SquarePeg Books

Most of those of us who write insist that words have the most power.  People need words. People can feel through your words. People can live and breathe and love and even have sex using nothing but words. It’s something us writers can get a little smug about.

Lately, my world has been turned upside down. Even my words have not worked out so well. This has forced me into situations in which I’m a wee bit more introspective than normal as I am forced my to consider the other senses.

Have you noticed your need for touch?

I’m not talking about the tactile need of nerves reporting to your brain that they’ve touched something hard or soft or gooey. I don’t mean the sense of touch that helps maintain your balance or the muscle memory that allows you to tie your shoes in the dark.

I’m talking about touch from another person. The need for touch. How much can be communicated through a touch – a handshake letting you know you’re respected or not. A reassuring squeeze of the shoulder if you’re having a rough day. A friend taking a moment to massage your back.

They’re all intimate in their own way, and sometimes we force it on other people through our own need. I need to establish dominance. I need to let you know I believe things will be okay for. I need to let you know I care.

A hurried, awkward embrace with a quick, thoughtless peck on the head.

I was frantic when that one happened. I felt panicky about the situation at home. I felt bad about what I considered a total abandonment and a shoddy hand-off of responsibility to someone a month sooner than I’d promised. I felt relieved that I didn’t have to worry about this particular activity anymore, that I could, in fact, drop everything at a moment’s notice and not worry about how I might leave 5 or 15 others hanging without adequate warning. I felt like I should stay. I felt like I should go.

I slung an arm around her back and shoulders, gave her a quick squeeze, and pecked the top of her head with a murmured, “thanks, hon” and ran off before I even realized I’d done that.

I’m normally very stand-offish. I don’t like to violate someone’s personal space. I don’t like to touch other people. I’m generally not the one that initiates physical contact. I often wait for an invitation of some kind. From my husband that’s an easy read – after 20 years, I would hope I can understand his smoke signals.

From someone I only barely know? Not so much.

I pondered it the whole drive home. Throughout the afternoon and on into the barely wee hours of the next morning without sleeping I played it over in my head, horrified that I’d so egregiously and thoughtlessly violated someone’s personal space until I finally came to my computer to type it out and somehow make sense of it all.

Halfway through this particular writing, I sent her an apology email, explaining that personal touch like that isn’t something I normally do, and I can only think that I forgot myself in my agitated state. Two days later she replied with an “it’s all good” kinda email, which made me feel better, but didn’t resolve anything else.

I still ponder the why. Why did I feel the need to do that?

Humans are selfish creatures. We want, we take. Sometimes we’re enlightened enough to kick our ID’s into a closet or at least put a leash on them and pretend we have civilized and acceptable social skills.

I do not enjoy touch from my parents. It comes with emotional baggage and a need to perform the outward expression of whatever emotion will most likely cause the touch to cease as fast as possible while allowing them to think it was on their terms (for the record, I was never sexually or physically abused). My accepting touch from my husband can be a tricky thing involving moon phases, the last time I ate chocolate and do I know where my coveted dragon stapler is? Accepting touch from my in-laws is a creepy thing that makes me very uncomfortable.

So why did I reach out like that? So bold and inconsiderate? That is totally outside my normal habit. Under normal circumstances, I would never even consider doing more than offering a handshake, if that much.

I wonder, if in my current state of mind, that touch from someone I know, but not in a close fashion, is somehow a reassurance of some kind? Is it like the 5 year-old who runs up and hugs a random adult out of an intrinsic need to be confirmed “yes, you are a part of the herd and cared for?” Is it a need to demand a response that isn’t tainted with obligation? Raw inconsiderate greed to just take a moment of closeness from someone to feed something intangible?

Even the idea of sex, the touch involved in sex with a loving partner, seems to fail miserably against this need I felt, that I currently feel, for a kind of touch that isn’t from a familial source. It’s a need for intimacy, but not a sexual need. A need for closeness, but not from a normal (?) source.

Feeling this particular need bothers the hell out of me, because I don’t understand what it is I’m reaching for or why. I know it is not fulfilled by embracing my husband or most acquaintances. And even the small touches, the ones that happened because I did not maintain my own boundaries, my own rules, while more satisfying are still less, in some fashion.

I crave something. I need something. But I have no words for what that need is.

I’ve journaled, I’ve free-form written, I’ve used writing prompts and tried reading (old books, new books, fiction, non-fiction). I’ve drawn and painted and played with string. It’s weird and distressing that I can neither find nor articulate in any meaningful way what I need or even why I feel that I need it. What do I want? What is it that I think it will do when I get it? WHY ARE MY WORDS FAILING ME?

Rough patches suck hard.