Contact

Again, this was during a time when I had lost everything.

I touch no one, and no one touches me.

When I wake up each morning, my mother gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

My mother, who gave up her security for me, who set aside her whole life to make mine the best it can be, who worries about me and misses me and loves me more than her own life. Who braved the trials of loneliness to give me a beautiful place to grow up in.

But when she hugs me, I only feel it skin deep.

It doesn't go through and thaw me out. It doesn't penetrate my shell.

When I get to school, my friends gather round and embrace me goodmorning, and when I leave they hug me goodbye.

My friends, who peeled me off the floor when I was sick with grief, who make me laugh and take away my troubles, who always listen if I need someone.

But I don't feel their touch.

There's a veneer I put up, a bright shiny covering-

nice smile, bubbly laugh, pretty face,

carefree step and genuine embrace.

But it's only skin deep. At the end of the day, I strip it away, and there I am underneath.

When I look at myself, I see nothing. My love is a shadow, a memory, faded and fragile.

I feel no love from those who adore me. Do you feel my love? Do you feel my passion for life? My vitality, my intensity, my commitment? I have no pulse, nothing holds me here.

No one can touch me. No one can get inside of me, anymore. I used to be so open, so heart-on-my-sleeve, and now I'm buried beneath layers of armor.

I touch no one, and no one touches me, and I crave contact. I crave comfort. I crave connection.

To touch and be touched, to love and be loved, to listen and be heard, to need and be needed.

I miss loving someone more than I miss being loved.

I miss needing more than I miss being needed.

I miss myself more than I miss her.

Where have I gone? What's happened to me? Why can't I care for anything anymore? It's just gone, and I am empty. Never in my life have I been so disconnected. I've always been so THERE, so substantial, so intense, so present in my own life. And now as I look at myself, I see the passion fading from my heart, starved of an outlet, starved of a subject.

The one thing I can feel anything about is my lack of feeling.

I hate it. I need to love something, to need something. I need to feel again, but nothing will stir it in me.

Nothing warms me, nothing compells me, nothing lights me up more than a little flash.

I touch no one, and no one touches me.

And it makes me want to scream, to do something drastic, to run and run until something knocks me down, to feel ANYTHING, even pain, even horror, even fear, as long as it shocks me awake again. I am slipping, on a flatline, and I can't let myself go. I need electricity, a shock, a searing fire along every nerve, I need to CARE. Right now I am comatose, a lost cause, life support and little clear tubes, and fuzzy darkness and apathy.

Somebody wake me up, somebody show me what it's like to be desperate, to fall, to reach and risk and rejoice.

Somebody show me why I'm here.

Somebody save me from this hell,

For there is no suffering, there is no comfort, there is nothing at all,

And hell is feeling nothing.

I'm not awake, not really. Can you feel my gaze when I look at you?

Do you see it when I stand beside you in the mirror?

Do you hear my soul when I speak, or sing, or laugh?

When I reach for you, are my fingers even warm?

Am I alive at all, under this shell of living skin?

Someone show me, and make me feel it.

I touch no one and no one touches me.

Touch me.

Please touch me.