Sensitivity Doesn’t Make You Hard To Love: Mistakes I Wish I Knew Earlier

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.“Henry David Thoreau

“You have to learn to lighten up.” 

  Ahh, a mind that works like mine, doesn’t just “lighten up.”  

All the people out there who has the belief that there is something wrong with you for feeling or caring too much, for everything hitting you so hard, knowing you would have enough money for a down-payment on a house if you had a dollar for all the times someone told you “that’s not something to cry about,” or it’s not that serious, calm down.” The people who wake up sad, or just have a difficult time coping with knowing we are all misunderstood beings trapped in our minds, or just have a harder time coping with life altogether because you don’t understand why things seem to hit you harder than the people around you, making you feel like something different must have happened in your genetic coding because not one person you have ever met seems to share the same level of insight into the hidden dimensions of depth that you seem to find in everything.  

 The people who all eventually question their sanity at one point or another, the highly sensitive and perceptive people who feel strongly they can read people’s emotions and see through the smiles and the bullshit. The ones who have so much to say, their mind’s are firing through thoughts seemingly at the speed of sound, interpreting and analyzing everything one hundred times over, but stay silent and observe. The one’s who don’t miss a thing and are so attuned to their surroundings that sometimes it seems so hard to stay sane, this is for YOU, and just know you are not alone.  

I am one of you. And I have learnt over the years that there are more of us out there, and we are not crazy! Being highly sensitive and perceptive may seem like a curse, opposed to being selfish and going through life ignorantly, but I have come to believe that it is more of a gift than a curse.  

 We see the world differently and although we will always have a little sadness is our hearts, or feel misunderstood, lonely even, in a room full of people, we sense things other people can’t and feel/understand things in ways that other people don’t. The concerns of everyone may be suffocating at times but because of our strong intuition we would never intentionally mistreat a human for something someone else may see as cruelty because we would see it for what it really was: self-loathing, or whatever the case may be. Because of this we are able to be there for people in a way others couldn’t. Helping people is one of the best rewards in this world so, having the ability to do so on a higher scale is an amazing feeling.  

There is nothing wrong with you for feeling too much, caring too much about things some people would never even think twice about, you are not hard to love. You feel exactly how you’re supposed to feel, it is in your wiring and there’s nothing wrong with it. The things that make you sad, are the things that make you sad so don’t suppress your feelings or force yourself to be numb to things you once cared about because the world tells you that there are better things to worry about. You feel what you are supposed to feel, and you, all of who you are, your jumbled mind and all is lovable. I know it’s exhausting sometimes to care so much and feel as if no one cares about your problems at the end of the day, so there is nothing wrong with sometimes putting yourself first and giving yourself that mental break that you need. Harder said than done for people like us, I know, but these “selfish” mental health breaks are a necessity in order to stay above the water and not find yourself drowning in time.  

This website is my journey in getting to know myself, and figuring out over-time that I am okay with myself and I can not blame myself for all the nights I stayed awake crying over things I could never change. I’ve learnt that we’re not meant to be fully understood, and that loneliness is malleable, and that companionship didn’t always have to be through a one-on-one connection but you could find it through books, songs, movies and poems. I also learned how worth it life really is when you get rid of the darkness, the demons. There are so many songs unsung, books unread, places unseen.  

I did not plan to make this website, at first I starting writing because it was all I had to release myself. My journal was the only thing that I felt knew me. The shit I spilled out in there are thoughts I was never able to express. I wanted to get to know myself, I needed a release, so, my pen and journal got me through a lot of rough nights. They still do. I decided to put together this website in hopes that people with similar experiences as mine could realise that the bad times don’t last forever and there really is hope for us all. You just have to find the right corner of the world that fits YOU and surround yourself with people who only bring out the best parts of you.  

I will share examples of how some of the things I’ve learnt made life not only bearable for me but instead, worthwhile. I can honestly say for the first time in a long time I look forward to waking up everyday. Even being where I am and all.  

My journey of self showed me that it’s okay to be sensitive and the only thing that deterred me from seeing that, were the people in my life and the negative mindset I held onto.   

 If you are constantly told that the world is a tough place and you’re going to have to toughen up, its easy to believe that there is something wrong with you, because you’ve been trying to “toughen up” for years but you just can’t seem to get it right like everyone else. Everyone could use a little toughening up but that’s mostly just growing. The only change you need in your life are the people that make you feel there is something wrong with being you, or that you are hard to love.  

Now that I am in a better head space, I have spent so much time trying to block out the past, scared of going back there. But I’ve recently came to realise that embracing and learning from, opposed to running from the past is the best healing mechanism and isn’t always as scary as it seems. So, I got out the old journals, and put this shit together since I have all the time in the world on my hands these days, in hopes of helping people my age at the time of these entries, before it’s too late.  

