The Habit

Last summer I was spending time with family at an outdoor festival. As we gathered under the bright sun, pondering what to do next, I noticed a woman sitting alone on a bench, staring into what seemed another dimension. She wore a t-shirt and shorts, laying bare an unsightly skin condition that covered most of her limbs. Air exposure must have brought her enough relief to offset any fear of repulsion from passersby. The woman's glare displayed an absence of emotion, as if drained by the lack of response to prolonged desperation and anguish, the same way the serene topography of a dry river bed reveals a life that once was. 

I thought of the cigarette addicts that I had often sold "poison" to, so many years before at the gas station job, some of whom displayed similar ailments, and how their equally repugnant skin, their cough, and breath motivated me to learn new and brisk ways of completing the transaction with as little human touch as possible. How my goal in their presence was to shorten it at any cost. How I saw myself as the victim in the awkward scene...

"That woman needs a hug.", I thought this time, as my rumination was interrupted by the announcement of a new itinerary. And that was that.

More recently I've had to address my own skin malady; the consequence of my feeble immunity where parts of my hands are affected by harmless but displeasing growths which can be solved only through painful treatments that turn skin into the stuff of horror flicks, for weeks at a time. I have extensive experience in examination rooms doing small talk (and cringeworthy procedures) with book smart people in white, so meeting my dermatologist was not going to be a heart pounding event. Or so I thought…

A petite, perky, middle aged woman knocked softly, entered the room, and smiled with a kind expression. "Hello. What have you got for me?…" She asked.
"Hi Doc. This…", I said, dramatically raising one withered hand, while doing my best Vanna White with the other. And that's when it happened...

The doctor turned to me, furrowed her brow and tilted her grey head towards the issue at, er… hand. Instinctively she grasped both my hands in her naked, soft and perfectly healthy hands. She caressed them gently, back and forth as she tenderly let out a compassionate murmur, the way a mother would for a wounded child.

At that moment, an avalanche of unexpected emotion overtook me. To experience the empathy and warmth of a stranger, with nothing to gain, willing to touch the grotesque wrapper of my very being. It floored me. It showed me the need that I've come to know so well in theory and see in others, but seldom have experienced myself, because for so long my tank has been filled to the brim in my coddled emotional reality. "Wow", I thought… "If that's how great my deprivation… what about the lady on the bench… the smokers at the station… and every other mortal?...

This episode was only the latest reminder of what I've come to know as an addiction that blankets all of mankind. An obsession that defines us all, from cradle to grave. A craving that permeates the entire world, and which differs only in the way we choose to feed it, and almost always dysfunctionally. An addiction evident in so much of what we do in our short lives, and which calls for a different kind of doctor...

(Virtually) every adornment, every tattoo, every mile run, every diet pill, every joke told, every status update, every luxury logo, every blog post, every pose in the mirror, every fast car or bike, every letter at the end of a name, every bumper sticker, every hand raised in class, every binging session, every marriage proposal, every adulterous affair, every angry outburst, can be translated into two small words which best define our unshakable habit...

Love me.