My therapist once told me, “You are the guiltiest feeling person I’ve ever met” and just to prove her right, I took it to heart. An astrologer said, “You have so much water in your chart. What is it like to feel the emotions of every single person alive, everyday?” and I wept because I sensed he was displeased. A teacher told my parents “She’s very sensitive. Far more than the other kids in her class.” I took my SATs at 9 years old, but they encouraged my mother to hold me back because of how my eyes glistened when I heard the word no. She told them to go to hell. So I cried my way through my education until high school when they said “You take everything so personally, you’ll never survive in a company environment. You wouldn’t make a good employee.” So I employed myself (out of spite or…necessity) and then later, I hired 200 people. A boyfriend told me “Don’t be so dramatic, everything isn’t a movie.” Fine, so it’ll be an album then. The doctor said “This shouldn’t hurt a bit.” I tread daily on a minefield that leaves me classifying the variations in footsteps, the tonality in voice, a change in breath. “Is everything okay? You seem mad” is my pledge of allegiance to this tightly wound bundle of flesh. I am cut open, butterflied and flayed, with every single nerve exposed like live wires and, yes, they all hurt to touch. Each interaction is a litmus test of how well liked I am, and therefore how worthy to live. I wake up every morning and the moral barometer resets, T-minus 12 hours to prove to myself that I am not the bad person I believe I must be. Sleep, repeat. An amnesiac nightmare. Prometheus on a rock and the gull in my guts is myself. I once envied those with greater armor, but not anymore. “Why do you care so much?” Guard yourself from the little grievances, but the shield does not differentiate. The space where I am vulnerable to the pain that passes through is an entry point for the microscopic good that others may miss. I live in technicolor torment. If I could do it over again and choose the comfortable grey, I would seize a knife and cut the little keyholes back into my every limb. So the light can get in.

Published on January 20th, 2023