Looking back at the journals for me was scary almost, because I am not that girl anymore and I don’t know where I went wrong.. How I got so far into the rabbit hole. So close to the ledge. I was hardly alive.. Just surviving. Felt like a walking zombie, numb to the world most of my teenage years. 

Most of the time, the person you were back then, is no longer the person you are now and embracing that old self is kind of liberating because you realise what you overcame. 

You remember being that scared little girl where you didn’t think you’d see the next day, let alone the next 10 years; and you’re reading it, reminiscing about being that girl, but it hardly feels like you anymore and it’s the best feeling ever knowing you could never be that girl again because you have surpassed that, and you are exactly where you are supposed to be.  

 When you’re in that dark state you could never imagine anything hopeful for yourself in the future, you see the same dark colours, the same dull lines and shades. But time passes and you don’t realise the change but it happens slowly and when you look back, or read back its crazy to ever believe that was you.  

So, I will include entries that will include my experiences with battling myself and the “demons” as they call them (therapy was not my thing, to say the least.) Writing about my emotions and how my mind seemed to be working in certain situations, helped me see what it was that affected me and what it was that I needed as an individual in order to cope in this sometimes chaotic, charade-like world.  

But also at times when things in life don’t go as planned.. Sometimes those demons feel like they are creeping back up and it makes me wonder if  they really were there all along but I learned to suppress them with materialistic joy, or do them creeping back up, prove just a little bump in the road I can easily rid of?  

That is something I still do not know the answer to, as of many things. I am learning and growing and my journey will never end, life is just too confusing to stop questioning, to stop pondering on who we are and what the hell we are doing here. Knowledge is key. Learning is fun, reading is honestly life. Losing my mind in a book will always be my go to escape. Fuck drugs, books are key.  

Drugs ended up being the opposite of an escape in the end. With them I stayed hidden within the cave in the mind, now, I am able to let the shit that’s in there, out. And man does it feel good. Fuck that cave I thought I wanted, needed. Without it, I really see. Books are the new drug. They are life.  

I think I’ll put the journals away and not touch them for another 5 years.. If at all. Although it was something I needed, I don’t want to see them again, I want to forget for a little and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to forget some things. Cause it will never fully happen, everything that has ever happened is stored inside our memory box. So, it’s nice to zone, get lost in the moment forget for a little while, sometimes. The past is the past, no longer who I am. I am just hoping my past can help someone else.  

There are some books I can honestly say were life changing as well. For me, and for many others, the principles in these books, when properly applied, have positively impacted lives on a grand scale. The results are astonishing. The power of literature is amazing. A gift all of us should cherish. i will share some book references in my other posts as well.   

The sharing of people of the past and present stories, achievements, strategies, and naturally just their lifestyles, is also a gift we should all take advantage of. These stories are proof. Proof that we too can apply the genius within us to do and acquire whatever it is we want in this life. 

Everybody is just an ordinary human being, no one better than anyone else, we all have the ability to do whatever we wish to, (yeah okay some people have exceptional talents, and born with gifted abilities or whatever, but with practice and patience any human could be just as good) what makes us extraordinary is knowing that we possess the power to do so. That we possess the power to do so much, any one of us. It is just about actually believing it and doing it.  

This world is 100% ours to take. All those corny ass quotes you heard your whole life like: “the world is in your hands,” “you can do anything you want to do!,” or “the sky is the limit!” they are all true to the tee. I swear to God you can have it all. Just gotta let go of the heavy shit, learn to float a little lighter.  

We are all, and always will be misunderstood, I mean no one will ever fully know the far corners of your mind, heart and soul, and finding peace with that, instead of claiming that you are misunderstood and lost, will bring you far more freedom, at least it did for me. Probably am at least 10% crazy though hahahah but that’s okay aren’t we all a little mad to a degree? 

“Is everyone mad, do you think?..One way or another do you think it could be so? Jung gave one of his shrugs and said: “There are degrees of madness of course. I have found traces of it in myself, I do confess. But madness is a crafty beast and cannot be caught with theories, but to actively oppose them. Facts are what matter. And the facts regarding each individuals madness are all we have. General theories of madness merely get in the way of discovering its true nature in each patient, one by one by one. My own madness is quantified by parentheses-just as all madness is. And because of that, I have learned not only to deal with it, but to live with it. And most importantly, like any person must, learn to function in it’s presence. It is mine-my own and only mine. What happened in Mister Pilgrim’s case is that he can no longer function-and whether this is because he is mad or for some other reason is still to be revealed.” Pilgrim, by Timothy Findley

  Here are some of my favourite book recommendations on this subject:

If you are interested in reading about a variety of different subjects such as mental health, inside the minds of disturbed artists, the importance of being an introvert, importance of body language and non-verbal communication, the importance of mental rehearsal and imagery, the power of our minds, mindfulness, metaphysics and the cosmic world and how all the great genius’ of the past have tapped into this power to achieve seeming miracles, addiction, abuse, the effects loneliness and so much more, please check out some of my other posts: