The heaviest burden to bear is the light weight of a fragile sensitivity

Do you remember the story of Aladdin and his magical lamp with a genie that grants three wishes? Have you ever considered what yours would be? Because I have... Not three, but one in particular, and I have pleaded my case so passionately, I believe my wish has finally come true - I suffered so violently from being too emotional that I only prayed I would stop feeling altogether.

I am convinced that being the type of person who feels everything deeply is a health condition that should be treated as such. Because it's not only about the whole year of my life that went by without a day when I wouldn’t choke from crying, and it's not just the depression and the intrusive thoughts of ending my life. It's also my body collapsing under the stress of “just feeling”; it's the hormonal therapy that followed a month of bleeding; it's the many examinations I went through when I felt my heart beating in my throat, and the wires that covered my chest in January; it's the fog in my brain and the emptiness in my gaze. I was so done last autumn, I’m surprised I am here a year later.

It all starts in childhood. People like me, the sensitive type, are obsessed with analysing human behaviour and reading psychology books. But all the books and the analysis, all the therapy and the understanding of what hides behind one's emotions, are simply not enough. And it probably wouldn’t be as hard to bear if it were just us dealing with our fragile sensitivity, but the constant judgment that comes from everywhere, blaming us for being the way we are, punishing us for not being more pragmatic and rational, only makes us feel inadequate and isolated.

In a society where people record their romantic dates as data in an Excel document, I am the freak who writes hundreds of pages in journals, trying to make sense of it all. Because, to be honest, the person I write some of those pages about probably has my name (spelt incorrectly) somewhere on a sheet with two columns that stand for “pros” and “cons”, and I guess one of those columns is rather empty. But the other I can see vividly flashing in front of my eyes: not blond, not short, not slim, not Asian, not blue-eyed, not different-colour-eyed, not young. He did, after all, “not like me that way”. Case closed to most people, not to me, though... Because to me, this person was pure sunshine, the one who offered me kindness and support. My friends would ask me, “Aren’t you over this yet?” - first with warmth, then with a little aggravation. It would then turn into “Still?”, which not only makes me feel bad about sharing, but also makes me despise the absolute essence of myself, because I am not able to cope the way they would.

But here’s the thing. This situation is not special, and it has, in fact, nothing to do with one person or another. Some of us just need excessive time to accept reality and move on. I mourned my home after my parents sold it when I was a child until my late twenties. It took me a decade to completely erase any feelings for my first love. It takes me, on average, three years to get over a broken friendship of any kind. I still cannot go to my previous district without feeling the ache of losing the life I had built for myself there.

I just feel deeply. And more often than not, I get punished for it by the people who are closest to me. So I added another question to make me restless at night: why were some of my closest friends pulling away? How can you say you loved me but then start keeping me at arm’s length from your life, discarding me slowly and in the exact way that had hurt me so much before, the exact way you know makes me feel worthless and heartbroken?

“People need resolutions,” was one of the answers I got. No one likes listening to the same old story over and over again. I felt trapped, frozen in time, when time seemed to be ticking for everyone else, and the only emotion that kept me company was a tremendous guilt for not being able to live up to other people’s expectations.

For the first time in my life, I was silent. I was robbed of my words, but I took silence as medicine. I crushed and killed my emotions, I cut off friends, deleted numbers and messaging apps, focused on the here and now, looked about me to see who was still around and started building again. And even though I still get occasional waves of self-pity, of missing others and of existential questions like “What the actual fuck?!?”, I have grown so much in the past two years that I feel sorry for who I was and how naive I had been, despite my age.

What comes as a surprise after all of this is the realisation that sensitive people turn into the biggest cynics of all. It’s irreversible because it was always there to begin with. It’s not like I didn’t see through all the bullshit; I just gave the benefit of the doubt almost every time - at my expense. Prayers and magic lamps, genies and confrontations, loneliness and wisdom - a year that almost kills you is a year that finally builds your resilience.

And I am not thankful. I just wish I’d never met either of you.

NIB and Ember