Starved of Silent Communication
Six weeks. Six weeks without a hug.
Without a handshake, without a kiss or a fleeting moment of excitement sparked from a gentle caress. No amount of zoom calls or social distance beers can compare to the quick oxytocin spike from a prolonged embrace. Rest assured, the first touch I receive when this is all over will be savoured like a peaty glass of single malt.
Touch has always been a language I’m fluent in. It often conveys what my mouth is too apprehensive to say and having this avenue of communication stifled for this long is torture
As difficult as it has been I have gained a great deal of perspective from this experience, similar to when I ran a community initiative focusing on feeding a portion of Toronto’s homeless population. Whenever I would hand out food, I quickly noticed that what most people were truly thankful for wasn’t the food but the simple act of a handshake or a pat on the shoulder. For several thousand of our fellow Torontonians being starved of touch is a daily occurrence and six weeks is, in comparison, a relatively inconsequential amount of time.
A.A. Milne once wrote, “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." This has been a prevalent thought in my mind lately as I often find myself thinking that I have hit the jackpot in life; to have so many people that I yearn to hold. Never again will I take that for granted and when life returns to its natural order you better believe I’m going to kiss everyone of those people right on the mouth.