untouchable

I’m not sure when I realised touch was so loaded.

I knew it was important from a young age—that’s what all the movies told me. Touch meant interest. Touch meant desire. Touch meant commitment.

It’s taken time to untangle these synonyms.

But when touch moved from an abstract act on a screen to something tangible, I couldn’t be sure of that mess of meanings.

High school was a lot. I head-divided first into mental illness and then quickly realised I was not straight at a “girls” Catholic school. I was trying to survive, and touch played a key in that. Too much would mean an untimely (social) end.

There’s always parts I’ve hidden of myself in my relationships. Even in primary school, I would reduce myself to easily digestible parts in order to keep friendships. Because people without friends didn’t survive.

The first people to know anything akin to the whole of me came into my life after I realised I was aromantic and demisexual. I was almost sixteen, and finally had other queer people in my social circle.

For a while it was good. I was seeing a psychologist, I was attempting to be open and honest about myself and my needs. I got affection—nothing major, just regular hugs—but it meant so much. But then my friendliness and trust got misinterpreted as something “more” and sex turned from an abstract but somewhat understood idea to one on the other side of thick, frosted glass. In/visible. Un/touchable.

My family is small and fractured. I have extended relations that I’m effectively estranged from. My brother is much older than me, and none of these factors meant I grew up with a lot of touching.

So I finally had true friends and I had touch and I had something like an authentic sense of self. Then another meaning got in the way.

Romance.

Suddenly my social group dissolved into a pile of crushes and lust. They knew I was aro, but it mostly went unacknowledged. Romantic prospects were given priority and physical affection was seen as an indication of flirting. How could I risk it, the infamous betrayal of leading someone on? Regardless of the fact that I have no clue when someone is flirting with me or vice versa, it simply wasn’t an option.

Things were torn asunder again when I came out as non-binary, and I started university with far fewer friends than I had hoped for.

The past few years have been an uphill battle. Trying to process the fact that my once best friend tossed me and our relationship—the most important one in my life—so easily aside for a girlfriend. Attempting to feel like I’m worth having my identities not only recognised, but actively understood and supported in my relationships. Trying to gather up any remaining scraps of self esteem after years of hurt and discourse, all the while adjusting to a new life of independence and long stretches of solitude.

I’ve had a group of internet friends for a lot of my life and they make things so much better. They’re wonderful and I love them all to pieces. They’ve been here through so many iterations of myself.

But still, there is that human need that lives under my skin that words on a screen simply cannot fix.

I’m lonely, and I’m touch-starved, and I’ve considered hiring a professional cuddler more times than I can count. I haven’t, yet—both because of the immense amounts of shame and the inescapable reasoning that if I can’t trust friends to touch me, how could I trust a stranger?

It’s hard, asking for what I what, what I need. Another entry in my how-to-be-human manual that got lost in the mail. The fear of rejection haunts me like an ever-present ghost and I learned a long time ago that I should just be satisfied with what I’m given. Asking too much pushes people away. Leading people on is as good as treason.

I’m lonely. I’m trying. I’m aromantic. I’m touch-starved. It feels like there’s a dozen things stopping me from something so basically human. I never want to make people uncomfortable. My fat, trans body—always too big and strange for things to be simple. My overthinking and anxiety and trauma put hurdle after hurdle in my way. I’m unable to offer romantic love or sex but still, so desperately, need physical intimacy. And yet it remains out of reach.

I’m a gordian knot of contradictions, forever waiting for a sword to cut me clean through.