There’s nothing better than contact when desired.
Imagine you’re having a bad day. Maybe you’re homesick, lonely. You’re with friends and the sun has gone down and you’re just talking. Someone laughs at your joke, puts a hand on your shoulder. You lean into them and they let you, and everyone’s still talking. They’re warm and vibrating and calm, and you’re still homesick but also strangely content.
Imagine you have a headache. Maybe it's right behind one of your eyes, and you know it wouldn’t be half as bad if you’d taken a nap earlier, but you’d gotten your homework done instead. Now there’s no saving the rest of today. You’re slumped against a small mound of pillows because it hurts, but you’re sitting in the common room because it’s too early to go to sleep and too late to take a nap. Someone asks if you’re OK, and you mumble back. Their fingers card through your hair, and you melt. It still hurts, but now there’s a layer of good sensation over the bad. You ask if they’ll watch a movie with you.
Imagine you’re sitting on the floor next to the person you like. You think they like you too, but you’re too unsure. Your butt should probably be numb, and it kind of is. But you’re laughing so much you’re rocking with it, and that keeps the worst of the stasis away. You finally pause to breathe, and they’re smiling, and then they’re kissing you, and you do a victory dance in your head, smiling against their lips.
There are as many reasons to shy away from touch as there are reasons to crave it.
Imagine your clothes feel heavy on your skin and the air scrapes against you. Maybe light’s too bright and sound’s too loud. Someone comes into the room and the sounds coming from their mouth push against your face. Not because of them, you rather like them. The humming of the fridge at your back is pushing in the same exact way. They push your shoulder playfully, and you suspect they’ve just asked a question. You lean away and think about how nice it would be to turn yourself inside out for a while. They quiet their tone a bit and don’t touch you again. You’re still on edge but glad you haven’t driven them away, so you make an effort to hear the words and make your own.
Imagine you’re in the process of waking up. Maybe, if it’s a sliding scale of wakefulness, you’re not quite halfway there yet. You can’t round it up to being actually awake. You have coffee somehow, a little too much creamer because it came out too fast. You’re in a recliner, a pillow in your lap, coaxing your body into the day. You’re almost OK but definitely not ready to interact, and someone’s comes up behind the chair and rattles it. “Stop it,” you say, but it’s early and you sound grumpy and kind of gravelly. They laugh and do it again. You just curl around your pillow, wishing you hadn’t already drank the coffee so you could admit defeat and go back to sleep.
Imagine you’re reading. Maybe it’s for class, and maybe it’s good, but your mind is in a precarious state of concentration. Every time the wind picks up outside, you have to read the sentence over again. Someone comes by and sits down next to you, against you. They’re doing homework too, or they say they are, and they shift every couple of seconds. It’s making a feedback loop in your brain. “The boat’s already in the water,”—shift—“The boat’s already in the water,”—shift—“The boat’s already in the water,”—shift— Wait, what was happening before this? You bounce your knee against their back. “I need to do my homework,” you say, and they reply, “I’m not talking.”
There’s nothing worse than intrusion except maybe continued intrusion after expressed dislike.
In saying “do not touch me” I’m not saying “I don’t like you anymore” or “I don’t trust you.” I could be. You could ask. Usually, I’ll say “not right now” or “I’m overwhelmed.”
It’s not a big deal to say “please stop” but when it’s met with “don’t be so sensitive” or a complete disregard, it feels like a trap. What do you want me to say? Usually, the problem is that I’m literally too sensitive — not my emotions, just my perceptions. There are a lot of reasons someone’s sensory perception might be off (stress, anxiety, Sensory Processing Disorder, synesthesia, etc.) and not a single one is helped by a patronizing tone.
If the response to my request is to ignore me and keep doing it — I don’t even know what to say to you. Why? It’s not a difficult request to either understand or carry out. It doesn’t harm you to abstain from touching me. In fact, this is the thing that will breed distrust in me. It makes me feel very seriously trapped. It sets my brain off on a loop of, “They won’t stop touching me. They’ll do whatever they want, and they won’t listen to me. They’d do anything to me.”
I know this is untrue, or at least unlikely. Somewhere in my head, if I were to stop and think about it logically, I would know it’s untrue. I have the reputation of a passive person, though. Normally, I don’t care where my friends want to go eat because the thing I care about is spending time with them and getting food — the wheres and hows often are unimportant to me. Most of the time, if my friends want to watch a movie, I’m happy to let them choose for the same reasons. But I would hope this means that when I actually do speak, I’m taken seriously. But when I say “please do not do this,” I sometimes find people still thinking of me as entirely a passive component in their lives. I normally don’t care what kind of music we play in the car, so I probably don’t care about anything else.
Not really.
Admittedly, most of my rep as a passive person comes from that order of priorities, but it builds on itself in a way too. From those people who ignore what I say when I do say it, I have the habit of falling into a pit of “nobody wants to hear what I have to say anyway.” And so I stop saying it, or anything, and sometimes I forget that I can say it. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to say it. I’m in a constant state of reminding myself that I can and that I should be listened to.
For those of you who consider yourselves more “active” than your friends, remember that you can ask. Sometimes, I’m even bad at answering questions, though I’m better than I was (I think). I fell into this weird, mute headspace a lot in high school only to get pulled out roughly by a sudden “where do you want to eat, Sawyer?” And then I seemed completely incapable of answering, still stuck in that loop of “nobody wants to hear what I have to say anyway.” I would always try to formulate in my mind what the correct answer was. Where did they want to eat? What was the answer that would make everyone happy? Because, of course, I might have a preference of restaurant, but if we got there and I enjoyed the food but somebody was mad at me over my choice, the whole night would be ruined.
This, of course, is not true, and it was a rather horrible thing to do to my friends. I can imagine now that they must have felt guilty for never letting me choose and only been trying to let me eat what I genuinely wanted for once, though the whole situation just created anxiety and wariness for everyone involved. (This cycle had very little to do with my friends, much to do with the “nobody wants to hear what I have to say anyway” mindset I was already in, and probably something to do with being a middle child.)
I’m still a quiet person, though I believe myself to be more relaxed in my skin than in the past. I speak when I have something that must be said, and I try to talk when I want to give my input. I ask, simply, that it be heard and respected.
Disclaimer: I love people, and I like touch. I’m human, and I crave closeness. This isn’t my way of declaring that you must have expressed, written consent to ruffle my hair or give me a high five or what have you. Much, much, much of the time that is fine. If I ever say “stop,” though, that means stop. It doesn’t mean stop forever, just for a little tiny bit of time.
