The Weight of Affection: When the Body Knows

Boop! It’s been a while, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on this.

It's March! It's been March for a while. So, let’s move on to my next aspect of love: Affection! (Ooh! Ah!)

If you've been following along, you know that I spent the first two months of the year opening myself up to love: kindness in January, acceptance in February. Logically, affection seemed like the natural next step for March. My language is touch, and I am highly sensitive to it. Plus, I LOVE sex. So this should have been easy, right? A simple way to convince myself that love, in at least some form, is real.

But what the f*ck is affection, anyway?

I think it’s ultimately an exchange of energy - giving and receiving - through physical touch. And the energy will reciprocate no matter what the quality of it is. Because, as much as we can soak up warmth through touch, we can just as easily pick up something toxic.

You can learn a lot through touch, because the body always knows. If you’re physically self-aware, you can tell when you’ve touched something you probably shouldn’t have. I know that I give off the energy of “don’t f*cking touch me” when some dude places an unwanted hand on me. Whether or not he picks up on it is another story. Some people are woefully oblivious.

But just like most humans, I’ve also always craved affection. I entered March with the intention of embracing affection in all its forms. For the first few days, I was alone in Nepal, hiking the Himalayas, connecting with nature and myself. And I wanted it that way. While hiking, I made it a point to physically connect with nature. I touched the trees, fondled the flowers, tickled the grass. Gathering energy through my fingertips, leaving a little bit of love in the form of gratitude as I went off. And yes, I probably looked insane. But trees have always been a pillar of strength for me. I take their affection very seriously.

Before I left Nepal, I met a dog. Stray dogs and cats are everywhere in Nepal and India, and they’re not really “strays”; they’re part of the community. This particular dog, a big white fluffy mix, belonged to a restaurant I went to. He came up to me, desperate for affection.

Now, I’ve said before that I don’t think dogs necessarily “love” - they’ve just learned how to interact with humans. What they do want is affection. I don’t know a single dog that doesn’t love a neck scratch. They beg for human hands to break through their fur, to soothe their skin, to relieve some unspoken tension. And we call it love.

Is it love? Or is that just our projection?

This dog seemed to be in heaven. So I kept going. He thanked me most courteously and carried on with his day.

Then I left Nepal and headed to Thailand to meet someone special. Someone new I met in India a month before. Someone I was excited to explore a connection with in paradise.

The first 24 hours were great. But then, on a nine-hour journey to Koh Tao, something changed. Not gradually. Not subtly. It was as if someone snapped their fingers and rewrote the entire story.

I was no longer just “not attracted to him.” I was repulsed by him. I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t sit next to him. My body flinched at his touch.

He didn’t do anything wrong - per se. Sure, quirks were emerging as we spent more time together. But this was beyond quirks. I had spent weeks convinced that this connection could lead to love. And then, suddenly, I wanted nothing to do with him.

I didn’t want to talk to him. Didn’t want him near me. And honestly, I couldn’t really explain to him or myself why that was. I just knew what my body was telling me in that moment – and it was screaming no pretty loudly.

Another man appeared VERY soon after, an Argentinian, charming and persistent, with whom I spent a very interesting "magical" night - or at least you could call it that on paper.

And then, my body got sick.

Fever, stomach pain, a complete shutdown. It wasn’t just emotional discomfort - my body was physically rejecting these men, despite how much they wanted to show me love.

It reminded me of something from The Body Keeps the Score:

“Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on the mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present."

Was I experiencing some deep-seated trauma response? My body was screaming, NO. STOP. GET OUT. I had no idea why—until a co-worker pointed it out.

“Maybe you were sick because you needed affection. But not from those guys. You needed it from someone else who you trusted.”

Maybe affection isn’t just about touch - it’s about the right touch. The safe touch. The kind of touch that doesn’t leave an imprint you have to spend years undoing. Maybe, for the first time, my body, my heart, and my nervous system were all in agreement.

And I’ve finally admitted to myself how much I miss a certain someone. How my body still longs for him, even months later. I just want to hold him in my arms. Laugh with him, sing with him, dance with him. Run my fingers through his hair, follow the tension in his body, release it, give our love so sweetly. I miss being affectionate with him - physically, emotionally. I miss the kind of person I was becoming when I was growing with him…you know, if it was even love at all. Normally, I move on very quickly. But maybe losing this one was too painful to process at my normal speed. And maybe this one will take more time.

I don’t know if I miss him or just the idea of him. Maybe I miss the version I thought understood me. And that’s the problem - I don’t really know who understands me, or who any of my people are right now. I just did a massive clean-up of everyone. I don’t want to give my love so freely anymore because it’s too exhausting, too painful, when it goes to people who can’t - or won’t - show up for me.

As another co-worker brilliantly put it, sometimes it’s okay for love to have conditions - especially when you have needs to be loved. But now, after cutting everyone off, isolating myself, going months without real affection, I’m left wondering: who are my “loved ones,” anyway?

Maybe this is another form of self-affection - learning to release the people who never actually held me the way I needed. Learning to trust myself more than anyone else. And holding myself the closest, especially right now.

I still don’t have the answer. But I’m learning. And right now, that feels like love, too.