Highly sensitive person. It’s a real thing. and I finally have a name for who I’ve always been.

are you?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/highly-sensitive-people-signs-habits_n_4810794

The world does not come easy for people like me, us, HSP’s, my people, my tribe…that I never knew exsisted…always thought it was just me. My whole life I’ve swung between thinking “what’s wrong with me? Why am I so affected by everything around me”,

And ” What’s wrong with everyone else? Why are they NOT affected by everything around THEM”?

You see… just leaving the house is an act of strength for me.

Take for example, a drive down Market St, which for 20 years I drove multiple times a day carting kids, running errands… I see and hear and feel what most do not.

Warning, you might want to buckle up and hold on for this example ride.

The construction noise, the latest beautiful tree chopped down to make room for the construction. The exhausted energy coming from the construction workers, the heat, fumes, pollution rising from the road covered with litter that nobody cares about and that will eventually lead to the waterways through drainage systems to find its way into the stomaches of the wildlife and ocean beings. The dead animal laying on the road , the impact site and the blood stained drag marks in front of the shop that has gone out of business and left the owners and workers jobless. The rude and PURPOSEFULLY , hurtful and instigating bumpersticker on the gas guzzling, polluting truck in front of me that is bulling the elderly, slow driver in the old sedan. The anger on the face of the truck driver that thinks he has the right to bully just because it’s what he wants to do. The homeless drug addict denying and lying with his cardboard sign, the mentally ill and the helpless TRUELY homeless man madly and endlessly trying to dry his blanket covering him from the rain with his hand, but who refuses the umbrella I plead for him to take from me…” no Ma’am ! YOU need that !” The historic building being torn down so that the Haves will have more and the have nots will be pushed out and away again. The dead looks in their eyes (the haves and the have nots alike). The sprinklers running in the rain. The parent texting while driving and ignoring their child in the back seat of the upscale mini van they probably can’t really afford. The obese killing themselves slowly and systematically in the drive thru of Chick-fil-A… a chain that kills hundreds of thousands of animals raised and kept in suffering conditions just to be served up on styrofoam that will NEVER decompose with a smile and a “my pleasure”.

But my kids are hungry and my husband (bless his heart for dealing with me and loving me anyway) is not and HSP, so we pull in to the drive thru, order, eat in the car with it still running and in the back of my mind I try to decide if I should discard the non recyclables or carry them home and waste water to clean and save them along with the others that I can not bring myself to throw away and that now haunt me from the back of the closet.

THIS… my friends … is a small example of what it feels like to venture out into this human infested world I am so fortunate to live in.

How do you feel?…. If you are actually still reading this? Crazy right? exhausted? overwhelmed? helpless? depressed?

HSP. Highly sensitive people. It’s what we are, and we feel the weight of the world that most people have the ability to ignore.

Maybe you are one too? Maybe you have a child or a spouse or a friend who is one.

I’ve spent my life trying to understand it and manage it secretly … hide my crazy right? (i actually wrote this 3 years ago but didn’t have the courage to post it) I’ve learned It can be managed with things like therapy and medication, or covered with addiction and dysfunction, but what it really needs to be is understood, explained and accepted as an extremely important trait for humankind.

Can you imagine a world without the contributions made by sensitive? Think Greta Thunberg and Jane Goodall, Mother Theresa and Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr…. Mr. Fickin Rogers!!!!

Literally COUNTLESS others that have done

SO. MUCH. GOOD.

We are who we are. We need to own it, share it, USE it. And I’m trying to do so.

so~

I’m sharing my crazy with you here, in an effort to explain and give you an insight and understanding that being sensitive is a hard thing but not a bad thing.

…that is…

if we can make it down Market st.