An editor emailed me an assignment to cover a child abuse awareness campaign and I had to turn her down. Another little happy piece to this bipolar thing is overfeeling. I’m a sponge when it comes to other’s suffering. It’s like empathy times twenty, which can be a blessing, but it can also suck pretty bad. Because of it, I have to be careful what I put in my head: what movies I watch, what tv shows I see (no CSI: SVU for me), what I get involved in. Extreme violence, rape, human suffering, torture… all still with me like gum on my shoe and roll through my brain like a VCR (remember those?) stuck on rewind and play. I have extremely vivid daydreams (another nasty piece), and carry people’s problems around with me like they were my own.
(Because of it, I also am hurt easily.)
BUT even in my weird, quirky broken state, I think God finds a way to use me. Because I am an overfeeler, I often find myself fluffing out my angel wings as a rescuer. I am a perpetual matchmaker and fixer…often sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, but thankfully, trusting that God leads me to the right person at the right time. The thing is, over feeling also lets me love deeply– my friends, my family, strangers, probably more so than regular people. And I’ve found a way to turn what could be an extremely good reason to detach from human relationships into a super power.
It doesn’t always work out and I walk a fine line daily between self-preservation and fluffing my angel wings, between shutting people off and pulling them too close, but for the times it does pan out, I can fold my wings in with a happy prayer and know that I was able to use my crazy for some good in the world.
2 comments:
Where's the like button? Thank you. Our society tries so hard to smother our sensitivities that sometimes we forget to celebrate who we are and how we feel.
This is beautiful - just like the person you are.
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