Reflection on Touch

My last entry about touch got me thinking about how my own relationship with touch has evolved over the course of my life and what I’ve been through.

It’s been complicated to say the least.

Jamie’s molesting me at 8 created such a huge, ugly conflict inside me when it came to physical affection and casual touch – I constantly experienced an agonizing conflict between desperate, screaming, aching need for touch and a paralyzing, nausea-inducing, violent abhorrence for physical connection. That’s pretty much textbook for victims of sexual trauma.

The need that every child – every human – has for the nurturing love found only in touch was at war with the self-rejection, shame, and self-hatred I felt as a result of being molested, and that contributed to the crushing sense of isolation and loneliness I felt through the rest of my childhood, my teens, and my young adulthood.

As I’ve written in other posts, I was curious about romantic touch but absolutely unable to stand for any but a very select few to do much more than hug me or touch my hand. It brought up the oily, greasy, slimy, shame-filled feelings of what Jamie did to my body, as well as to my heart and psyche. I fought with that and with fantasizing about what it would like to have a boy kiss me.

My dad’s side of the family was never all that physically demonstrative once we stopped being babies. That side of the family just didn’t hug much, or give much of anything in the way of physical affection.

My mom’s side of the family was a little more demonstrative but I didn’t see as much of them growing up.

After Jamie molested me, I mostly stopped seeking physical affection from my parents as well, just couldn’t stand them touching me because I could only think of how they’d hate me and reject me if they knew my secret. But I didn’t stop wanting the touch, needing the touch of parent to child.

It breaks my heart and makes me cry now to think back to that child that I was: existing in a never-ending, silent scream for physical affection and comfort.

Hurts my heart to remember what that was like.

As I healed, though, that need for physical touch came out of the conflict and I was able to have people touch me. I was able to seek hugs, seek the caress of a hand on my hair, a kiss on the cheek. At least with family and same-sex friends I could stand it and even enjoy it at last.

It was like rain in the desert, only so much more.

What’s weird, though, is that it still felt weird to be touched. I never realized it until now, but it was like a muscle that I never used, so it atrophied. Because it always felt awkward, even though it was what I needed and desired. I still felt so self-conscious about it, so hyper-aware of being touched.

It’s … hard, emotionally, when something you need and desire like you need and desire breath feels uncomfortable and is everlastingly coated in a thin film of angst.

It took a lot of work and even some of what psychologists term “flooding” to help me get more comfortable with touch. Flooding refers to deliberately exposing one’s self to a fear – like an agoraphobic deliberately leaving the house and going to the mall. Or someone with a fear of heights deliberately climbing onto the roof.

I would force myself to reach out for hugs when I wanted them, not listening to the fear in me that was terror-stricken and nauseated at the thought of being embraced. I would let people touch my hair or walk arm-in-arm with me - would even find a way to revel in it - even though I felt every point of contact in my stomach like a punch. I would stay in embraces with people I trusted for long moments, coming face to face with the vibrating panic I felt from my space being violated.

The need was greater than the fear. Thank God.

With healing and increased self-confidence, increased self-love also came more ease with touch. I am deeply grateful for that. But it’s still like a muscle I have to exercise – I deliberately have to seek it out and allow myself to have it – it never really feels 100% natural to me.

I’m hopeful that it might, given a little more time and a little more love.

It remains something my inner being cries out for, something extremely important to me – life-giving, even. I starve for it. I crave it in spite of it still feeling a bit unnatural.

And I don’t mean unnatural in the “this is fake and lame” way. I mean it in a “can this really be happening” way. When I receive and give loving touch without all that fear and conflict, it feels … almost unreal to me, like a dream. It’s always over too fast.

And I’m always left wanting more.