Toucha Toucha Touch Me

As a person who has lived alone for long stretches of my life, I am acutely aware of when and how people touch me.  As a survivor, maybe it has always been this way.  I spent a good part of my thirties being kinda touch-phobic by which I could not stand for a stranger to brush up against me in any way.  A complete ruffling like an angry porcupine when someone touches me without my invitation or without good intention.  Contrasted to the complete melting of being touched in affection, camaraderie, and love where every defense mechanism slides off meaningless to the floor in the face of a mere touch.

Living alone means I am am touched less often than someone who shares a home with a lover and or kids.  I used to shamelessly get my fix from my nieces and nephews who would fight to wallow in my lap, hold my hand or hug and kiss on me.  These few I trusted completely just as they trusted me.  There has been a sadness for me in losing that as they grow up.  Not that I would have it otherwise.  The youngest ones have been too big for my lap for a while now and are rapidly approaching a place where holding hands and skipping wherever we go will no longer fly.  :-(

I pay someone once a month do massage.  And some months while I am lying there on the table I get a little weepy thinking the last time anyone touched me was the last time I laid there.  A whole month ago.  Double sad face.

I know touching is vital to the development of children.  But I wonder if it isn't also vital to us as grown-ups too.  I know how much it means to me.   How it makes me feel suddenly included in this tribe.

As most of you know, my mom was diagnosed a few months ago with an aggressive form of Alzheimers disease.  Things have evened out, but there are still days where we struggle and fall back into old patterns.  None of them good.  How when she goes there, I follow along unable to hold my ground against the slide.  How she clings to me and drags me down with her into the pit.

Last weekend we had one of those fights from hell.  Yunno the where you end up screaming at each other, neither listening to the other.  I drop the F-bomb.  She flings it back at me (this woman never says this word).  I try to just remove myself but can't.  As a last desperate measure, I squat down - ripped out knee and all - and take her teary face in my hands.  I tell her how very much I love her and how that's all that matters.  Everything else will work itself out.  I have said this many times that night.  But finally she hears the words, sees the truth in my eyes and the anger falls away.  Since then I have made a conscious effort to touch her more - hold her hand when we walk toward a restaurant or through the mall, rub her arm or back, hug and kiss on her.  And I am seeing a slight improvement.  She doesn't remember any more than before.  But she gets less angry.  That's an amazing thing.

And being experimental nerd girl, I have to wonder what could I let go of if I had someone to touch me more often, if I had someone to see me, if I became part of a tribe larger than one.