I go through, as I know we all do, periods of complete neuroticism - I analyze everything, I feel everything, I seem to care about everything. I get serious, I get sullen, I feel greatly inferior to at least 90% of the people around me; and even some who aren't. I've spent the better part of the last month feeling like this - it happens when I spend a lot of time on the East Coast.
I get frustrated. Both with myself, and with the people around me. I've been feeling continually penalized for being a passionate person. This is also magnified by the fact that I'm so damn sensitive. My sensitivity has always been a double-aged sword - it's helped me so much in my life, in my understanding and empathy of others, not to mention my life in the theatre - but the blade is so often turned back against me. I make myself an easy target, and what flimsy walls I've constructed to repel the onslaught, buckle and become useless. It's Macbeth's vision of the dagger before he kills Duncan - is he using it to the kill the king? will it just kill him instead? Answer: Both.
When I care about something, it's not just a mild concern - it's a full-on force-field of feeling, like an X-Men power that's just been discovered, pulsing with raw power. I've spent a long time trying to control it; trying to hone this crazy, erratic emotion to where I can turn it on, and turn it off when *I* want. Sometimes I'm successful. Sometimes I'm not. When I feel like this, I tend to isolate myself - which sometimes just makes things worse.
Nothing specific has happened. I just haven't been feeling quite like myself. I anticipate that as I continue to be on the West Coast, the last rotting tentacles of this ... fog ... will fade away as surely as the snow that I left in New England. I'm writing this down in an attempt to banish it, to clear my brain of these blasted cobwebs that have been growing thicker and heavier over the past month.
As John Irving wrote, "Keep passing the open windows."
I've been listening to this song. A lot.
A Collection From A Graveyard
7 months ago
4 comments:
Hope your spirits are lifted soon :)
'Keep passing the open windows'...from The Hotel New Hampshire, right? I used to quote the line 'Sorrow floats' from that book all the time. Makes sorrow seem like less of an anchor and more of a flotsam that can be washed away.
Hmmm...
In this case, I would prescribe...
writing a list of all of your talents/blessings and then dancing and singing (with passion)to "Hey Ya", "Born To Run" and any other tunes that would be on your "Mood Lifter" playlist. :D
Oh, sweetie...I love you so much, for all the ways that you are you. I know it's hard to be sensitive, and it's probably a really yucky feeling to not be feeling like yourself lately. I wish my love could fix everything but I know that it can't - that you just have to sit in the uncomfortableness sometimes and let the storms pass, and no one can do it for you.
But I promise to love you and listen to you while you are sitting in the crappy feelings.
::Hugs::
Oh, my dear...this is all so familiar.The old double edged sword is an ongoing reality. I think one good thing about getting older (and I do have a few years on you, kid!) is that the sensitivity thing becomes less of a liability and more of a strength. One feels the slights and blows less severely, most of the time. You just keep that chin up, girly! The world needs more you.xx
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