A Taboo Topic (for me anyway)

I was contemplating the mystery that is Tanika these past two days concerning a particular area of my life. And I realized a few (good/bad) things about myself. (Besides the things that are glaringly obvious)

I live with my good friends the Raceks and they have 3 cool kids Dawson, Katie, and B. Will. I also work with children at the Mathnasium and also as a private tutor. Needless to say I spend about 90% of my time with children. Besides being incredibly interesting and fun to be around children ,in general, are physically affectionate. And they definately don't understand physical boundaries or personal space.

For those of you who know me this is a particularly sensitive subject because I'm not a touchy, feely person. There are reasons for this, which I will discuss here briefly. First, when I was younger I had my personal space physically violated by someone else and I had no control over this, which both angered me, frustrated me, and ultimately left me not wanting a lot of personal contact. Then in some of my earlier attempts to physically reach out to people (of the opposite sex) I again had a violation of that space. As I got older I realized that I really needed to trust a person to be physically close to them (regardless of their sex). But alas trust is an area of life that doesn't come easy to me. Then when I would try to explain myself to people some would think I was joking and overstep boundaries I had, which basically traumatized me.

But children don't understand all that, nor do I expect them to. I also feel that it is important for children to be able to express themselves emotionally since it is very difficult for them to do it verbally. So over the course of these past few months I've been getting a lot of hugs, kisses, and general affection , from children and sometimes adults, which at first seemed overwhelming, but now I'm getting used to and I also realized that in some cases I actually enjoy. Yes, there I said it. I enjoy SOME hugs. I realized that kids just like adults have reasons for expressing affection. When they like someonesometimes they want to give you a hug, or a kiss on the cheek. Maybe even play with your hair. But sometimes they want to manipulate you emotionally so they can get something they want. I found this out mostly at the mathnasium with older children. They would give me hugs and wanna hang all over me (which I don't let them do. Mathnasium policy) then turn around and say "Hey can I get a dollar?"

I guess ultimately I feel uncomfortable with physical affection from people who either clearly are self motivated and don't have my best interests at heart, are trying manipulate me, or have unclear motives for why they are being that way (or I just don't trust them). But I realized that when a person just genuinely likes me and wants to physically express it then I actually want to return that affection. Now don't get me wrong I still need time to get used to it, but before everyone was just lumped together in my mind and I just didn't want anyone to touch me at all. I mostly just tolerated it.

But the irony of it all is that somewhere in the back of my mind I'm doubting that a person atually has genuine affection for me, which is why I get all weirded out in the first place. How's that for a twisted thread? Anyway just wanted to share.

As always have a good day and enjoy.