Chapter 30 Loving Me #9
"Your body is not reacting to the present moment. It is reacting to what it learned touch used to mean."
She linked this directly to my developmental history. She suggested that my reactions might not come from the present alone, but from earlier experiences where touch had not always been steady or safe.
"There was never a repeated experience of safe contact for your body to store as normal. So your system built safety through distance instead."
She explained that over time I learned to brace myself before touch occurs, because in most of my lived experience, physical contact was either absent or associated with violence, emotional risk, or loss of control.
That bracing response has now become automatic.
It is no longer a decision but a reflex, which is why my body tightens or withdraws even when I intellectually understand that I am safe.
"Try not to correct it yet," she guided. "Just notice the moment your body prepares."
We also spoke about how limited my experiences of safe, positive touch have been.
She did not focus on details, but she acknowledged the pattern carefully.
Apart from brief relationships or isolated moments of closeness, I have rarely experienced sustained physical affection that felt both safe and consistent.
"What does your body assume touch will lead to?"
After a pause, I managed, "Bad."
She nodded, "Exactly," she said. "So our work is not to argue with that assumption, but to slowly give your body different evidence."
She emphasized that this response is not a flaw in character or willingness, but a survival strategy that became overgeneralized. My nervous system learned early that closeness could lead to harm, so it continues to apply that rule automatically even when the present situation is safe.
"Your system is trying to protect you," she said. "It is simply using outdated information."
The goal of therapy, she explained, is not to force tolerance of touch, but to build gradual, repeated experiences where touch can be chosen, paused, or stopped, and where nothing negative follows that choice.
Over time, she said, this is what allows the body to stop bracing in advance and begin distinguishing between remembered danger and present safety.
She explained that pleasure wasn't something separate from safety; it was something the nervous system relearns when it stops associating closeness only with threat.
Even neutral or slightly pleasant sensations were important because they created contrast, evidence that touch could exist without harm.
She guided me through grounding exercises slowly, teaching me how to stay present inside moments instead of abandoning myself the second vulnerability appeared.
Some days it was as simple as breathing steadily while maintaining eye contact.
Other days she would place objects with different textures into my hands and ask me to focus on sensation instead of anticipation, on what was actually happening instead of what my body feared might happen.
"You are allowed to experience affection without earning it first," she told me quietly that afternoon. "And you are allowed to want things too."
The words followed me long after I left. By the time I arrived at Bramwell's house that evening, the rain had stopped, and before I had even knocked properly the front door opened.
Alice smiled immediately when she saw me. "There you are, sweetheart."
Something in my chest still tightened every time she called me that.
She pulled me gently inside before the cold could follow me through the doorway, already taking my coat from my shoulders with the effortless warmth.
"Martin has been banned from helping in the kitchen. He thinks following recipes 'limits the creative spirit,'" she explained, making quotation marks with her fingers.
"I heard that," Martin called from somewhere nearby.
"And yet not a single denial," Alice replied calmly.
I walked into the dining room to find Martin leaning back in his chair. Bramwell stood near the kitchen doorway behind him, sleeves rolled to his elbows, looking tired and warm and unfairly beautiful in the low light.
The second he saw me his expression softened instinctively.
"There you are," he said.
Martin glanced between us and sighed in relief. "Thank God. He's been pacing like a medieval king awaiting the arrival of a plague physician."
"I was cooking," Bramwell replied.
"You opened the oven twelve times as though expecting invading forces."
I only smiled before carrying the fruit salad I had made into the kitchen.
Bramwell had once told me he loved them.
Dinner unfolded slowly after that, warm in the easy way their house always seemed to be.
Conversation drifted between ridiculous stories from Martin's university days, Alice gently correcting half of them while laughing anyway, and Bramwell pretending increasing levels of suffering every time his father exaggerated something for dramatic effect.
At some point I realized I had relaxed completely without noticing when it happened.
I was laughing more easily now, answering questions without rehearsing every sentence first, letting silence exist without scrambling to fill it.
Alice asked me about work with genuine interest instead of politeness, and Martin somehow turned a story about grocery shopping into a ten-minute performance involving an elderly cashier who apparently "radiated organized disappointment. "
Even Bramwell looked calmer watching me there. After dinner, Alice stood and began gathering plates before I could help.
"You two stay," she said immediately when I started to rise. "Martin promised to walk with me before it gets too cold."
Martin blinked once at his wife. "I did?"
"You did now." She replied.
Something suspiciously amused passed between them. Bramwell noticed it too. "You are both being extremely transparent."
"Nonsense," Alice replied serenely while putting on her coat.
Martin pointed toward Bramwell while following her toward the front door. "Do not emotionally destabilize the poor girl with geology facts while we're gone."
"No promises."
The door closed behind them a moment later, leaving the house suddenly quieter.
I looked toward Bramwell slowly. "They planned that."
"Oh, absolutely," he said. "My mother has the subtlety of a military operation."
Despite myself, I smiled.
He seemed pleased by that as he moved back toward the kitchen. "I was bribed into making dessert, unfortunately, so now I have to finish before my father returns and somehow ruins whipped cream."
I followed him into the kitchen, leaning lightly against the counter while he moved around gathering ingredients with familiar ease. Music played softly somewhere from the living room, low enough to blend into the warmth of the house itself.
"What are you making?" I asked.
"Apple crumble," he said. "Or at least something spiritually adjacent to apple crumble."
I watched him slice apples while continuing a completely unnecessary monologue about the emotional instability of baking measurements.
Flour dusted the sleeves of his dark sweater and his curls kept falling into his eyes every few minutes until he pushed them back distractedly with the back of his wrist.
"There's something fundamentally weird," he said, "about instructions that say 'until it feels right.' I'm cooking, not resolving an emotional arc."
A quiet laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
The warmth inside the kitchen settled around me slowly. Bramwell moved around the space with that same unconscious gentleness he carried everywhere around me now, never crowding too close, never reaching for me without warning, always leaving space for me to retreat even when I no longer wanted to.
And suddenly all I could think about was what my therapist had said earlier.
You are allowed to want things too.
"I have something for you," he suddenly said, sounding oddly nervous now.
I looked at him in surprise. His expression shifted into something softer, almost shy beneath the humor. He reached into one of the kitchen drawers before holding out a small cloth pouch toward me.
I opened the pouch slowly.
Inside rested a bracelet made from polished uneven stones connected by dark wire, handmade enough that I could see the tiny imperfections in the shaping. Nothing about it looked expensive or overly delicate. It looked personal. Thoughtful in the quietest possible way.
I touched one of the stones gently with my thumb.
"This one," Bramwell said softly, leaning slightly closer, "is from the riverbank near the north trail where you nearly walked directly into freezing water because you were distracted by moss."
Warmth rose immediately into my face. His finger brushed another stone lightly. "Labradorite. Because it looked dull until sunlight hit it properly, which unfortunately turned into a metaphor before I could stop myself."
Then another.
"Obsidian. Because you glare at strangers like a cryptid defending territory."
A startled laugh slipped out of me. Bramwell went visibly still for half a second at the sound before his expression softened almost painfully.
"And amber," he added more quietly, "because it preserves things."
Something tightened hard beneath my ribs. I slid the bracelet carefully onto my wrist, staring at how perfectly it fit against my skin. The honesty in his voice settled somewhere deep inside me, heavy and warm and terrifying all at once.
"I chose the bracelet because I noticed you never wear necklaces or earrings." He added.
For a while neither of us spoke. Soft music drifted through the kitchen beneath the warm scent of cinnamon and apples while Bramwell returned quietly to the counter, giving me enough space to steady myself around the emotion gathering painfully in my chest.