Normally when I use the word demonstrative on my blog I use it very loosely, it is a word I happen to love and on the level that I have written about myself up until now the context in which I have I used it is always simply to mean that I am not an affectionate person. Having exposed some of the things I have about myself in the last couple of posts l’m feeling more comfortable writing of things that make me who I am, but they’re things that I haven’t spoken about on here in detail before.
Regardless of how bad it is, and it’s really fucking bad, it is refreshing to be able to finally say, yes, Adam and I have problems, we’re normal. Of course people know we do, but I get sick of the online facade. Sure we have a fantastic relationship but we are, hands down, going through a tough time right now. Why hide it, when it is affecting so many areas of my life?
A week or two ago I tweeted a line from one of my old poems “how can I feel so alone when you’re sitting right next to me”. This facet of my personality leaves me an excruciatingly lonely person at times. Wanting to reach out so incredibly badly, feeling frozen and not being able to do it.
It is no one’s fault. Neither of my parents grew up in demonstrative families and that wasn’t their fault either. My parents always told me they loved me but until I left home three months after turning nineteen I had never said it back.
In small ways as a teenager I was able to open up physically but back then the problems I had with affection I deemed for the most part normal adolescence stuff. And because of general teenage angst and insecurity I was able to fake being more affectionate than I really was. How I don’t know or remember, because I can’t fake it anymore as an adult, even craving every single person I meet to like me it is still more common for me to use snail mail [you should see my stationary collection] or my fingers on a key board to express affection, to reassure people I care.
I know it is difficult for people first getting to know me to understand how I can open my heart so freely in writing and then presumably close it off in person. I’m not a particularly closed off person, but if you don’t know me, let’s just say I [can] take a while to grow on people. I have friends who ask if it is okay before they hug me and some who just do it. I’ve had friends convinced they could break whatever it was holding me back and would try to force affection on me, mind you, in a caring way; but still not for me.
This runs a lot deeper for me than simply tensing up when someone hugs me. For years I couldn’t look people in the eye when I spoke to them, I know that to most it comes off as being rude, for me it was from feeling insecurity and fear.
Although it was something that always bothered me about myself, when it would come to my girlfriends, I always wanted to be able to be affectionate with them when we’d have sleep overs and give hugs without a back pat or loose arms but for the most part I couldn’t. I’d send them an affectionate note saying how much the weekend meant to me instead.
I think the best of example of just how bad it is would be how I used to treat my cat. In 1999, there was an incident that made me realize that I had an actual problem, I wasn’t just a cold bitch on the outside. Gus has always been a needy cat, she was the runt of the litter and she is spoiled rotten. But she never used to be. When Gus would jump in bed with me and try to snuggle with me I’d push her away, I’ve always been a non cuddle sleeper period, and mostly a non cuddle person in general, so having a cat putting her paws in my eyes and mouth was all fun and games during the day but when I was trying to sleep or read and she’d sit down right in the middle of whatever book I’d be reading, I never really thought anything of it; just pushing her off. I thought she’s a cat they’re supposed be independent why does she even want so much attention.
I was living with someone who also had a cat, this cat hated Gus, this cat wasn’t so much mean as she was just a total fucking terror on four legs. We never got along, myself and that cat, but she had a close relationship with her owner. It wasn’t until I saw how affectionate he was with his cat and how affectionate he was with Gus that I realized that I was depriving my cat of affection. I ignored it at first, it wasn’t as if, except for pushing her off the bed, that I was mean to her. It was years ago so I don’t remember exactly how it happened but Gus must have been trying to get some affection out of me and I wasn’t having it and this person basically yelled at me “Corinna, pet your fucking cat!”.
It didn’t happen overnight but just opening up to my bloody cat changed me, actually letting her jump up on me when I’m upset and comfort me, letting her sleep with me and not tossing her off the bed when she was ready for me to be up and walking all over me. How did I live without that before? With it being eleven years later, I’m glad I changed this behaviour towards her when I did. But then again how do I live with so little human to human contact? I have found being a good three years into my thirties now that it’s something that bothers me, a lot. And it is something that I have for a few months now been working on because I want to learn how to get over this before it’s too late, before people are gone from my life forever and I never got to give them one of those hugs that I’m starting to get better at giving, the ones where I will actually pull you in tight to me. And so far it has felt good every time I have been able to do it.
