I believe that it is vitally important to one’s own survival and happiness to not only know the strengths but the weaknesses we possess. It allows us to step around the annoying little details that make up our lives. It allows us to lean into what we can do and to modify it for the world that we live in. It allows us to live a life on our own terms, sometimes to protect ourselves, and sometimes simply to keep those we care about satisfied, if not completely in the dark about the things in our lives we don’t wish to share. It is strategy. Knowing about one’s own self is strategy.

I could fill multiple posts about the billions of things that I am not good at; it would probably be a paragraph for me to list the things I find are my strengths. As I have made clear in multiple posts there are simply things I can’t find within me. I can’t find something to hold up in a ray of sunshine and say ‘look’, here’s something that I like about myself. I can’t look at myself in the literal or the mental mirror and see in myself something great. And because I am not a person who truly understands or even accepts compliments; any potential help from people around me so that I can understand myself in a more healthy manner, is lost on me. We could chalk that up to trust, as I don’t truly trust anyone, or we could look back into the depths of my childhood and my pathological need to make sure no one ever touched me, including my own mother. Maybe it’s a genetic deformity inside of me, this inability to allow anyone to touch me physically or psychologically. Maybe it was a sign of the beginning of the manifestation of a series of mental illnesses that have followed me throughout my life.

But despite the fact that I face my strengths and weaknesses, with what I hope is an open mind, it doesn’t negate the fact that there are true losses in my life. I understand them, I see them, but I can’t bring myself to trust enough to open up enough to change those weaknesses. And my inability to stand touch, either physically or psychologically is a weakness.

Everyone from Darwin, to the now famous Romanian study of children deprived of touch, to even the religions in this world, defines touch as vital. My mother, who is not on her best days affectionate, loves to tell people that as an infant I hated being touched, so she simply didn’t. But there are many ways a human can touch another. Of course, most people immediately think of the importance of skin to skin contact, but that isn’t the full spectrum of the act.

The character of Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory television series, famously showed how certain people simply find human contact – the skin to skin variety – as scientifically proven to be dangerous to health of another human being. If you don’t like comedies, Criminal Minds had a Dr. Reid who felt the same. But they didn’t lack for other kinds of human contact. The contact of showing care and love through acts that don’t involve human skin. The touch that is delivered through an act of kindness, a smile, an acknowledgement, or a simple moment of attention paid to another. These touches are more psychologically imprinted than physically.

My aversion to touch, either physically or psychologically, was thrust into my face in the most unexpected of places. My daughter, who is ruthlessly smart, received another award. To put this in context, I have literally had to start a list of all of her major awards incase I have to remember them for her college applications. So going to another ceremony where she is presented an award is actually so normal in my life, that it is one of the few places where I don’t get anxiety. I know that school, that auditorium, the seating, the best vantage point, that it’s become routine. And anything routine can often minimize my anxiety. I liken it to going to my therapist. I have been to that office so many times, I might actually be able to drive it in my sleep.

But at this awards ceremony was an old friend. I should stop and tell you that I don’t have friends, and this woman is probably the reason that cemented that truth. She is not a bad person. She is not a person to pity, or look down upon – she is honestly a really nice person. But like many people, once she learned of my disease, I simply didn’t fit into her life. The depression I suffer put a damper on the things that she wanted to do. My inability to understand her need to be social to the point she has no openings on her calendar, to her need to be out front and in the center of everything she is involved in, contributed to our loss of friendship. She invited me to her recent wedding, so although I didn’t go, I imagine she thinks of me sometimes. Some would simply say that we drifted apart and I would be okay with that explanation if I didn’t also know that she consciously has no time for me despite the number of times I have reached out to her. This is a pattern with the people I meet, the people I have tried to befriend. Eventually, every time I make a friend, the fact that I don’t drink or smoke weed, to the fact that I am introvert with difficult diseases, to my inability to be front and center of life, makes me an undesirable companion. Oh, I am great if your life is falling apart and you need a place to cry and a shoulder to listen to you, but that seems to be the extent of my talent in keeping or even retaining friends.

At the ceremony with this old friend, who I used to think was a close friend, she acknowledged me with a hello, and simply moved on. I wish that I could chalk this up to her being busy with her family or excited to see friends, but the truth was, this has happened before. And it simply reinforced my own knowledge that friends aren’t to be in my repertoire but there is a deep and dark loneliness with the fact that I can’t have friends. I joke, or I causally mention the fact that I can’t have friends as a weakness, but often that is a protective measure to guard my own feelings. I joke that my own mother didn’t touch me as a child, but I look at my own children and am forced to ask why that is? Because, I can touch my children, both physically and psychologically, and always have been able to. They are my exception because I never wanted them to know the loneliness of not being touched.

It is true that I am a difficult person to be a friend to; I can’t be normal. It is true that human touch almost hurts my skin, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t feel the loneliness of it. It is true that I search for others to understand me, to love me as I am, to try and find ways to reach me; and all this busy world has to offer is either paid professionals or people who simply can’t connect with someone like me. I am trying not to cry as I write this sentence, but doesn’t everyone deserve someone in their lives that aren’t paid to pretend interest? Doesn’t even someone like me, someone who is difficult to like, deserve to be seen? To be touched?

I know that I have taught the people in my life, including said therapist, that I hate to be touched; but what I couldn’t anticipate is what that would do to me. I know that friends don’t stay, so it is safer for me to not even try and continue that bond, but does anyone know what that does? I know my own husband has been told and taught that I like hugs, but why is it that he can’t see that is only the first step in what I need? Why is it that people, in general and in my life, can’t understand the simple truth that the Romanian study proved? Humans need touch to live. As much as they need food, water, and air. Humans need touch. And if you can’t touch me physically, why did this world decide that I didn’t deserve any kind of touch, ever?

It’s a lonely world on the best of days. It’s excruciating when you have to look at your own life and realize that you are the reason that you are lonely. You are the cause of the breach that will never be filled. You are lonely and that’s both your strength and your biggest weakness.