November 24, 2003
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The other night a customer came into the bookstore, and as she was checking out, she commented that when you eat chocolate it releases the same chemicals in your body as are released when you receive a hug from your mother. I assume she said this because we sell some chocolates by the register. heh
It made me think though… I’m allergic to chocolate -does that mean I could be allergic to affection? Or am I allergic to chocolate because I was deprived of affection as a child, a state which continues now as an adult.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been hugged since I was a child. I wasn’t abused, but I maintain that I was very much neglected.
My parents divorced when I was three. My mother remarried when I was seven despite my warnings against it (who listens to a seven-year-old anyway even if she is pretty psychic). This was basically to keep my baby brother from being a Ba$tard. Yeesh, you’d think she’d have learned her lesson the first time.
Both my mother and step-father worked, and the raising of myself, my sister, and our little brother was left to my great grandmother. I reminded her of my father and so she hated me. It’s ironic that my sister looks just like him, but she was still a baby at the time of their divorce. My sister and brother received all of her affection. When I wasn’t being ignored, she made up lies about me to get me in trouble. She once told my mother I kicked her after she scraped her shin on the sofa.
And people wondered why I hated my grammy and hid in the closet or went to the library when left alone in the house with her. There was also the fact that everyone in the house would leave without telling me, and when they returned from the carnival or whatever, they’d say that I was always sick, so they just didn’t ask me along believing I’d say no anyway. Well, maybe, but I had allergies for goodness sake! I probably had a headache for five years straight before we even found out what was making me sick.
I think I stopped trying to give or receive affection when I was about fourteen, and I tried to comfort my mother; she was crying because my ex-stepdad had screwed up our lives royally, taken off for who-knows-where, and we were losing the house. To make a long story short, she pushed me away and that was that.
I haven’t really tried to give or receive affection since or made an effort to go out and “meet people.” I’m almost thirty, and I’ve never been kissed or been on a date. It’s not like I’m at all unattractive, and really, if I wanted to lose my virginity, all I’d probably have to do is walk into a bar and say, “Yo, virgin, right here” and watch the ensuing barfight. (Or maybe I just have a low opinion of male self-control heh).
But I wonder… being allergic to chocolate… if I ever did find someone to love me, would their affection make me sick? I already don’t take gratitude well, which could be considered the most minor shows of affection. When people thank me for something (and being a very considerate person, I get thanked quite a bit) I say sure or anytime, etc. I never say you’re welcome (not that I avoid it), and I try to get out of there ASAP. Is it modesty, bashfullness? I don’t know. It just makes me uncomfortable. How much worse would it be though if someone confessed their love for me?
I suspect it will never happen, and I can content myself with intellectual relationships. But it bothers me. It’s obvious in this instance that this level of non-conformity to society’s norms goes beyond my average level of rabid mysanthropy. Do I crave affection (and chocolate) because I was first exposed to them and then denied them as I grew older? Is it then just a simple matter of “chemical dependency?” Or is it something else?
Comments (2)
Interesting theory. But i’m not sure the choclate fix is quite so specific as to be an emotion like affection – it’s basic like endorphins maybe. Oh boy, you’re granny is a bit harsh, you should have kicked her in the shin anyway seeing as you took the blame. Oh and I think your opinion of male control is fairly spot on. -good luck-
hmm…you bring up a point that I have often wondered about. I’ve kind of become disillusioned with affection and have been wondering whether it will be possible for me to live the rest of my life without it… or at least without the physical relationship kind. This is what you seem to be doing so far. You come across as ambivalent about it… on the one hand you feel the desire for it on what you perceive to be some basic human level, yet on the other hand, you seem to draw strength from your independence and non-conformity to the social norms that dictate that you have to get married and produce lots of little kids to work in the factories, get sent off to war, and otherwise fuel our great capitalist machine. You seem to me to be a very independent person, and I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that any kind of affection pertaining to another person inherently undermines this very independence and calls for some degree of conformity, if not to society’s standards, then to those of another person. Our natural human condition seems to be that of loneliness… yet for some reason we try to reach out and to bridge that gap, though we know we can never fully connect with another mind and as Donnie Darko said, “every living creature dies alone”. What makes us do this? I don’t know. But I do know that I don’t like doing things without knowing why I am doing them. So I guess my point is, is it possible for one to overcome this desire and content oneself with individual existence and development and the cultivation of intellectual relationships? Since you’re about ten years older than me and have somewhat the same views and mindset, I see you as a sort of future-me (is this getting weird yet?)… meaning that I could see myself in your exact situation ten years from now. Anyway, I hope everything works out for you, and hopefully, it’ll be the way you want it to as well. That’ll be somewhat reassuring to me.