I remember it vividly. I had this year between high school and college. I stood on a waitinglist for the study of my choice and at the same time I new ‘the independent life’, though I longed for it deeply, came too soon for me. So I enrolled in a transition year, a preparation for the sports academy, closer to the home I grew up in.
It was there, in one of the first lessons we had, that I got blown away.
A boy, who I considered ‘nice but populair’ – the opposite of what I had been in my school carreer – came to sit next to me. That already blew me away. People never had wanted to sit next to me. – They never said so out loud, but it was obvious in their behaving. –
On top of that, he sat so close that his leg touched mine. And not only briefly, followed by retraction. A reaction that I was familiair with. It stayed there. I remember briefly watching him, checking his responses. But he didn’t seem alarmed. No hidden intentions, but also totally cool with it.
I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. It touched me. Made me aware of what I had missed. It revealed a kind of lurking hunger at the same time. I felt myself restraining, I couldn’t believe this was real. Nor the touch, or the thing I saw, that this was a totally normal thing for him to do. No strings attached. No disgust of me.
A boy that I considered ‘nice but populair’ came to sit next to me.
Later on, at the sports academy, I learned that ‘touch’, for so many people, was a normal thing. To give and to receive. And though I couldn’t feel that ‘normalness’ myself, the way that people around me behaved regarding to touch, relieved me big time. I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t want to either. But it was there in my subconciousness.
After the sports academy I took a study in body psychotherapy. It involved a huge part of ‘self discovery’. In that place, touch – though still difficult – became slightly more normal for me too. And as a plus, I started to acknowledge more and more how I’ve missed it during my life. And maybe, just maybe, I secretly longed for it.
How cynical it is that I lost all that in the years after. Not because I lost sense of it, but because I stepped into the scene of survivors of child molestion; survivors of physical, psychological and sexual abuse. A scene that brought me so much, but at the same time ‘took something’ from me that I just had rediscovered.
There I soon (re)learned, that touch wasn’t normal for everybody. And more than that, that it contained triggers. That you could harm someone with it.
What I learned to do in my previous education, though stil not quite normal to me, I rapidly unlearned again. I learned to ‘read the other person’ on a more advanced level than I already could. And the automatic response to repress my needs got imprinted even further.
So when they didn’t approach, I learned to not approach either. Because they might not want it, but also might not be able to indicate their bounderies about it.
If you’re in a ‘healthy state of mind’, you could say ‘well, yeah, everybody has their own responsibility in that’. And that’s both true, and also doesn’t work that way in the trauma scene. We try to keep eachothers needs in mind for as mucht as possible. They have been inflicted more than enough already. And that’s both a good thing, as it can be a pitfall.
That’s both a good thing, as it can be a pitfall
To me , I think – in an even more cynical kind of way – the above learned response, created an attitude from other people (non trauma, as far as that does even exists) towards me, that’s not benificial to me at all.
In other words, I think a lot of people hesitate to touch me, because of my (re)learned anticipation related to touch. And that would mean I subconciously created my shortcomings all over again. To meet the needs of others, yes. But still.
I don’t have the priviledge of many (steady) social contacts in real live. Therefore this means that other than my physiotherapist – who obviously touches me in a work kind of matter – , I’m lucky to count three hugs a week. Apart of a totally unexpected hand on my shoulder once in a while.
That means as well that I got into a state – familiair to the past- in which I’m not used to touch anymore. And that any unexpected touch, just like the one in my transition year, blows me away. It’s hardly bearable, because it reveals so much. Of the past. Of the present. The shortcomings. Being different. And at the same time, it’s so needed and there is this longing.
The corona crisis just briefly got us all ‘into the same boat’ on this one. A lot of ‘non survivors’ started to understand the meaning of touch, and what it meant to be deprivated from it. But as soon as that counciousness came, it faded again. Now it’s already almost as if it never existed. Leaving those, still struggling, alone again.
I want to get out
I want to get out.
Get my needs met.
Grow into it, for real.
But how?
Because I’m still more than half of my time surrounded with survivors and at the same time I really don’t want to cross anyones boundaries as well.
