The Hinges are Sobbing, and So Are Your Nerve Endings: On Touch Starvation.
A personal confession about a battle I've never truly owned up to fighting.
I feel like all humans are made of doors, and, like a variant of binary, we decide whether to open or close them. As we get older, more doors are added to the soft, fleshy tissue of our heart, and it gets harder for us to let people in. Only, it’s not that simple. Firstly, we all grow at different rates. A seventeen-year-old could be more cynical than a ninety-year-old, depending on the cards they have been dealt in life. But one things always the same: the doors we leave open, and sometimes the ones we close too, were always meant to be walked through. If we don’t satisfy those desires, cobwebs of capillaries build in spaces where warmth should radiate, and we grow cold and dark. Sometimes, we leave a tiny bit of space between the door and the panel - surely against the rules of open and closed. However, the truth is we still desire a gentle hand to push it open, hear the hinges creak, and kneel down to fix the screech and sob of their rusting metal.
I’m the kind of person who goes all-or-nothing. For most people, my doors stay shut. I may tease at what’s behind them to keep people listening, but the general consensus on those who know me is that I’m not much more than a strange kid. Perhaps it’s because you need my insides to put the bits I show you in context, but I’m not willing to take that risk. It’s hard for me to let friends in, but for those that do, they know everything from my favourite books to my suicidal tendencies. They have the freedom to roam my insides like a broken palace for my languishing heart… except I can’t hear their footsteps. I can’t feel them brush their hand along the broken glass of my windows, or their blood drip onto my lifeless floors. I wish I could, somedays. Even if it hurts us, I want someone to walk through my door fearlessly.
If only that was something people admitted. Because the truth? There is a growing epidemic in our generation, an epidemic that started with a real virus, and then slowly dissolved into fake smiles, and shaking that person’s hand just long enough to be awkward. Too many of us are suffering from it to count, yet nobody would dare say it out loud, because it’s shameful. It would bring disgrace upon our Church, our parents, our friends, even the people we let through every door. if they haven’t also fought this ongoing battle, we assume they’ll judge us for not only wanting physical contact, craving it, needing it, on a level almost impossible for the average healthy human being to comprehend.
I’ve been in and out of depression since I was twelve and a half. But even through my good days, weeks, even months back in better days, my body was fighting a constant battle. When I leaned heavier into escapism, it spread to my mind, too. I’ve spent a good portion of my adolescence hoping and praying that someone would look at my doors instead of dismissing them, oiling the hinges, fixing the wood, and helping me decorate them, tell people just how badly I want to let them in. I, along with many people in my generation, are suffering from something known as touch starvation; an unfulfilled desire for human contact and physical connection.
Disclaimer: I’m not a certified psychologist. Just a kid with some thoughts and a big mouth. If you are in danger, or struggling mentally, seek help here.
Many people believe the crisis started in the pandemic. Not surprising, considering we were locked in our houses for well over a year and a half. And although their words do have truth to them, it is undeniable that life has returned to pre-pandemic standards. Intense loneliness was common in those years, and although still serious, it was something that the whole world could understand.
Therefore, now comes the question: it’s been five years, why are we still lying in this ditch?
Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, because this type of loneliness has many causes and consequences that must be explored, the most obvious of which being that it often starts in childhood. My father was, and still is, the least emotional person I know. He doesn’t do hugs, kisses or any of that nonsense, because he grew up believing emotions made you weak. When my godmother was diagnosed with (at the time) terminal brain cancer, he didn’t cry like the rest of us. He just looked at me while I let out a long string of curse words, telling me dryly not to let slip to my mother that he told me all the awful details. On the way to school, he told me that emotions clouded judgement, and distracted one from their work, after I mentioned being so distraught I completely botched my history test. That’s a mentality that I’ve unconsciously grown up with, because my whole life, I’ve been ridiculed for crying too much. By family, friends, classmates, teachers. I am a master at surpressing my emotions and hiding my tears because I’ve learnt that nobody wants to hear or see them.
It may well be the equivalent of being a social leper - someone with an ‘illness’, someone who people refuse to touch with a six foot pole, unless its to bury him six feet under. Nobody will engage with me in a meaningful conversation, unless its to join me in making ridiculously concerning jokes. I’m too weak to tell them that like that leper in the Bible, I need a Jesus to come and take my hand. I need a person to hold me, even though I have shown my weakness in its full glory. Except, needing that makes you weak in today’s world, just like crying in front of my father does.
Additionally, physical touch was something in my childhood that signified a lot more than it did for most households. In my family, it was the silent marker for forgiveness. As previously mentioned, the house I grew up in wasn’t an emotional house. It was the kind of house where my father could be shouting so loud the neighbours could hear one night, and bring home two crates of my favourite peaches the next. So, we learnt to show our love in other ways. After every argument, my mother would give me a hug, but sometimes, she would refuse to. Sometimes, she’d be so mad at me I wouldn’t get one. When I did, I felt like the world was okay again, and things weren’t as awful as they were literally two minutes ago. When I didn’t, guilt would gnaw at me, shame would eat me alive like mice on rotting wood, and I would feel worthless. As I’ve grown, my relationship with my mother has grown stronger and healthier. But I still see touch as the way others give me mercy, extending their arms out for forgiveness. Most of the time, I don’t know what I’ve done to the world this time, that my rib is breaking in half and picking up my heart like a pair of chopsticks, but I know that I need that redemption to breathe freely another day.
With my extended family, hugs were non-negotiable. Even as a kid, I’d be uncomfortable hugging quite a lot of my family, but I’d push through it for the sake of saving my parents’ face, as their golden child. It’s part of the reason I slowly became an introvert; something so deeply personal to me, and at that stage, with my relationship with my mother, being forcibly used so freely on people I was only supposed to love, made every place their lips hit and their arms squeezed tighter for hours afterwards.
