This past winter (or was it two winters ago?), there would be days where I felt like I was about to burst out of my skin. Sure, I'm never able to watch a movie without burning through my five free lives on Candy Crush, or stopping halfway through to peruse Instagram Reels, but I pride myself on being able to start something and stick to it. On my good days, I can watch paint dry with a smile on my face.
Good days seemed impossible. Somewhere in the middle of everything, I managed to convince myself that I felt that way because I needed to go to a rock show. To a certain extent, that was true. I never went, but the knowledge that I could, that the problem was hypothetically fixable now that it was identified, was enough to tide me over while I shook myself to sleep. My mistake was not asking why. Why would a concert fix me? Did I need to get out of the house? Fresh stimuli? Sort of. The only thing I knew was that as soon as I entered the mosh pit, I would be able to let go.
I stopped feeling like that, eventually, because if you hold yourself still for long enough the tremors get bored. Picking up an instrument helped. My frustration could be centered on an object other of myself, like a lightning rod. That didn't mean the electricity went away.
All of this is to say that I'm feeling that way again. I noticed it last night, when I couldn't decide how to cross my legs while I watched TV, and when my car nap left me unsettled and shaky. The problem is that now I know the cause. The one thing you need for a mosh pit is people. Songs transition and instruments cut out, but it doesn't matter as long as the push and pull of sweaty bodies continues. Then, and now, I'm dying for human touch.
There are countless ways to touch people, not all of them equal. Last week I had a movie night with my friends, and one of them left her legs thrown over my lap while I rested my head on the other's shoulder. These kinds of touches, from appendage to appendage, feel like there's always something between you. Shame, maybe, or just restraint. My uneasiness longs for real connection. I see every body as a furnace, and everyone else might be ready to settle for idle warmth, but I want to be burned. Torso to torso. No. That's not enough--I need to be living inside someone else's skin, resting my head on their heart and cradling myself in their intestines. Blood vessels form a web that will never let me go.
The hardest part is that when someone initiates this kind of intimate touch, I shy away. They do it wrong. I need to be the one to touch them, but they have to prove that they're trustworthy, like a feral cat seeking shelter for the first time. Who can I ask when it gets like this? No one, if I want to hide my soft underbelly and dull claws.
One day, I will have to choose between safety and fulfillment, but it's hard to know how when I've spent a lifetime packing myself as tightly as I can into my body. The facade starts to fade when I'm sick, or somehow physically exhausted myself without becoming nasty and antisocial. I list toward those I trust: the ones I occasionally let hug me (when tears are involved). I want more. I don't know how to ask for it, but that's not true because my body does--it's that wild animal instinct that wants me to forget. I hope "one day" comes I forget how to be human, too.
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