Not Everyone Is Happy Hugs Are Back. Here's Why.

"While millions of people have lamented the lack of hugs and physical contact since March last year, for me and people like me, social distancing brought...

I remember many of my pre-pandemic hugs. A goodbye to my uncle after a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Disneyland in August 1994. My first full body contact hug with the professor whom I subsequently fell in love with, and who broke my heart two months later, in April 2012. The last one I had with a close relative, in January 2011, before I got on an airport train to live abroad. They’re imprinted on my brain not because I’ve missed hugging, but because I remember them with an involuntary shudder. Hugging people usually makes my insides shrivel up as if trying to get away from the contact happening at skin level. It’s full body contact I hate most, but I also dislike the single crooked-arm demi-hug and the leaned-in cheek kiss. I received each of the hugs described above with my body stiff, wanting it to be over. Yes, I know it’s odd. No, I don’t need therapy. I’ve just always been this way, since I was a very young child asking my mother if we could dispense with kisses at the school gate.