skinfeel

gut feeling, intuition, good old fashioned instinct. i call it (and have called it since i was a child) skinfeel. in italian, they use a similar phrase to describe how they feel about a person or a situation: una sensazione a pelle.

you might know what i’m talking about – goosebumps, static hair raising, shivery waves. that feeling in your stomach. they’re all warning signs, alerting the feeler to be aware. anxiety, hypervigilance and trauma skewed these sensations for a good couple of years but they’re always there. i’ve learnt to appreciate my skeenfeel about someone. because even if i choose to ignore it at first, sooner or later it proves me right.

as a child, i, like many people – particularly women – relinquished my skinfeel in order not to be called silly or neurotic. then separation, divorce, the loss of friendships. grief, in other words, all chipped away and my skinfeel wizened down to a vestigial organ, like an umbilical or appendix, something not even related to until there’s a problem with it. but it was always there, shouting into a soundproofed room.

i chose to ignore my skinfeel when i met the great manipulator simply because i so wanted to be loved and i wanted time and energy spent on me for a change, instead of me doing that for others. the great manipulator said all the things i wanted to hear.

he was all the things i’d asked for in a human being. at first.

and yet there was my wizened skinfeel gesticulating wildly at me that all was not what it seemed.

this side of that chaos, i now believe he had cased me out days or weeks before coming to my town, via social media and my website. just like a crocodile watches the habits of its prey. he was uncannily too good to be true, and he had honed his words and actions so perfectly, even his social media profile had been crafted to perfection.

this cancer of a man knew already knew how to bait me, and then upon meeting me in person, hook me.

skinfeel is there for a reason. if it feels off in any small way at all, don’t second guess it. listen to it while it’s still whispering, before it has to shout.