Touch.

Origins and evolving thoughts.

As a toddler, I enjoyed backrubs. My whole family remembers this clearly. It is the only form of touch I ever asked for. The only form of touch I ever sought out. My father was the best at backrubs and, as his youngest daughter, he could not find it in himself to ever refuse my demands. Everyone made fun of him for it. 

But by the time I turned six and eventually seven, my mother intervened. I had grown too old for backrubs so it was no longer appropriate to ask for them. I stood ramrod straight for hugs and kisses on the holidays from all manner of relatives because it was deemed rude to reject those. But backrubs? Not allowed. And just like that, I couldn’t remember why I liked them so much in the first place.

I admit that discovering what sexual intercourse was solidified any walls that already existed in this area. I didn’t come from a touchy family so touch never became a way I expressed myself to others. You’ll never find a picture of me wrapped in the arms of a friend or on a pile on the floor with teammates. Quite the opposite, you’ll see me standing off to the side quite comedically, exhausted from a long game of soccer yet pleased we had won. Touch was mostly the equivalent of the handshakes our head of school would give us each morning as kids before starting our day, firm and with eye contact. Or, again with sports, taking the ball from an opponent on the field. There were also the self defense classes our school gave us when we were ten, lining us all up to go attack a cartoonish idea of a man, quickly disable him, and sprint in the opposite direction calling for help at the top of our lungs. 

But finding out what sex was changed my rejection of touch from a preference to a necessity. I felt very ill-equipped to understand what touch meant to people or to the world so it seemed sensible to just forever keep my hands to myself. Squeezed in the backseat of a car with others would have me reciting times tables in my head to distract myself. Holiday hugs and kisses had me transporting myself somewhere else entirely. And with my friends, accidental touch sometimes had me apologizing. 

For those even the most basic level of observant, my body language would give me away most of the time that I wouldn’t even need to say anything.

“Not a hugger, I see,” a colleague would say. 

I sat perplexed listening to friends talk about needing touch, needing sex, needing intimacy to feel connected with others while for me such things were accomplished by simply having conversations together or doing activities together. Artistic and athletic activities really do it for me, personally.

Today I still remain largely unchanged. I have mellowed out a bit since I was a teenager. On some level, I feel better at judging when and why touch is happening. I know the social cues that would prompt a hug or a pat on the back so in these situations I voice that I know what is expected yet explain I am going to do something else. I’ve been told that I’m a very calming person to speak to which is funny to my family members who find me odd rather than everyone else who finds me odd but interesting. 

At a wedding I went to recently, I explained a brief moment when I was pulled up to dance with a friend, arms linked as we spun around each other. It made me happy in a way I hadn’t felt with physical contact involved since I was a toddler. It felt significant, like for just those thirty seconds I was in on something. To her, it probably did not feel like a big moment at all. For me, just thinking about it almost brings me to tears. 

But that friend is a highly unique case. And just like all my other friends, she is in the process of solidifying her life with a man within walls I’ll never be invited behind. Perhaps my feelings surrounding the event are ones of a general sense of grief in regard to the path the closest people in my life are choosing unanimously. It gives the feeling of the times we had together not only not being enough but were seen as less than building a life with our only remaining natural predator. And so moments like a silly little dance have me reacting in such a way, touch or no touch. 

Regardless, at this point in my life I am not opposed to changing my relationship with touch. I guess I just don’t really see a reason why. With friends, would it make my sense of grief greater? If that is the case, does touch equate to some form of connection I can’t currently see?

This is another topic where my thoughts aren’t fully formed and so I lack any definitive conclusion. I just know that another thing I mourn is how male culture seems to have hijacked touch above perhaps all other forms of communication, and that is probably the driving factor behind me staying out of that particular lane. 

I’ll probably revisit this topic more thoroughly at a later time.