Missing touch

I had the privilege to have an impromptu sleepover with my little love yesterday. I will confess that sleepovers with her entail us snuggling in bed as closely as humanly possible and either worrying I may squish her or sleeping soundly. Last night, I slept soundly. I needed that. I have not been sleeping well and while I have tried taking steps to correcting it with pills and gummies to help me relax, I think I just need to adjust and embrace the benefits of being awake at night when its most quiet and when my thoughts get to take shape. Today I woke up thinking about touch and how important it is to me and how much I miss it. I have realized in so much of my reflection, how much I took for granted the most important things to me. That I took for granted that without true reciprocity and true desire to maintain connection that the things I had access to would not remain forever without giving back into it. I could beat myself up all day about this but that isn’t useful. I am learning that shaming myself all the time keeps me stuck, lessoning the shame is allowing me to move forward.

I spent so much of my life not really understanding how sensual, intimate, and necessary touch is. I had adapted a lifestyle that didn’t allow much in the way of touch. It was an end to a means. Never was it about the actual potential to create intimacy between me and another person. I suppose it was also that I never stopped long enough to slow down, to pace myself in a way that would allow for natural connection to flow between myself and another person and when pacing myself was necessary and I learned how incredibly intimate pacing yourself with another person could be, I was eager and wanted it. Intimacy created between people who love each other was always meant to be beautiful. Anyone who believes that intimacy is reduced to simple acts of sex hasn’t had true intimacy. We can be intimate in so many more fulfilling ways and that is what I am missing today. I have recently wondered if me verbalizing these feelings is helpful or harmful. I feel as if it takes me down paths that I am trying to avoid but as I shared in my therapy session yesterday, I can’t avoid these feelings. Everything I am feeling and learning at this time is helping and it will help me in the future whatever path I choose to take.

I have learned a lot about my needs in recent months and that has allowed me access to a higher expectation of myself and the people I surround myself with. I spent so much of my life desiring to be seen, known, and loved but never felt that my needs were as important as someone else who had more challenging things going on in their life or who needed more support than I did. I suppressed my needs, and I am no longer willing to do that. Perhaps that is a revelation that my standards for myself and relationship are more fine-tuned than they ever were or that I have learned that there can be room for my needs and those of the ones that I love and that everyone can feel good as long as I remain in the awareness of myself and not project my shit on them. Maybe this is an area that needs further exploration and so I will continue to sort this.

The beginning of where I am right now began in December of this past year. The end of 2020 didn’t quite go as planned and as I reflect back on that time, I am not sure what it is I had planned. If I am being honest with myself, it was that I would do anything to maintain any level of comfort or normalcy at the expense of those I loved. That was who I was at that time. I made a commitment at the beginning of 2021 that I would not go another year in the same chaos that I allowed to happen for all of 2020 and I stuck to it. I made significant moves towards creating independence for myself for working on myself in a way that I never had and while the outcome, if we are measuring outcome on who’s left standing next to you when all is said and done is not what I had expected it to be, I am standing much taller than I was. I have chosen to never again allow myself to treat another human being less than they deserve to ensure that my comfort is secured. I never wanted to be that person and the more and more I unpack my trauma and the hold that it has had on me for so long, I realize that I never needed to maintain that narrative for so long. My wounding did not give me permission to hurt anyone else, ever.

I am deeply sorry for the pain that I caused, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to continue to work on myself. To be able to sit in my truth and to correct those dark parts of myself. I will never be complacent again. I will never again accept such poor behavior from myself, I always have control over how I treat those I love no matter what narrative I wanted to put out there before.

I know that my thoughts began with the topic of touch and intimacy, but it is important to acknowledge this because this is why I am missing these things. I am missing these things because I made choices that completely destroyed a connection that I absolutely wanted. I didn’t realize how much I wanted it but it was because of how healthy and pure it was, and it was based on mutual love and understanding. Maybe that was it, the purity and health of it. Why would I not fuck it up? But we will leave that for another day. The lesson I have learned is that I know the kind of touch and affection that I need and after so much of my life not having it, I can’t go back to settling for a quick fix, which is why I haven’t. My life has much more meaning than I ever really realized. Intimacy is a building block to a healthy relationship, and I won’t settle for anything else. The whole package is required, and I will not compromise my standards for anyone or anything. I have experienced something that many have not had the opportunity to. When you are able to transcend all of your experiences and find that profound and life changing thing that forces you to be better, try harder, and do everything you can to fix the broken parts of yourself, it cannot ever be replaced.

This blog may evolve over time but right now I won’t deny my feeling, or my experience. I heard something the other day that went a little something like this, unprocessed emotions are not benign, they metastasize if not processed and I thought, yes! I thought how come it took losing everything to find out what was important to me and what my process was? I suppose that answer is revealing itself, but know this, I will never undervalue myself, my process, my emotions or those of my friends and partners ever again.