Monday, September 25, 2006
The Discovery Channel
I’ve always hated people touching me. I know, for someone who really enjoys sex, that seems odd. I suppose I should qualify my statement, I’ve always hated certain people touching me.
My grams touches my face and I just want to scrub my face with bleach. I don’t know. I love my grams, but she touches my face and I just want to crawl out of my skin.
At clubs the boys would dance around me. I wasn’t an amazing dancer (well, actually, I am pretty good), rather, I needed the protection from elbows and back and other body parts that were flailing about in a coke induce arrhythmia.
On airplanes I try to snag a window seat so that I have something I claw onto when the person next to me moves their elbows (and more recently legs, GET ON YOUR OWN SIDE BITCH). Bruce was a little surprised to see me so messed up from the touching thing (that flight was the first one where I was driven to tears at the thought of being touched).
Public transportation clearly has no place in my life, except for the fact that I take it every day. Great.
But there is more. I have realized that I might not be okay. I was reading a blog by a father in a separation and heading to divorce. He wrote about how he talking to his daughter who sat on his lap while he mowed the lawn. “Next it was time for the big girl. She was with me the rest of the time which was for about an hour or more. We talked, as best we could, about what she did all day and things she wanted to tell me. I kissed her shoulder a lot and held her tight. We got to just enjoy each others company.” I read it and thought creepy. I didn’t think too much of it until yesterday on the T. There was a family heading home after the Red Sox game and the youngest child, a boy of about 7, kept leaning into his father and bouncing his head off his father’s stomach when the train lurched back and forth. A joke was made about his paunch being good for something and then the young boy TOOK A HANDFUL OF HIS FATHER’S STOMACH AND SQUEEZED. For his part, the father didn’t even flinch. Dude was totally at ease with someone messing around with his stomach fat. I shuddered at the thought.
And yet, now I wonder, is this me? I know I have friends who don’t like to have their face touched, but it seems to be a universal preference rather than in regards to a single person. And why would I get so messed up by my grams touching my face when we touch hands and link arms all the time? And why do I start having anxiety attacks on airplanes when someone’s elbow jostles me? Is it normal to want to claw off your own skin just because someone’s elbow touched your blanket-covered, jacket-covered, AND shirt-covered arm?
Also, I have noticed that the more chemically impaired I am the less affected by all this I am.
I am so messed up.