Let’s talk about skin hunger

First, a truth: January was intense. 

If you’re a regular reader, you already know the year kicked off with a health scare. And while it had a happy ending, leaving me breathlessly grateful for so much in my life, it also revealed a need. One I thought I had under control.

See, I’ve been single for about two years now. And there’s not one day I have regretted that decision. It was the right choice, and I’m grateful for it. But I also know that, as most of us do, I need positive physical touch in my life.

Since I wasn’t particularly interested in relationships or casual encounters these last couple years, I found other ways to experience positive contact with other people. I came back to my old love for dancing. I booked weekly massages. I reveled in my physiotherapy. I even did the non-touch things experts say to do. Stretches and crunches and things like that. And, of course, I spent plenty of time (to Luna’s chagrin) pressing my face into the dog.

In other words, I made sure I wasn’t living in a complete wasteland of touchlessness. 

And yet.

And yet.

Suddenly, when the health scare knocked the wind out of me, my body’s need rose up to make itself known. 

I wanted to be held.

Not just touched. Not just danced with. Not just snuggling a little dog. I wanted someone to hold me and tell me it was going to be okay. To lace their fingers in mine and just sit with me there. To lay on the couch with a movie on, playing with my hair. To bear a sort of physical witness to my aliveness.

Experts call it skin hunger, and it’s been a pandemic within a pandemic. A lack of touch that leaves us with a growing sense of need. Depressed, flat, or breathlessly emotional. Hungry, really. But not for food. There’s a reason doctors recommend babies who are struggling be held against their parents’ chests.

Now, in the aftermath of my fear and my gratitude, I was the baby. I was the need. 

And so, what came next? What were my options? How does one go about finding that kind of touch? Obviously, I had my massages. I could dance more often, perhaps even take up a new form of dancing to get myself out even more. In the States, I remember hearing about cuddle therapy (literally you hire a professional cuddler, which is a genius business idea), so I started exploring whether that was a possibility. And then there was the most obvious answer: to ask someone I trusted.

Of course, with my closest friends living very far away and many of my local friends partnered, that’s easier said than done. So I thought and researched and waited.

But even after my health scare was over, the need didn’t go away, didn’t recede to its normal levels. In fact, a few days after the good news, I was knocked flat by more bad news (more on that another time). And the need doubled and tripled in on itself – a fever pitch – until I was forced to gather up the courage to ask a new friend:

Will you come over and just hold me?

That first ask resulted in an (extremely polite) no. (Which is fine; we’re all about consent ’round these parts. And hi friend, if you are reading: I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable at all.)

And so I still exist in this jittery deficit. Nearly crying when people hug me. Trying to figure out the safest, best way to meet this sudden, desperate need without sacrificing my safety or my peace.

*

It feels incredibly vulnerable to share all this with you.

But here’s another truth: when I’ve whispered my secret need to friends across the world, they’ve gasped and cried with the recognition. “Me too,” they’ve whispered back, and I can hear the longing in their voices. That catch in their throats. The truth behind the words.

If so many of my friends are reacting that way, perhaps that’s you too. Perhaps you’re feeling that deficit, left by covid or moving to a new place or any number of other things. And so I share a story without an ending, without a clear way forward just yet.

I haven’t solved my skin hunger. Yet. But I’m here to say I see you.

I see you. I am you. And if I was there, I’d wrap you in the biggest bear hug and I’d hold on for dear life and I’d tell you: It’s going to be okay.