Listen, I really, really mostly like my Self.
Love my Self.
Feel comfortable with my Self.
(Capital S “Self” here to denote the larger, deeper, wholistic, Self. The “Who I Am” Self. Separate from the physical, daily, collection of micro-moments where I’m a bratty-unregulated-child self.)
In general, I love the things I love, the way I think, how I relate to others, what I have to offer— all that wonderful stuff.
So when I say “I did not choose this,” hear that just as it is: I did not choose this. I don’t hate it, but I didn’t pick to be this way. Just like you didn’t pick to be the way you are. None of us did.
But here we are.
Here I am.
Sensitive af.
Acutely aware of all things.
Freely receiving all inputs and outputs, all the time, and trying really hard several times throughout the day to train myself to have a stronger filtration system to those inputs and outputs.
Certain parts of my Self I chose like clothes from racks and shelves from stores and closets.
But other parts, the parts like being so sensitive a single lyric makes me choke, the smell of the blue Blistex brings second-hand grief for a friend’s lost mom, the sentence you said or question you didn’t ask sticks in my brain and bites the skin on the insides of my cheeks until I can’t help but ask you what you meant: yeah, those parts, I did not choose.
The way I cannot not listen to the words in music and thus have to work/write exclusively to instrumental lofi beats or complete silence (cue: existential disdain for my Spotify Wrapped year after year) is symbolic of the level of my lack of ability to filter out feelings, information, noises that I do not want to feel, receive, or hear.
Again: I did not choose to be this way. It’s just how I am.
Which is not to play an easily accessible Excuse Card. It is only to remind you, dear reader, that as much as I want to heed your advice to “just ignore it,” that’s like telling someone to just not like the smell of bergamot (whatever tf that is, but it’s always in candles I like) or the taste of fried calamari (love!).
Which is to say: it is completely useless counsel.
I can’t change that part of who I am and how I arrived here on God’s green (slowly browning) earth any more than I can change that I like bergamot-scented candles and fried calamari with marinara and a squeeze of lemon juice.
I can learn to tame it, wrangle it, harness it. I can learn to wrap my hands around it and wield it at will like a mighty saber rather than letting it possess me and fire randomly without my consent like shotgun shells that splinter into a hundred pieces.
And I’m trying.
So very hard, I am trying.
I like myself.
And—
…I did not choose to be my Self.
I did not choose to be open flesh where others are skin.
I did not choose for the kind of deep nostalgia that leaves you speechless and emotion-full to be as readily accessible as recalling what you had for breakfast this morning. I mean, who would willingly want to be able to feel old heartbreak, airport goodbyes, pure bliss that will never happen again because it can’t—at the drop of a fcking hat?
But I can.
And I do.
Often.
I did not choose to have ears that hear all conversations (and lyrics 😤) around me, a heart that feels all feelings felt in front of me, and even the ones I invent on your behalf. (Three cheers for an addiction to resolving uncomfortable feelings so strong you invent discomfort 👍🏼) Who would elect to be so precisely and constantly tuned to the frequencies of everyone else, good and bad, heavy and soft?
But I am.
And I’m working on it.
Because the flip side of being able to meet you in the dark and dance with you in the sunshine, the other edge of my ability to anticipate your need before you yourself are able to voice it, to create a space that feels like home for you, is codependence.
The place where the gift of my sensitivity meets the burden of my sensitivity is resentment for expectations (albeit impossible and unfair) unmet. Disappointment for extensions of equal compassion and emotional support unreciprocated.
That is the place where the good becomes the not good. My positive contribution to the world becomes my own selfish addiction. The moment where the superpower starts to be used for evil.
It’s not easy to be this way, I think.
So don’t, the voice in my head responds.
But I am. This is me.
Both bold and brave, and so very easily poked.
Both neon and insatiable, and so very quick to cry, slow to let go.
So very ouch, but also so very back-for-more-5-minutes-later.
I cannot help it.
I did not choose to be this way.
But if experiencing things in 3D-iMax-Dolby sound-Ultra 4k-technicolor-high speed-high def all the things is the cost of this part of being Me,
if I can only have the love and the magic and the too-big-for-this-world-beauty with the pain and the rawness and the ouch and the crying more than most, then though I did not choose it, I would choose it.
Again and again and again. In this life and the next.