"Skin is burning" / "Everyone's a building burning with no one to put the fire out"

Lately, for the last two weeks or so, my skin has been on fire.

Not my whole body -- just my skin.

But it's the entire organ, from my feet to my scalp, across my back and hands, and it's more than a minor annoyance most of the time. It's more than that.

My body has been running a low-grade fever, I think, or I have a mild cold. My throat becomes sore as I contemplate it, but nothing else changes. Nothing in my brain changes. I feel the same as always.

Have I always been burning like this? Have I always been on fire and unable to feel it? Is this some bizarre way for my skin to scream?

What is it screaming for?

*****

"Skin hunger is a documented physiological condition recognized by medical and psychiatric organizations...Early in this century, social workers at city orphanages discovered that babies who received no physical contact -- cuddling, rocking, kisses, tickling -- beyond the bare minimum of daily maintenance became withdrawn, sickly, and finally died. The conclusion seemed to be that human beings require a certain level of daily skin-to-skin contact in order to survive. "

*****

As a little, very little child, I sleep on a twin bed with all my stuffed animals, and I pray a letter every night:

Dear God, dear Jesus --
Thank you for this day. Thank you for everything we have. Thank you for [something I'm grateful for today].
God bless me, Mom, Spencer, Tyler, Grandma and Grandpa, friends and relatives. God bless [someone I want to remember today]. And God bless the whole world.
In Jesus' name, Amen.

The list of people to bless is in the order I want them blessed, with me and Mom first, then Spencer (though he is youngest), then Tyler, then everyone else.

We don't have any close relatives, but I think I ought to cover all the bases. My father would be in that category, and his family, but I never think of him -- I think instead of my Uncle John, the truck driver, and Aunt Diane and their kids, and Aunt Betty and her kids. I remember, vaguely, Uncle John "stealing my nose," or a lone pool party on Labor Day, or dark velvet-Elvis paintings hung in rooms with wooden furniture.

The circles of my prayers describe the arcs of relationships around me, the distances from me to everyone else.

After I pray, sometimes, I let my mind drift over them as I fell asleep.

Other times, I focus on Jesus only -- Jesus first and last, as in Sunday school, the closest of all.

I want to give him something to show my devotion.

I pull myself out from the covers -- though I've never been able to sleep without weight -- and take a small stuffed-animal-sized blanket with me to the bottom of the bed. I curl up there as small as I can be, and invite Jesus to sleep in my place.

He'd only had a manger to sleep in as a baby, full of straw, and wooden and hard and surrounded by animals, but here was a bed he could use instead.

I think over whether I should be on the floor, instead, to give Jesus' feet more room. I decide that Mom will yell at me if I do this, and that Jesus will understand.

It never occurred to me, then, and hadn't until this morning, all of a sudden, to wonder why I'd gotten out from under the covers at all.

Why did I assume that Jesus wanted me out of the way?

That he wouldn't want to touch me?

*****

"In sedentary subjects, skin hunger also causes muscle damage, particularly in the shoulders and back, in theory because the subjects are always tensed in order to ward off either a harmful touch or rejection of their need."

*****

After fifth grade, I went up to Lakeside Christian Camp as I had the previous two summers.

Somewhere between gimp and cat's eye yarn crafts, I start talking.

"My family's poor," I say. "We don't have any money."

I say this with the cheerfulness of a ten-year-old, hyper and entranced by neon colors and new knot techniques for friendship bracelets -- but then surprise us all by bursting into tears.

The craft counselor comes over, shock written on her face, and pulls me into the craft office.

I can't stop crying.

Eventually, they get my counselor, Wendy, who takes me back to our cabin.

"You don't have to tell me anything," she says, too attentive. "I'm here to listen if you want to say anything."

Embarrassed, struggling to think of something safe to say to this woman, who demands confidences with her posture, her tone of voice, her eye contact, I start talking about the first thing that comes to mind.

"We used to have a really bad doctor," I say. "Dr. Harwin."

He'd told my mom when we brought Tyler in with a cough once that he ought to give her a key to the office, she brought him in so much, and he sent us home without checking Tyler's lungs. Two days later, Tyler was in the hospital with double pneumonia. He was two years old.

This is what I mean. What I say is "he takes your shirt off just to check your breathing. I feel bad for the girl I know who still goes to him. She's thirteen."

Wendy bristles, and sensing danger, I backpedal hastily.

"I mean, I was five," I say. "He probably had to do that. We were little kids. And I haven't talked to that girl. He probably doesn't take her shirt off anymore."

Wendy presses. "Did he ever touch you?"

"No, NO," I say, panic creeping up in me. This isn't what I had intended. "No, he was just a doctor, and he wasn't very good, and I'm sure he didn't do anything wrong."

I leave the cabin on some excuse and find the craft counselor.

"I feel sick," I say, tears filling up my eyes again -- but she must be used to this by now. "I want to go home."

She lets me call home, but no one is there. I leave a message.

By evening, I've been convinced not to leave. But I never allow myself to be alone with Wendy again.

And I never go back to camp.

*****

"Older children and adults may have received adequate contact as babies but, for various reasons, no longer receive that same level of touch. They become isolated and defensive, suffer intense feelings of loneliness, and may develop a number of neuroses and personality disorders such as schizophrenia or multiple personality disorders."

*****

I look forward to walks with my girl, to the times I can slip my crooked elbow into hers and joke about being "attached."

"I like being attached to you," she says, and laughs. I laugh, too.

"Me, too," I say.

*****

"Skin hunger is very common in victims of physical and sexual abuse -- for obvious reasons."

*****

The pinch of Mom's grip on my chin pushes all my skin forward, doesn't let my mouth move in response to her questions.

I don't even know what she's saying. She's angry. She's holding my face, tight, right in front of hers. Her eyes flash and her voice is tight like her grip.

She lets go with a flourish that flings me to the ground. This is the only time she ever does this, the only time she knocks me over. Later I tell people, unable to remember the details, that she'd punched me and I'd fallen to the floor.

She might have. I still can't remember.

What I don't tell people is that it doesn't matter.

The skin of my cheeks and chin stings with the red of too-rough contact, and humiliation. My face -- my face hurts.

*****

"Trust is a BIG issue with skin hunger patients."

*****

When Spencer is little, I'm told, I pick him up a lot. I take him from my mom when she's frustrated, when she's likely to hurt him, when she's exhausted from his colicky crying. I rock him and calm him and put him to bed. I play with him, hide and seek and spitting "raspberries" at each other and defending him against Tyler -- even when he's exaggerating, or wrong.

The connection persists, but as he grows older, it becomes more dangerous to express it. He is Mom's, and I am Mom's, and we are not each other's.

Affection leaks out in violence -- we kick and poke each other, and I'm sure even then that he knows what I'm saying: I love you. I'm connected to you. I want the best for you.

Mom yells at us, irritated when we laugh in public or chase each other or make a game of kicking.

"That's rude," she says, but whether she means public fighting or public displays of affection is never clear.

Years later, I poke Spencer and with the well-worn reflex of conditioning, he jumps backward and sucks in his stomach.

"Aw -- brotherly-sisterly love. You know, I poke Mary," he says, of his girlfriend.

"Really?" I say, fascinated. "That's kind of weird."

"I know," he says. "I wonder what it means."

I know what it means. It means I was right.

He did know what I was trying to say.

*****

I'd like to think it's a purge, a burning as in the Bible -- a refinement. I'd like to think that when this is over, this intensity and low-fever life I've been living, I'll be free: free to touch anything I want, to press myself against, to lean on everything. I want to be in contact with it all. I want this skin between me and the world to burn off.

I am waiting to touch everything.