I Believe in Cuddling

I believe in cuddling. That awesome power that the simple act of throwing your arms around someone can do. I believe in the warmth and the love that generates when you lay down next to someone you care about and letting your personal space vanish. Feet and hands and legs and arms intertwined, with bodies fitting together like perfect pieces of a puzzle. And in this tangled web of limbs there is no discomfort. There is no such thing as too close or going too far. I believe in the things cuddling can achieve. There have been times in everyone’s lives where they are inconsolable. They are heaving, shrieking, and hyperventilating wrecks. Yet somehow, a mother’s embrace or a lover’s arms wrapped snugly around their body and suddenly things start to get calmer. Breath becomes regular and tears stop flowing after so long and an overwhelming feeling of safety and relief washes over them. Cuddling can drastically change someone’s mood, no matter how impossibly upset they are.
Cuddling makes you invincible. I know from time to time I think about death, and the irrelevancy of human life. I dwell on how vast the universe is and how the time that Earth has been around is nothing but an atom of a freckle on the face of time. And even smaller than that is the length of my life. I mean nothing to the rest of the world and probably never will. And one day I will die and I will be cold and alone in a casket. Eventually people will forget about me and it will be like I never even happened. Even worse than this situation is that there is nothing I can do to stop it. When I think about this, a terrible emptiness hollows me out. And I am terrified. It has occurred more than once that when I think about this and that black icy emptiness creeps up inside of me, I have to sit down. I crumple into a ball and throw my arms around myself, desperately hoping that the closeness will erase any feeling in my heart that I am meaningless. It never works. But sometimes, I find myself in the arms of someone I love. And suddenly, the universe doesn’t matter. The galaxy and the solar system and the planet and the countries and my country’s problems and the city and stress and weather and homework and drama and everything else around me dissolve. And I and the one I love are the only things left in the world. Our embrace is steeped in meaning. Every squeeze writes volumes of history. Every caress moves mountains. My heart swells because I feel so important. In the loveliest way, I exist and I mean something so much to at least one person that they are willing to spend hours with me, just wrapped around me. Because of this, I believe in cuddling