I need touch.

This post could just as easily be called "the only thing I could be considered high maintenance for." Although really, a lot of people wouldn't consider this a big demand; I just happen to have a boyfriend that's not incredibly touchy-touchy unless there's more...Intimate things involved. He's trying to do better about just holding me to hold me, and it's helped me feel a lot better about life in general. Up to a certain point in my life, I always had at least one friend who I could lounge around with. Even just sitting on a couch with my feet up on their lap while we were hoping that Mario would jump over that stupid hole and land on the two pixel width block of land. I hated that level.

For me, it's almost as though my skin has a legitimate physical need for contact most of the time. I don't need expensive gifts, or big romantic gestures (although I get some of the latter that are incredibly sweet)--I just need touch. The whole day, even the whole week, could be the worst known to man. But let me have an evening of just lounging together, doing mundane things? I'll be alright. It's as if I have the ability to turn a loving touch or a warm, safe pair of arms into a suit of armor. I can slay any monster if I have someone at my back.

This isn't to say that I can't be a strong person without it--from the time that those days of lounging in the basement playing Mario ended, through the suicide of one of the friends I'd done that with, and up until I met my boyfriend of (almost) 5 years, I had to be--but it's just as knights are more able to withstand with their armor, but should be capable fighters without it, so it is with me. I can fight, but I must be even more careful to guard myself as I do it.

Sometimes, I wonder if anyone else feels quite that way. I know there are others with a need for physical comfort like that, but I wonder if it's their suit of armor? Or what others use, if not that. A loving word? A warm smile? Or perhaps they use no one as their armor, but find it within themselves.

I don't know If I would envy those people or not, because I think that if I could just pull that armor from within myself, it might become more mundane. Instead, a warm embrace to me feels like coming home from battle. I spend my life fighting against a mental disorder, fighting against a failing body, and trying to make life work. It's nice to be able to slip some of that off of my shoulders, and replace that with warm, living, loving armor.