I’m still that girl: Emotional, sensitive, dramatic1; I haven’t changed, but something else has: I no longer want to change that part about me.

I used to. I used to want to try to be less emotional, less sensitive, less “dramatic”. Many people2 have called me dramatic over the course of my life. Many people have said that I’m too emotional, or too sensitive. They’re not wrong. It’s true: I am all those things; I feel things very strongly and I’ve never been good at hiding my feelings3. I’ve learned how to identify the right time and place for certain things, sure, but I’ll be damned if I will pretend [they don’t exist], or hide my strong4 feelings about something.

With all the feelings came a lot of thoughts, insecurities, and questions about whether my behaviour was ever going to hurt someone. Along with all these feelings comes this ability to feel the same things that someone I cared about was feeling as well5. On top of that, I really hated feeling any sort of negative emotions and I fought them with such fervour, and of course that only made things worse. So I would worry, and try to predict situations and attempt to prevent hurting other people’s feelings. Naturally, whatever it was that I was trying to avoid was exactly what would happen and then I would be devastated. And I would blame myself; forever.

EFF THAT NOISE

I’ll be honest that I haven’t always treated every single person I’ve ever met with the utmost respect; I was a teenager once too. And in my adult life, I had a lot of learning to do but once I learned the hard lessons I have always tried my best to be as respectful as possible. I’m also overly considerate; sometimes to a fault. I don’t even try to be. It’s just there. One example I can think of would be the sidewalk dilemma: You know how, when you’re walking on the sidewalk and there is a couple or a group approaching you going in the opposite direction, the onus really should be on them to make room6, I used make myself so much smaller for no other reason than I wanted to be nice. Of course that would often backfire on me and make my walk that much more uncomfortable. I don’t do that anymore. I own my space. I walk on my side of the pavement, with a smile on my face and people always graciously move out of my way.

It’s only a small example of the changes I’ve seen in myself. And I am honestly just that much happier. I just can’t believe how much I used to worry about. I have to admit, I wonder how long this will last. It didn’t start over the holidays; I’ve felt this way since I turned thirty-five in early November. It feels pretty fucking fantastic. But I can’t help but worry that it will all change once I fall in love again. That’s always been my Achilles heel, if you will; it’s almost as if falling in love just rips me so wide open that I no longer know how to function. I just become a puddle of mush. It really sucks because I do so love being in-love. Thankfully I don’t foresee that happening anytime soon, and at the very least I know better now than to let things get out of hand too soon like I have been for the last 20 or so years. If he can’t fucking wait, that’s his own damn problem, isn’t it?

There’s a part of me that hopes that the girl I remember being is really gone for good. There’s another part of me that is sad because there was so much about her that I really loved. How much and how deeply I cared about things and people. But then again… oh how I cared; to the point where the pain was unbearable when someone hurt me. I’m sure that at some point in my life I will find something to care about that will be worth that pain, but until then I’ll be happy living a fuck-free life focusing on only those things that make my heart soar, and my soul sing7.

1. if I had a dollar for every time that someone has called me that in a negative light, I’d have some extra spending money [↩]
2. not just the recent ones who I have since quietly cut out of my life [↩]
3. that is kind of a lie, if I wanted to be disingenuous I could be but I simply have no interest in misleading people [↩]
4. an important distinction to make [↩]
5. I know you’ve heard of empathy [↩]
6. because logic [↩]
7. speaking of singing, I’ve been doing a lot of that too. Hoping to write an update on that soon-ish [↩]