SENSITIVE

I may be a tangled wad, but I can certainly feel a disconnect shift.

I'm a sensitive motherfucker.

It’s taken me forty years to unapologetically say that.

Flashes of hazy snapshot memories of my childhood come to mind. Me in my room, overhead light blazing, wildly sorting through socks of all colors and brands, searching for THE ONES with “no funny toe thing” (the toe seam) to wear. My days were filled with this panicked and often internal meltdown routine and usually ended up with me getting made fun of by most members of my family for wearing my socks inside out. I often reduced the teasing exposure with the +solution+ of rolling the legs of my socks into… well, literally a roll. Like Olive Oyl.

Then I only got made fun of for that.

Sensitivity doesn’t stop at the clothing that's touching me and how it's touching me, it weaves through the sounds and their echos, the pungent, face-slapping smells or abrupt lack of smells, the temperature of not only the air, but the energetic temperature of a room.

Having no control (or control denied to me) of most the things listed above resulted in a constant internal boil of sensation digging its nails into emotional outburst and reaction.

The sensitivity to perceived rejection.

The sensitivity to having a nuclear family.

The sensitivity to being misunderstood and not understanding.

The sensitivity of every thought and emotion finding itself naturally bold and italicized therefore constantly under surveillance by all systems.

If your breath pattern changes mid sentence, if your shoulders slump while you fidget and listen, if 5e fall of your footsteps sounds heavier than ten minutes before….

I sense it.

I wish I didn’t.

I wish I hadn’t.

Sobriety has only made that worse.

Some days I would give anything to feel less and I miss alcohol for that falsified reason alone.

Realizing my neurodivergence and unmasking exhausted me at first, but now everything feels amplified. As I put myself back together… my sensitivity feels fortified and mostly unapologetically declared, protected, and viewed as (god i hate this terminology) a super power.

Before my sobriety and neurodivergence upgrade, I thought everyone was this sensitive.

This sensitive!

I thought they just carried it better, like everyone else had the answers and I couldn’t cut it. I thought all of my reactions to every moment was a reaction of hypervigilance to growing up in a turbulent and traumatic eggshell household. I thought maybe it was just a Pinkola Estes ''Wild Woman'' intuition thing.

Truth is, it's all those things and wiring and more all wadded up and ready to read every nuance, shift, shiver, quiver, tint, tone, texture, taste, and sensation of each sensory organ as well as the energy of the brain.

So when my bids for connection with someone I love go unseen and unheard and ignored in the slightest, you bet your bottom drum it hits harder and resonates into next week.

I reach, I pebble, I crave, and I silently beg in my actions to be seen, heard, held, and connected,

And then I ruminate in its forever seeming silence.