But this woman, who died a decade before I was born, clearly knew me quite well.
I'm in love with the quote. It so eloquently explains how I've felt for so long.
I began thinking about my own sensitive nature, and some of the writing I did as a teenager (when undoubtedly at the pinnacle of my hypersensitivity). I described things in a strikingly similar manner. It seemed cruel, how my emotions and experiences seemed to be amplified to an ear-splitting level. Everything pounding into my brain from every direction, all at once, all so LOUD. The noise and white deafening static, the commentary... the suffering, blitzing heartbreak, blinding me with such hard black hits it leaves stars swirling about my head... the raging red anger of nightmares and pulse-pounding terror... the heart-swelling white joy of clarity.
As a teenager I feared that something was very wrong with me. As, of course, all teenagers do. But there was something different about me. I absorbed the feelings and physical pains of those near me.
I recall sitting in the high school gymnasium watching a basketball game next to my friend Jennifer, feeling perfectly relaxed until a panic attack struck from out of no where. Having always been extraordinarily sensitive to anxiety, I was quite familiar with it's precursors and triggers. I looked around, confused and unable to identify why my heart was suddenly pounding and my chest was growing tighter. Until I looked at Jennifer, and saw her rocking and biting her nails. It was her panic attack, not mine.
Being someone who never gets headaches (I can count the times in my life on one hand), whenever I have felt a splitting in my temples I have soon learned that someone near me has a migraine. I absorb the feelings, the aches and pains of those around me.
I've always been an empath, but some people say this degree is called clairsentience.
But it doesn't happen to me so often any more.
When I realized this yesterday- how long it's been since I've experienced this- I breathed a sigh of relief... thankful to be rid of such a curse.
And I felt deeply saddened. Urgently mourning the loss of such a curse.
Why did it go away? I'm less sensitive than I used to be, I realized.
Life still brings me great pain. But it also brings me awesome joy. The less sad I am, the less sensitive I feel.
Why? I'm an adult now? Loss of creativity? Loss of romance? I'm just a happier person? Have I gotten so good at filtering emotions, by nature of my work, that I am better able to protect myself? Have I developed of a numb, callous skin? Or it is just the anti-depressants?
What turned down the volume, bringing it from a deafening cacophony to only a frenzied screaming?
My emotions have always felt too large for me. Art has provided the only moments of relief; the psychic blood-letting that relieves my engorged heart and focuses my seizing brain. I have often attempted to incorporate my physical/somatic experience of emotion into my art.
How frequently I feel as though my body has been severely beaten with blunt force... how, when feeling love being torn from me, I feel the claws pierce and dig into my skin, tearing my flesh into smoldering ribbons.
Everything. Just. Hurts. So. Much.
When the sensitivity was at it's pinnacle, I described myself as being without a skin. I pictured myself as one of those anatomy models, skin stripped away, leaving only shining bloody red muscles, stretched in patterns across the body and tethered with tough white tendons.
And the emotion I experienced was a metal cheese grater being rubbed across my already exposed raw flesh.
While I'm glad the volume has, for whatever reason, been turned down... I fear losing any more of my sensitivity. Art not only vents it, it keep me in touch with it. It keeps me able to define the fires inside and know my self. My sensitivity has saved me. It has kept me from becoming the abuser, it has given me a purpose and a career.
And when the sunlight streams in through the blinds the morning, falling in warm golden slats across my pillow... or when the dog wiggles his golden eyebrows above his warm, unassuming brown eyes... or when I head for outer control and a sweet wall of fragrance from the inmate's newly planted flowers overwhelms my senses... or when I breathe in the familiar scent of a lover, our lips gently melding together as our souls mingle for just a moment in the small space between our kiss... or when I smell the scent of a mowed lawn and bar-b-queing chicken... tiny golden fireworks erupt in my brain. The darkness implodes with light and life feels as though it could be no better...
I am so, so thankful for that deafening silence.
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