This is only my personal experience, but it has led me to be both fearful and longing for touch. It put it on both a pedestal and a dreadful pit. There are many other childhood experiences that shape a similar or even more intense version of my emotions that are equally as overlooked. That brings me to my first point.
I’ve seen a medical bill (in the States, of course, healthcare here is free) where a mother was charged forty dollars for holding her baby after her C-Section. This has nothing to do with anything I’ve said, I know. However, it reminds me of the way that sometimes, the people we love put physical affection at a price. Perhaps it is only given after obedience or achievement, perhaps you’re forced to dole it out because your parents’ social status is more important than your comfort, perhaps it is with-held as punishment. Either way, there is no price to touch, to contact, not in early years, not ever. It is so normalised in society that parents make jokes about it, and the long-lasting mental and physical effects of ransoming a basic form of love are ignored. For instance, children who have recieved healthy touch are more likely to have a stronger immune system, and be less prone to cardiovascular disease. Additionally, touch is literally essential to a baby’s life, because without it, they will not release the hormones they need for healthy development.
Secondly, as we grow older and realise how deprived we are for physical contact, it is almost certainly followed about by a dose of shame. For those who grew up in homes where ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’ were forbidden words, the longing for touch will always seem to be lust. Often in simple hugs of opposite sexes, the man is seen as a pervert, the woman a slut. Especially in cultures where physical contact is less accepted, like the UK - which ranked lowest out of a test of five countries’ cultures to see how tolerant they were to physical touch - it is often seen as extremely strange to willingly go and seek contact like this. Additionally, touch starvation is almost a taboo topic in the Church, which I saw when researching not only for this essay, but out of desperation to see what I was supposed to do with myself and the desires I wished would leave me. It makes sense. We are all called to modesty, and a lack of intimacy before marriage. However, not all touch leads to lust, and not all of it exists to fill some sensual desire within us. The woman who had been bleeding for years, who was not only of the opposite sex to Jesus, but also considered unclean, touched the hem of His robe. And He noticed her, her secret longings, and He spoke kindly to her. Even though He already knew her reasonings for touching Him, He still made the effort to make her feel seen and loved in her desires. And honestly, I don’t believe this issue to be any different. Especially in forms of loneliness like this, which often go deeper than what meets the eye, it is imperative to show love and refrain from judgement. Judgement is what has been bringing them - us - down for so long, and honestly, one gesture of human kindness makes our year.
It is also worth noting that men experience this completely differently to women. Women are more likely to hold and hug their friends without seeming strange, while men are less drawn to such contact. Unmarried men or men in unstable marriages can be lonely in a form unfamiliar to those of the opposite sex, because it is simply not talked about often enough. Relationships with women are often all they are allowed to have to fulfill their physical needs, which can have negative impacts on all parties involved. While women are nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression, men often get less support for theirs, and deal with more shame because of traditional masculine stereotypes of emotional repression mistaken as strength. As brothers and sisters in Christ, or even as fellow human beings if you are a non-believer, we have a calling to help those in need, not only physically, but emotionally. You may be the difference between someone going home and to a bridge, or a drugstore, or a gun shop, tonight.
Lastly, this is barely the beginning. I believe what I’ve covered above is only a small part of a deeper epidemic of loneliness, in part due to the way friendships and relationships are framed in modern society. The sex work industry commodifies and weighs touch, putting a price tag on a deep human desire and what is supposed to be a pure expression of love. Cheating is becoming more and more common, leaving both parties ultimately broken. The internet gives us a million ways to be mean without people ever knowing, and even people who claim to be ‘real’, hold it simply as a gimmick for whoever will stay to be made a fool of next. I don’t talk to anyone from my school, because they taught me that lesson by hand.
It is no surprise we’re lonely, honestly. It is no surprise we’re touch starved and hurting and it is no surprise that nobody is addressing it, because anyone who does looks like either desperate or slutty. But it shouldn’t be this way. This is a mental illness, like any other kind, and it is one of the rare ones I haven’t seen people impersonate for clout. It hurts so deeply I often feel like someone is gnawing at my heart. I don’t who that someone is and how they got through all the doors, but they are slowly ripping my chest apart. Every day, I wish I could close my doors, never let anyone in so at least I could say I chose to be lonely.
But it isn’t right. My doors are flying off their hinges, but I still hold hope that one day, someone will see the way my irises get darker when I’m sad, and ask me, truly, if I need to be held. Maybe that someone will be Jesus. Maybe it’ll be some figure from the future cloaked in shadows. Maybe it’ll just be the people who dance on the line between my dreams and my delusions.
But for whoever’s arms are a little more empty without you, keep on going. I won’t say you’re not alone physically, because if you’re still here, you probably are. I won’t give you the cliched tips I see all over the internet, since those are mainly quick fixes that don’t deal with the gaping wound within you. To ease your pain, you have to fix the cause, not the symptoms. I would highly recommend pairing any quick relief with long-term solutions such as therapy or antidepressants. And remember, Jesus heals. Even as a Christian myself still suffering from this, even as one who has had this issue affect my life in sickening ways I cannot even begin to describe here, I know that Jesus will heal me. And He will heal you.
You do not have to continue to suffer. You may very well do so, for as long as it takes, but at the very least, you do not have to be ashamed of your fight, because you are brave for carrying on. You are strong, even if you don’t see it, because you fought to be alive and reading this today.
So lay your head down, and remember that you are loved, even if there are no phantom hands to trace the words down your spine.