Touch

I've never been a particularly touchy-feely person.  I never liked hugs before I met you.  Even these days, I shy away from physical contact sometimes.  It's just not one of the things I'm a particularly big fan of.  And yet, I find myself craving touch.  Not wanting to be touched, but wanting to touch.

Somehow, I seem to have made a connection between knowing people and touching them.  As though the curve of their skull, the line of their jaw, the softness or roughness of their hands could explain them to me as a person.  I know it doesn't work that way.  I know as well as anyone else that the shape of your skull doesn't make you a criminal or not.  But I just can't stop thinking about knowing people through touch.

Maybe it's the idea that touch breeds intimacy (or is it the reverse?  I think it might be).  We only let people touch us who we are comfortable with, who generally know us.  So maybe the desire to touch really stems from the desire to know people.  Which makes sense, to be fair, since I do want to know people.  That's the whole point.

This hasn't been well-written or well-organized.  I have put a lot of thought into it but I have barely organized it at all.  The most vital thoughts in my mind are always the ones I find hardest to sort and put down eloquently.  All of the most important things are the ones that are hardest to write about...I learned that lesson well a year ago.  But I've said what I meant to say.  I don't know what else to add.  Sorry.