To repel touch
An open letter
Touch - One of the five senses we get to devour as thriving individuals. A sense that lets us convey acts of care and love through the tenderness of skin and soul.
A comforting hand of courage on the shoulder;
Arms to collide in after a long day;
A formal handshake;
An accidental touch while walking together.
Small signals of your existence that make you feel alive and seen.
However, certain circumstances may cause you to repel it. When you are deprived of a loving touch for the longest time and finally, when you're touched, it is with lust in someone's eyes disguised as love, you repel it for the rest of the days in your life.
Every touch feels like a monster's hand possessing your body. And you hate yourself for falling into the trap of sexual coercion. You are haunted by the memory of the touches you endured under the pretext of love.
You hate yourself on every lonely night when your body trembles to search for a loving hand, yet fears that 'touch of love' the most, so you suffer yourself to sleep.
First, you hate your body, and then you hate yourself for hating your body.
You hate every time you flinch, step back or lose a breath over a gentle touch, even when you have needed it and craved it the most.
And you hate that you allowed yourself to love, and sometimes continue to love someone who has done nothing to deserve it.
But know that you love, because you are capable of it. It is an act of courage. Also, know that you offered vulnerability and not just your body. A rare, brave thing people have given up on. You surrendered your insecurities to intimacy. Your softness was manipulated against you when you tried to find a speckle of divinity in someone. It was they who couldn’t hold something so delicate yet powerful.
So, be soft with yourself, it's your superpower. Be the loving hand of touch you crave and let someone comfort you with their presence until you find your way back to trust - the touch.
as someone who is dealing with the aftermath of years of coercion, thank you for this. you have no idea how much I feel seen
When this is combined with years of deception. A hidden, separate life that you knew nothing about. Alcoholic, smoking, multiple casual partners, out of control.
The same wild elemental charismatic nature that attracted you that they are so proud of, is also their Achilles heel. Karma will do its work eventually.
You are left in the dust with those highest of self actualising memories of touch that were life changing to your core.
Now those same precious memories feel empty, lustful, crude, debased, imagined.
They didn't trust oxytocin, because it's just another ephemeral lust they craved and not a fundamental building block of the eternal you thought you both shared.
Heartbreaking.