untouchable

Untouchable. The word emerging in my morning journal and clanging in my mind like a well-dented bell. Untouchable. So much, from so many angles: a description, a feeling, an emotion, a warning. I had to walk away and let it settle. So obvious. It was unsettling that I’d never noticed it before, never seen it there, winding it’s way into so many aspects of myself.

It was a stream of consciousness moment, talking to myself on a page instead of inside my head, wanting to pull my creativity out of thought and into tangible reality, and there it was.

Don’t be untouchable.

(Clang)

Pause. Be still . . . How long have I been feeling untouchable?

(I miss being intimate with my lover, my husband)

How long have I felt untouchable? (Beware! I’m trouble)

Have I always felt untouchable? (I’m not sure about this)

So

There it is, was, that word: untouchable. Interrogate? Surely that is the best option at this point, seeing as it does so neatly dovetail into those other feelings of, explorations of: nakedness and exposure, shame, aspects of voice and telling and writing and sharing, explorations of where we are allowed to go, what we are allowed to touch.

Ah, and here we are at the other side of the coin.

Allowing touch (to touch, to be touched)

The forbidden touch (you cannot have, you stealthily take)

The intimate touch (touch me there)

The gentle touch, the soothing touch, the thoughtful touch, the finishing touch, the special touch, the touching moment.

(Here the confusion lays, the confused lie)

But untouchable?

Where does that come from and where has it been
and how do I touch the untouchable?