Acknowledging One of the Many Thorns in My Heart (Pt.2)
I’m touch-starved. Thoroughly touch-starved. It is affecting my mental, physical and emotional health in ways I can’t describe. Hence, this post today is about something that has been bothering me day in and day out since the past few months.
You must have seen how surrounded by the troubles of daily life and in dearth of the happy hormones that serve as water to parched morales — oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin — some people just keep withering away, suffering alone in silence, to a point where words alone cannot bring them back. Some have to fight their demons all by themselves and still maintain a straight face at work. All without a loving caress or a cheeky little slap on their back, and with just empty lip-service from others who couldn’t be bothered any less.
People are usually of the opinion that human beings are ‘social animals’. Every middle school essay, at least here in India, begins with that sentence. And yet, it is somehow forgotten that being ‘social’ is not just limited to verbal and non-verbal communication. Physical touch is also an equally important part of any social communication.
Look at the animal world. Our closest cousins — the apes, have a variety of non-sexual forms of physical touch that they use to create, maintain and strengthen bonds within the community. From grooming to playfighting to hugging, every ape species has contact-based elements in common that ensure their communities are functioning healthily. And why just apes? Even elephants, one of the brainiest land mammals, have full-fledged socialising activities that involve ample use of their trunks. Then why, among apparently the most intelligent creature on this earth — the Homo sapiens, is physical touch more often than not perceived as unimportant, or even worse, taboo? The answer, in my opinion, dear readers, has got more to do with complicated psyches than any real hiccups.
Over the centuries and especially in the present, mishaps after mishaps due to lapses in human conscience have conditioned people to believe that physical touch can be misconstrued at the drop of a hat. Need a hug from your male friend? You’re soliciting sexual advances. Want your female colleague to hold you during a particularly stormy situation? You might be perceived as a needy lesbian. Telling your partner clearly that you only want to cuddle? Not happening without the promise of a ‘happy ending’. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Yet, all these scenarios are the sad reality of today for men and women alike.
Surprisingly, not only does this ‘touch problem’ exist between the opposite genders but also within the same gender! Something as simple as hand-holding has been romanticised (and sexualised) so much that one can seldom get those contexts out of their brain and not be apprehensive of initiating or reciprocating.
This confusion leads, or may lead, to so many complications that it becomes near-impossible to find safe spaces where perfectly normal and valid needs can be satisfactorily indulged in. Sure, there are businesses being made out of this problem (you must have heard of professional cuddlers), but of what use are these to a regular person who just needs a ten-minute long hug from their best friend after a rough day?
Thus, for an individual who is soothed most by any form of non-sexual intimacy such as hugs, cuddles, or even something as simple as pats on the head, it becomes impossible to ever get their mental health regulated even as they go through crisis. Simply because they don’t have anyone sane enough to ask for those pats from. Not even their own parents sometimes, because it is parents from particular generations who unsurprisingly hold the most prejudices against showing any form of affection to their ‘grown’ children. What a shame.
In any case, if there is one thing that is to be remembered, it is this: touch is connection. The purest, truest, most direct, and scientifically the first and most comforting form of connection that one living being can have with another. Plants need it, porpoises need it, and human beings clearly need it most! Let us unlearn all the nonsense that has been passed on to us as generational trauma and reconfigure our belief systems in order to create a true support system for ourselves and our loved ones. All so that one day, nobody will need to stand with a ‘Free Hugs’ sign because they will be busy being smothered by hugs themselves.
Laugh together, cry together, play together. Smack someone on their back, keep someone close to your heartbeat, pull someone’s cheeks, breathe in each other’s presence. Console that friend with caresses. Give your father a shoulder massage. Greet your favourite teacher with a high-five. Embrace yourself everyday. Remind your skin that you are alive. Touch, hold, live.
