Touchy

Once, when a friend of mine was an hour late for brunch, the first words out of her mouth were: "I'm so sorry! I know you are (insert Meyers-Briggs Personality type here.)" She couldn't see me because I was at the stove attempting to resuscitate a dried-out quiche, but I rolled my eyes so hard I was afraid they would stick.

"I saw that." She said from behind my back.

We laughed and sat down for a cup of coffee.

I've never put much stock in personality tests. At best, I think they confirm what most of us already know about ourselves. At worst, I think they become excuses for our bad behaviors. This particular friend and many of my graduate school friends, now that I think about it, love personality tests. I mean, will discuss their results for hours, talk about the ways to best manage different personality types, how our group is strongly skewed toward the "Woos." I usually interject some smartass comment about what do personality tests say about people who think personality tests are a load of bullshit?

"That you are strongly cognitive and evidence based. Also, you're kind of a bitch."

As I said, confirming what we already know about ourselves.

***

I'm really squicked out by strangers touching me. 

There are a lot of reasons for it, some having to do with being an obsessive-compulsive, some are leftover hang-ups from a Catholic upbringing, some are bad relationship remnants. Whatever the reason, I really, really, really dislike when strangers touch me. Handshakes are fine, but please don't fly into my Soviet Airspace otherwise.

However, when I'm among people I love and trust? All bets are off. There's no such thing as too much touching, sitting too closely on the couch, getting hugged too often. If I walk past one of my friends, I will pat them on the back. I will hug them when I show up to a party, when I leave, and probably twice in-between. I sleep best when I'm in bed with someone else and can reach out and put a hand on their arm to reassure myself that they're there. 

In the greatest karmic tragedy of my life, I've had breathing-while-sleeping issues since I was five and am apparently the worst possible bedtime companion. 

Back to the point, touch. My tendency to be innocently physically affectionate with friends has led to some, um, miscommunications. I've never been particularly good at navigating that weird close friendship vs relationship line, and I think a part of the confusion stems from the fact that I will practically sit on your lap on the couch. My personality-profile type friends tell me that this is because touch is my "love language" and has some profound insight into my metaphysical self and how I fall in love and where I've made mistakes in the past and better understanding my love language will enable me not to make those same mistakes in the future. 

Personally, I think it says less about my metaphysical self (I mean, honestly) and more about the fact that I was raised in a shame-based religious tradition with a bunch of repressed Irish Catholics. 

I suppose the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. 

***

I cannot say this with enough emphasis. Adult friendships are strange. 

It's entirely possible that I say this because at the moment, my friendships are hopelessly cocked up by the fact that many of my close friends live elsewhere. When I'm getting ready to go on a date, I can no longer run down the hall to borrow a straightening iron or run over to see Krista to have her talk me down off the oh-my-god-I'm-going-to-throw-up-all-over-this-guy's-shoes first date panic.

If you haven't had that feeling you should probably just quit reading this blog.

My friendships now are strange because they're based primarily on email, chat, or Facebook. There's a part of me that loves these methods of communcation. I've always been far more comfortable writing my ideas down before I say them aloud. It gives me a chance to consider my word usage, how the other person will respond, and my arguments. And, let's be honest. Anyone who has had the misfortune to allow me an opening to talk about Enceladus or sea turtles in a conversation can attest to the inarticulate mess that I become when things about which I am passionate come up. So the text-based friendships are a way for me to be a slightly more articulate mess about the subjects that make me jump-up-and-down-in-my-chair excited. 

While I love textual methods of communication, I worry that I'm losing my ability to carry on a conversation with people who don't know Kelly shorthand. I am so intrinsically awkward on the phone that I still horrify my friend Andy. I'm actually concerned that when I try to have a normal conversation with someone who doesn't already know me, and who hasn't already known me for years, I'm going to shut down completely. I'll just sit there and stare, silently or ask for a pen and paper and scratch out the conversation like I'm deaf/mute. As I've blogged about before, when I meet people for the first time I'm already trying hard not to shut down entirely. Now I'm conducting the majority of my relationships through the internet, this has to end well. 

Oh Christ. That is literally the saddest sentence I've ever written. 

Of course, the other downfall to friendships conducting at a distance is what I've already set you up to think about. 

Physical intimacy has dropped to almost nothing. 

And to be clear here, I am emphatically not talking about sex. That's a whole different blog entry that I will never post. What I'm talking about is, quite simply, the lack of physical closeness I have to people here in the North Country. I really didn't think that anyone could be more repressed than my aforementioned  Irish-Catholic family, but damn, Scandinavians have them beat. I don't hug my friends here. Partially, I think, because most of them are friends from work and hugging your coworkers is objectively weird. But even taking that into consideration, the people I know here are just not physically affectionate in the way I'm used to being physically affectionate.

I didn't realize how much this was impacting me until I went in and had a massage a few months ago. I have a love/hate relationship with massages. I mean, they feel wonderful, but I have the aforementioned squick factor when it comes to having someone I don't know touch me. In graduate school I solved this by what my shrink calls exposure therapy and just kept going to the same massage therapist until I got used to her. Up here, it came down to necessity. I had been sleeping oddly--really twisted up and pinching a number of nerves until my back was a mass of knotted, uncomfortable muscles--and I needed to do something. I mentioned my squickiness to the massage therapist and said that it usually makes me really ticklish, and if I started squirming it was unintentional, and I would say if something was painful or uncomfortable. 

About ten minutes into a fifty minute massage, something happened that has literally never happened to me before. 

I started sobbing. 

And by sobbing, I don't mean mean getting a little teary. I mean, full-on-I'm-watching-Atonement-after-having-not-slept-for-four-days sobbing. With those terrible, racking inhales and a runny nose and general gruesomeness. 

Have I mentioned I'm not one of those girls who looks cute when she cries? Do they even exist? I call patriarchal mythos.

To my massage therapist's credit, she didn't seem terribly phased. She paused, asked if I was all right, gave me a tissue and continued.

I'm not great at admitting when I was wrong, and it took me months to acknowledge that while I still don't buy into the meta-personality bullshit, my Meyers-Briggs loving friend may have a point. When we're not being loved and cared for in the ways we want--no, need--to be loved and cared for, it feels an awful lot like not being loved at all.