"What was that promise that you made?"

As one of my friends noted, I will probably feel better about things when I am not brittle and tired. Cooking a holiday dinner followed by three days of performance is a lot for anyone to manage and still maintain sanity. I failed at sanity and had a full blown panic attack on Saturday. I took my emergency meds and spend Sunday completely sober (which is saying something given the availability of booze).

The issue involved touch. I have said it before, touch is a foreign language to me. I was not raised with it and I feel like such a amateur when I am with people who use touch to communicate. I have tried to explain and ask for help, but most people seem to just get frustrated with me. I have had more than one partner simply dismiss my inexperience and tell me that they will get their touch needs met elsewhere. It is one place where being non-monogamous has been a detriment, not an advantage. A partner is much less motivated to help me through my inexperience. They can find someone who is more comfortable. This ends up feeling like rejection and has made me even more anxious about touching and being touched.

I have what I term a "Don't Touch Me" field. I am better now than I was a number of years ago. I used to flinch when people touched me. Now I can usually keep myself neutral with people I don't know well and I react positively to people I am comfortable with. It isn't that I don't like to be touched, I just don't know how to respond appropriately. I feel like I spend most of my time feeling touch starved because I'd rather that then be that person who clings and makes people uncomfortable.

I can usually navigate platonic touch. The rules are mostly clear and if I am a bit stand-offish, well that's just Rachel. Romantic, intimate, or flirtatious touch stymies me. I don't understand the rules. If people touch me, I figure that they expect to be touched in return. That's where the problem is. I get so anxious about touching them incorrectly that I just withdraw into myself.

I recently mentioned the new fellow I met at fair. He was a lot of fun to flirt with, but I don't think I touched him. I was so hurt and frustrated when a fellow cast mate crawled into his lap, like it was no big deal. I could have cried, because the cast mate isn't even interested in them. It was just touch and a lap. I hate sitting on people's laps. I am so afraid that I will be too heavy that I avoid it.

I have no idea what this poor guy thinks. I was flirting on him hard, but I never closed the deal. I didn't touch him. I didn't know how. When my friend curled up on his lap, I gave up and backed off for the rest of the day. The guy doesn't do fair on Sundays, so I won't be able to talk to him until this Saturday. (I tried stalking him online, but I had no luck finding him.)

I like social dancing, because the rules are clear. I like BDSM because, again, there are rules and negotiation is part of the expected interaction. But the expectation that I should touch a person I am interested in is one of the most frightening things in my world. It can be panic inducing. When my resources are low or I am feeling brittle, the expectation of touch will shut me down. It's also when I need touch the most.

It isn't the first time that touch has been an issue. I have been told many times that I do touch wrong. I don't want to even bother anymore. I feel broken and undesirable. 

That's how I felt Sunday and still feel now. I know that this touch thing is something I should work on. However, after I was told that I was just not good at touch and that my partner felt that they were  better off getting it somewhere else, I gave up. I know that person was an asshole, but I can still remember the words they said and how they said them. I still feel the rejection in my heart. I shared a part of me that was tender. Their actions left me bruised and bleeding. I don't want to let anyone else do the same to me again. 

On Saturday, I got overwhelmed, I felt the hurt rising and I panicked. I shut down. I didn't get hurt, but I upset my partner and I felt like I disappointed them. I ended up taking one of my anxiety pills, which always feels like failure to me. However spending a night curled up into a ball and crying didn't seem like a fun evening either.

I don't have a positive note to end on. I have a song, though. The Doors just released The Soft Parade 50th Anniversary, so I have a  song for this entry, even if it is derivative and mostly inaccurate.

Today's Song - Touch Me by The Doors