It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

Sensitive.
That word has followed me my whole life. I grew up thinking it was some kind of bad thing. It felt like a label people kept using to describe me.
It's a good virtue. It's a quality that many people lack. As I've gotten more comfortable with myself I've learned to embrace it. I'm thankful, now, that I'm a sensitive and empathetic person. But as a teen/adolescent it tortured me. I somehow learned in some twisted way that it was a way of calling me weak. Fragile. Made out of glass.
I DO cry at a pin drop and yes, I have had some pretty embarrassing moments crying in public. As a young girl I felt myself actually get jealous when I saw someone able to control their tears, swallow them and let them all come tumble out, somewhere private. For the life of me, I've tried. Inevitably, my sensitivity felt like a curse.
I was called, "cry baby" all the time. "Stop being so sensitive" was said to me over and over again. But what I really heard was, "stop being so weak and get over it already."
Labels. There are plenty, but I'll name a few. Fat, ugly, nerdy, skinny, gay, loser, slut....on and on and on...Yeah, I know sensitive/cry baby is nothing compared to some of these, but to me, it meant so much more. Sometimes, we have no idea what little words said over and over are actually doing. (Sometimes we DO know, but that's another blog entry- entirely.)

An excerpt from my diary (7th grade)

It became such a vicious cycle. The more I couldn't control those damn tears,  the more I got the comments and people telling me to "just stop already"and I came to hate myself even more.

And another

I know now, that I'm a much stronger and capable person then I ever realized. When given the opportunity to just be ME, I learned that being sensitive wasn't a bad thing. It was not a curse. It was a blessing. 

I was in someone's office yesterday, and she had 2 rules up on the wall. (She works in a middle school) BE NICE AND WORK HARD. Nice. It's a simple word and it's pretty simple to do. 

So let's all just try to be nice today.

Always,

Tova 

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