When you live in the area where you used to also work, it is inevitable that if you leave your home during the hours of 9 A.M. to 10 P.M., that you will run into people who you used to see on a regular basis. In some instances, they will be people with whom you had very amicable relationship, and in these cases you will engage in small talk.
Small talk invariably begins with the question How are you? Well, not good, actually. I do not want to say that, and at my feeble attempts to brush off the question, there will be a follow-up posed: Are you okay?
Are you okay? Is not a question, it’s a trick. When you are okay, it will make you feel as if things are not, as you had assumed just a second ago, okay. After all, someone is asking you this question while looking at you, something about you seems definitely not okay. You begin to question everything, your posture, your clothes, your face.
It was your face.
In the event that things are decidedly not okay in the first place, Are you okay? Will make you cry.
Are you okay? Can render a seemingly stable person suddenly hysterical. Your carefully affected stoicism will be perfectly intact until someone says Are you okay? Then you will weep openly in the street.
As far as tricks go, this is a good one.
Depending on whether the person you are speaking to is capable of human empathy, you will then be hugged.
I have friends, and I love those friends. I show my love with words and presents. Mostly presents. I am just not a touchy person. When forced, in social situations, I will turn the mandatory hug into a joke. There will be a poke to the ribs, a tickle, these actions will cut the hug short. When tickling is not appropriate, I will mentally check out. The hug will become my to-do list for the day, the sorting of laundry. If I can see any way around it, I will not touch. There may be a fist bump.
I once had really strong feelings for this Man, that has become something like a deep familial love on my (weirdo) part. Despite this love, beyond the grazing of fingers as money was exchanged for coffee and baked goods, we never touch. When we spend any time together and part ways, I give a short wave and turn from him. When he does something nice for me I throw gifts at him, tell him I have a cold and then run away. Sometimes I get other people to give those presents for me. I go to great lengths to stand apart from him and put my hands elsewhere. Now he seems to do the same. Arms across chest, hands in pockets. I have wondered if he too has the same mental maxim…
No touching.
I think it comes from my upbringing, the human trial of the Harlow Experiment. In this variation I had both wire and plush models for maternal figures. My mother, the grandiose narcissist, and my Grandmother, the loving martyr. I would hug my Grandmother, soft and warm. She would braid my hair, dress me and tuck me in. I was her baby. At times, I would turn to my mother for affection, clinging to her steel frame, finding instead a cold violence.
Silly monkey.
I learned to only trust one person for safety and love. Grammy.
At first I was tiny in her arms. Years later she would rush to me and I would crouch down into a head-kiss-hug combination. Her head well below my shoulders. Over time, I would have to first carefully lift her from her recliner, and then steady her shrinking body in my arms. The last time I did this was two days before the hospital.
When your only source of comfort, the only person you ever readily and happily let touch you is dying, you find yourself confused and falling for Are you okay? like a bear for the honey trap. Crying in the street you wonder what happened to your hardened exterior. You were going to go home, undress, sob in the shower for five minutes, change your clothes, eat a sandwich and go back to stay with her. And then someone said Are you okay?
That kindhearted… bastard.
What follows is the battle of Empathy vs. Introversion… Empathy is insistent in its Awww, come here, let me hold you. Introversion, a passive Oh… please no, your touch… it burns with a caring I can’t reciprocate, physically. I sometimes get the feeling that if I were to refuse a hug I would hurt those offering. And so it seems empathy wins on both fronts.
Those few weeks I was pressed to bosoms and stroked, petted, soothed, taken into arms and rocked back and forth. Somehow I was hoping to comfort the comforters by being comforted.
And I tried so hard to be comforted, but long after the hugging stopped and the hugger moved on, I cried. In retrospect I should have said No, don’t. You can’t stop what you are about to start. But maybe that would just present people with a challenge. Like when I tell people I’m a vegetarian and they say that I must try their amazing beef wellington. As with your miraculous embrace, I don’t think my body could handle it.
Still, sometimes, late at night, staring at my Grandmother as she breathed softly, too scared to disturb her, I had thought of what might happen if I ran into the Man and he said Are you okay? I wondered if his might be the touch that felt safe like hers.
And then one night she was gone.
I stood in her room, I kissed her cold cheek, I put my arms around her frail form.
I don’t leave my home from the hours of 9 A.M. to 10 P.M.
