my clothes off in front of people I wasn’t about to have sex with.
And we plunged into the dark, star-speckled water, and I was free.
It still took another three years before I had the nerve to show myself to anybody.
I had been holding myself back, fretting about what people would think of me, laying my thoughts bare to the world; worrying what other people would think about what I think.
And whether I would measure up to everyone else writing out there.
But you know what?
Just like that balmy night on Monkey Island, as soon as I took my clothes off, I stopped caring.
It was the easiest, most natural thing in the world.
Whatever it is that you’re hiding inside you, put it out there.
You were born that way.