My Turmoil with Touch and The Fear of Darkness
I did not like to be held close as a kid. I am not completely sure of the reason, maybe I just wanted to see everything. Perhaps I embraced the light so fully that to close it off from me felt like a cruelty. This would make sense in my deep fear of the dark. The dark haunted me as a child, the monsters who lurked there were unquenchable. Even though most of the time I was fully aware those monster were in my mind, that fact didn’t change the way they made me feel.
I ran to my parents' bedroom almost every night when I woke up from a nightmare. I knew they didn’t like it. I was full of shame when I would tap my mom on the arm or when I tried to just gently add my body to their bed. The more I did this the more they made me feel I was a nuisance, childish, and disobedient. I increasingly would lie in my bed praying the monsters would settle and I could just fall back asleep. Sometimes after an hour or so this would work and I could reluctantly drift back to an uneasy sleep, but more often I would slowly work up the courage to head to my parents’ room.
One night, the night that solidified one of my core messages (the feelings of helplessness and being at the mercy of the monsters), my parents just locked their door. I screamed and cried and yelled at the doorway. I don’t know how that story ended because I don’t remember but I don’t think my parents ever came and unlocked that door. If they did, the fear and pain was already solidified – this world is scary and I was alone in dealing with the fear.
Eventually, when my child brain was moving out and the adolescent one was moving in, I had a dream which ended my nightmares. My ego took my hand and taught me how to fight the monsters. My nightmares dwindled after that moment.
I could handle whatever emotion came at me, whatever fears I had could be rationalized away or simply avoided. I no longer had to burden any one else because I knew it was too much for anyone else to handle and anyone who would try to help would eventually let me down.
This is a very useful way for me to hold my heart as I was growing up. I may not have been outwardly confident but my inner self was full of pride. Eventually I would teach myself how to let that out and any morsel of power I could get my hands on meant that I could make sure no one got hurt.... and if that didn’t work than at least I wouldn’t get hurt. Relationships were easy to let go of as soon as they got too dangerous and if I held the reins then I knew where the ship was going.
The thing about always holding the reins and always retaining the power in relationships is that no person could ever really give back to me. I could give myself physically and emotionally at will but receiving from others was often met with cynicism and mistrust, when it didn't turn into an unquenchable thirst.
As I said, I did not like to be held close as a child and even refused to breastfeed. I needed something, some sense that could not be found in a close grasp. But if being held close was like torture, not being touched at all was hell and that is what you get when you reject hugs as a kid, isolation. My strongest positive memories of touch from my childhood was when my mom would scratch my back. I loved getting a back-scratch, my whole body would crumble and I never wanted her to stop. I don’t know if it was just the rarity of what I would consider a positive touch or just the exact thing I needed but to this day there is no better touch for me than a back-scratch.
The thing I wonder now is that maybe I needed touch so badly as a kid that being held close was overwhelming. It was like a surge of energy I wasn’t yet ready to handle. But as I have so often realized in most aspects of my life, if I reject something or react too strongly emotionally, people back off.... they really back off... and there I am, alone.
I don’t blame people. This whole thing really confuses me too. It has taken me over 30 years to even get close to the proper explanation of my love/hate relationship with physical touch.
Touch demands so much of me and I often receive nothing back from a touch I have given. All I seem to have are demanding touches at this point in my life. I don’t know how to start asking or looking for the type of touch that could restore me.
This story does not have a happy conclusion today, just grief.