CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
Profile continued . . .

ARCHIVES!
I Don't Know How to Start Hugging

Wednesday, April 02, 2014

this entry brought to you by st. vincent, "digital witness"


I suppose this is ultimately a good thing, but I don't know when to initiate regular physical contact with a person. I guess I would rather default to being the person who assumes everyone else doesn't want to be touched. After all, I'm a guy. Everybody hates Grabby Guy, right? But there's got to be a happy median between never touching anyone, ever, and being Grabby Guy.

There's a lovely girl who I have worked with for years who, over the past six months, has taken to touching me upon seeing me. She will rub my shoulders, run her hand down my back. I actually rather like it. And I don't mean in a sexual way, I mean in a friendly way. It is comforting. I will be in my own little world listening to music, paying attention to nothing, and I'll feel a hand on my side and I'll think "Aw, I know who that is, she appreciates me!"

And there's another person that I get along with great that is super huggable, and I would love hugging her every goddamn time I see her, but I don't because how. Defaulting to not hugging is a good stance, but there are people that have been working around her less than me, one in particular who just started working two or three months ago, who gets regular hugs from her, so I know she is down to hug, and it makes me jealous. I want a hug! But I don't know how to initiate it. I don't know how to start the hugging process. Don't know that first step.

But the worst part is she has gone in for a hug from me before. The whole interaction took as long as one second, but if you were to have filmed it and played it back, all the body language was there like in an instructional video. She began to raise her arms and lean toward me, I hesitated, she disengaged the hug. She has not tried it sense. It might not even be a thing she's consciously aware of, it might be a case where she thinks "Oh, Chris doesn't like hugs" and doesn't think anything of it.

Instead I am off in the distance, scowling as people get hugs and I don't know how I'm supposed to initiate hugs, and don't even know how to act when offered a hug. I'm close friends with the first girl I ever hugged, and I was just telling her today, I assumed that our first hug was awkward because I had never hugged a girl before, but it has not changed. I've been actually told before, even recently, "I would hug you but I can tell you aren't a huggy person", and this came a day after someone asked me "Why don't you like being touched?" A friend of mine approached me on her last day of work just a year ago and said "I'm going to hug you now. Don't be weird about it. Just let me hug you." How does she know I'd be weird about it? What it is about me that just exudes don't hug? Oh my god I do love those things! I would hug all goddamn day! And I would never over hug. My hugs never overstay their welcome. I just need to hug several times and get used to the hugs before I get comfortable.

But trust me, regardless of who you are, male or female, if you hug someone in front of me I will want to hug you, I just have some sort of strange disability that does not allow my hugs to start.
----



with love from CRS @ 12:57 PM 

0 Comments:

Post a Comment