Hugs destroy me.
I have a generally very positive immage of my own body. Looking in the mirror, properly clothed, I look awesome and even without my second skins I don't look too bad. I have a carefully built and maintained musculature, a constructed macho-preformance myth to justify it, and a wild personality to pave over all visual faults.
A hug slices straight through all of this. In an instant I am reduced to a clumsy bag of sharp joints, strained sinew and hairy, oily skin. My movment freezes, my skin is too hot and too cold, My muscles squeeze too hard and too soft and both are akward and the whole "not showering" excuse is shown as the immature hollow excuse and I am wearing my rancid fuckin belay jacket and oh my fuck did I just flinch what kind of psycho flinches when they get hugged...
If you know, you know.
Predictably, all of this scares me. But yall who know me know how I approach things that scare me. Both feet first, feel it untill it is normal.
So, to recap: I 1. Recognize hugs are an expression of care from someone I like, and I like that. 2. have a significant adverse psychopysical reaction, which I don't like. 3. have a long-term conceptual fear of this reaction making me unhugable, which I don't like. 4. want more hugs, so that I can get over 2 and 3.
So, that is why I am so weird about hugs. And I have no idea how to start to change it. Like who asks just straight out to be hugged more? What right has someone as akward as I to start hugging more? How can I even be in a loving, not fucking, relatoinship without beating this and how do I beat this witout that? Is this a kindof common thing, or is the problem that I have read too much meaning and expectation into hugs and they arn't really as big a deal as all this to most people? If I have so many problems with it and did without for so long, why do I fall asleep every night hugging my blahaj in a death grip?
Oh well.