Who do you crave when you are in pain? Who unfailingly welcomes and solicits your unedited truth? Is it the perpetually smiling person dedicated to the optic and insisting that nothing is wrong? Whose music and books touch you deeply? Are they the messages of the politically correct and poised-the judgers and deniers of struggle? If you are sensitive, those people will cause you to become very sick. They will drive in you the need to cry, hide, pretend, disappear, numb, to be someone else– a non-sensitive person.
I am finally learning from the many relationships in my life, in which the poised and smiley have turned to me, confided in me, feeling safe and comforted by my ability and willingness to listen to and identify with emotional hardship and struggle. And then, once relieved, ties are cut and efforts are made to distance themselves from me and to discredit me, even to erase me– I think because I know things they could and would not share with others. They came to me when they felt weak. This is a problem. Their illusions of strength are threatened by my existence.
Being dumped in this way has been a common experience. My mother, my sister, my ex husband, and friends along the way have confided in me, things I absolutely believe they would not share with any other. They unburdened with me and then despised and judged how I do not turn off my vulnerability, sensitivity, my willingness/need to discuss and examine difficult and uncomfortable things.
As I peruse my Audible library, I recognize that the majority of my books are memoirs and biographies of highly sensitive people who openly faced trauma, spent time in mental institutions or rehabilitation centers for substance abuse. Strugglers and survivors are my people. They are the lighthouses. Fuck the tidy one dimensional clowns, the self proclaimed emotional police. They cannot handle the feelers and go to great measures to silence them/us.
Because of passionate and courageous badass truth seekers: activists, singers, artists, writers, speakers, innovators– who express difficult truths, darkness, yearnings, questions, I am able to breathe and to soldier on. These are the people whom I count on, trust and look to. They are the helpers. They are the feelers. They are proof of God. “Look for the helpers.” said Mr. Rogers. Be a helper and a healer. Never Ever has denying the darkness gotten a suffering person closer to the light.
Today, it is clear to me that people who deny their own pain also will adamantly deny the pain of others. (unwavering denial of pain felt or caused by them) This makes them improbable sources for mercy, compassion, comfort, solace. They do however make great hosts, politicians, salespeople, networkers, attorneys, and performers. In recovery I have been stripped of any need for affiliation with these types. I have watched as those whom I characterize this way are increasingly disturbed by me. This no longer makes me sad. At all. I am a reminder to them of what they do not want to consider.
