She keeps a calendar full of meetings, birthdays, and dentist visits, but there is no reminder for “hug received.” Still, her body keeps score. It notices the months without a palm pressed to her back, the mornings she wakes up curled around a pillow instead of a person. The ache is not dramatic; it is a low note under the daily noise, a quiet hunger that no snack, no streaming show, no promotion can feed.
Friends praise her for “holding it all together.” They say, “You never need anything,” as if that were a compliment. She smiles, nods, carries the label like a medal. Inside, her skin feels thirsty. A simple pat on the shoulder from a coworker can linger in her memory for days, replayed like a favorite song she refuses to delete.
At night the house is tidy, bills are paid, the dog is asleep, yet her chest buzzes with unused tenderness. She tries to translate the feeling into motion: rearranges furniture, bakes bread, writes long encouraging texts to friends. The love flows out, a river with no lake to return to. She is grateful for the giving, but the imbalance slowly carves a hollow space, smooth and cool as river stone.
Years pass this way. She stops expecting grand romance; she would settle for five minutes of being the small spoon, for someone to notice the new gray strand in her hair and say, “It looks nice.” The longing learns manners—it no longer screams, it whispers. It shows up as a second glance at a couple holding hands in the supermarket, a deep inhale when she folds warm laundry, as if cotton could mimic the scent of another heartbeat.
Then, without fireworks, change arrives. Maybe it is a neighbor who hugs her goodbye after borrowing sugar, maybe a new friend who asks, “How are you, really?” and waits for the honest answer. The touch is brief, the conversation ordinary, yet something inside her unclenches like a fist that forgot it was clenched. She cries in the car later, not from sadness but from recognition: oh, this is what I was missing, and I am still here to feel it.
The thaw is gradual. She does not turn soft or weak; she simply becomes rounder, fuller, like a plant given water after drought. Her laughter drops lower, stays longer. She learns to ask, “Can we sit a minute?” and stay on the couch when the dishes wait. She discovers that receiving a compliment without deflecting is another form of intimacy, that being seen without hustle is a kind of sacred rest.
One day she catches her reflection and sees both steel and velvet. The strength never left; it just grew tired of standing alone. Now it has a place to sit, a hand to hold, a voice that says, “You can lean today.” The hunger is still there, but it is no longer desperate. It is a healthy appetite, reminding her she is alive, that skin is meant to be touched, that hearts are made for two-way streets.
