To Be Touchable

I usually only post one thing in a day, if I post at all, but today I am full of thoughts. I can't stop thinking, thus the second post. Things I have been hiding from and not wanting to deal with are slowly surfacing. My counselor has said that is what happens when you open yourself up to dealing with abuse. I am either closed off to it, or completely open.

I hate being completely open. It usually doesn't last that long, because it gets too hard and I close up again. I feel like I am too much. When people look at me I fear that they are seeing the word "deathtrap" printed in harsh letters all over my face and up and down my arms. This feeling extends even to the point that I ask people permission to open up to them and ask for help. I feel like I need permission to make their lives a living hell. Why should others have to experience what I have experienced? I am making them live through it by them having to answer my questions and listen to me yammer on about myself day in and day out.

I hate thinking that I am a whiner. That's what I feel I am when I continually talk about what happened to me and the feelings I feel because of it. Shouldn't I be over it? Shouldn't I be okay already? Maybe I would be if I wouldn't stop closing the floodgates all of the time. This feeling fills my heart so much and I feel so guilty for "whining" all the time to my friends that I close up, and nothing is worked out.

The easiest way to get past things is dealing with them right? Even if it takes up a lot of your time, and other's time? Well that is what I'm told. So I am going to start writing. I will write out these deep feelings that I have and work through them. I have to admit things. I have to get it out, otherwise they become "words" that haunt me. I'm tired of being haunted.

One must be warned, though, that when working through things I run out of strength very quickly. The more I post, write, or talk about things the more I want to cut. The more I want to take scissors or a box cutter and slice it across my skin for relief. Then I wait for the moment that blood starts to appear and a thin red line appears on my skin. Soon the blood stops and the thin red line stays. A deep breath escapes from my mouth and the process towards cutting starts all over again.

But I can't cut. It is like a drug and it slows the process more.

There is still one other complication with telling truths about myself. I do it not only to get through my problems, but also as a way to prove to people that I am the words I think I am. The more I let someone know about myself, the more I expect them to cringe and me and tell me its too much. This is something that I want in a way, because if they cringed and walked away from me, it would give me permission. Permission to cut. This alone is a truth about myself that I needed to share.

So, to start out the process I will write something here that I have been struggling with. Part of me, again, is waiting for someone to read it and agree with the pain I am feeling and that I deserve it, but the other part is hoping that getting these thoughts out will take me down the road to healing. Here goes...

My family was not much much for physical intimacy. Well, except for the abuse from my father. That was all he wanted, but I wouldn't call it intimacy. My big sister was fiery and angry most of the time. My father kept us both on our toes, and she wouldn't take it like I did. She fought back openly.

Up to this day, I've probably only hugged her five times in my life. Most of them jokes. That's the closest I have ever gotten to my sister. When you tell her you love her, she doesn't respond. She has never said those words to me, but once. She has never written those words to me. All I have is her protecting me as evidence. And most of the time, that is enough.

My mother is an hard person to define. She hugs me and tells me she loves me. The next moment she is calling me my father's name and wanting money. She never read to me as a child. Sometimes she would brush my hair and hum a little song she would make up, but that is about it. It was never really comfortable to be close to her in that way. I never really cuddled up next to her on the couch or fallen asleep on her. She would just get uncomfortable or upset.

I remember sneaking into my father's room after my parents got divorced to look through our family pictures that he had up in closet. In them I found a letter from my mother. She wrote how they were never intimate. I cringed at the words and shoved everything back in the box.

My extended family and grandparents are the same way, even on my mother's side. It has always been awkward with each of them. I never sat on my grandparents lap or anything. "Touch" was just... weird for all of us. It was uncomfortable.

This leaves me with so many questions. How many people knew about what was happening to me? Did my mother know and that was why she had a hard time talking to me or touching me? Did it happen to my sister too and that is why she is so afraid of touch or exclamations of love? Did even my grandparents know, and because they knew it was gross to touch me?


When a boy touches me all I can feel are hands and arms that want me. Sometimes this is a good thing. Other times, these hands and his eyes and face scare me. Even in the most innocent of touches or when we are just cuddling during a movie I can feel it in his hands or see it in his eyes. It is always there, that he wants me. I can't run from it. I can't make it stop. So I don't want him to touch me. It makes me angry that a man wants me like that. Makes me feel gross or like I should just lay down flat and let him take what he wants because I am worth no more than that. All these colliding feelings cause me to slide away and never want him to touch me.

So what does it mean to be held? What does it mean to be held and not "wanted"? And what does it feel like to be held and "wanted" and have that be okay? I am left feeling like I have never been just simply held and comforted because there is something wrong with me. I am scared that if someone holds me or if I lay my head in their lap while they play with my hair that they will touch something that makes them cringe back. If they run their hands through my hair will they stumble through a knot in my hair and remember that I am used? If they run their hand down my arm or back will they only think of how my own father touched me? If I lay on them will they that mean that they want me and I have to give in? What does it mean to be held like my mom should have?

Am I touchable? Am I holdable? What does it mean to just be held? NOT WANTED. Just held?

Now that I wrote this all out, I feel gross about it. I feel like I am gross to wonder about it. But I am going to post it anyways. That is how this works right? Just be honest, right? Well.... Okay.