How do I express myself?

I know now that this isn't a typical, stay-in-bed-all-day depression. This is depression of my heart, depression of my emotions and my brain is throwing them all up. I want so badly to see a light at the end of this tunnel. I'm so afraid of my existence amounting to absolutely nothing. It hurts. Everything hurts. Nothing I say or type or do is right. I feel like I am bursting at the seems with energy and completely exhausted at the same time. My brain is in over drive and I can barely seem to think or focus on any one thing for more than 23 seconds. I'm obsessed with picking the one perfect thing to think about or do at any given moment, but nothing ever seems quite right. I can see the flaws and cracks in every thing more clearly than ever, mostly in myself and every thing I think and do, but also in other people. I turn to someone I once looked up to and their very existence seems so crappy and mundane. Everything they talk about sucks. The food they eat looks stale. It's like I've reawakened my awful adolescence. I realize now though that even if I wanted to I can't put this part of me away. My inability to express any of this is the worst thing in the world. My brain is working so hard every day to generate all of these ideas and stories and none of them ever get told. This is the worst thing to me. I imagine a painter who spent his life creating masterpieces, then locking them up in a closet and never showing them to anyone. Some people paint for themselves, that's fine- but I don't. I think to be able to share my ideas with others. The problem is that I don't even know how. I don't have a platform to. Do I speak, write, speak, dance? Furthermore, are my ideas even worth sharing with others? I love writing, but I feel like my ideas aren't even worth telling anyone about. I'm waiting for someone else to discover me, for someone else to show me what to do, and this just plain sucks. I know this will never happen. And other people have seen glimpses of who I really am and the power I want to express, but they're probably just as confused as me. Then I feel guilty for not expressing myself, and I can feel the ugly clock of time ticking away and I feel this panic and dread. I fear that I will never move from this place, and if I never move from this place I will never fulfill my destiny, but of course, this begs the questions: What the hell am I supposed to be doing? If only I knew, I would do it. If only someone would hand me down a giant roadmap and step by step directions, I would follow every single one, no matter how painful and soul-exposing. I would reach into the ugliest, darkest places if only someone would tell me how. When I was a kid I hated those choose your own adventure books. I want to watch the story unfold from my safe place, but it's so hard to be so present with myself and so aware of my true desires, because my desires are huge. They reach beyond what anyone in my life has accomplished, and I simply don't know if I am up to this task. I must be having these feelings for a reason, I tell myself. There has to be some good, solid reason I am built this way. This all must tie together and make some kind of sense. If I don't have faith in that, I am just broken and flawed and I don't fit.

Anchor

I feel a massive ball of anger building. No, it's not building. It's there. It's very real and very tangible and I don't know what to do with it. If I spend one more second not doing something with my life it's threatening to explode. I have to remind myself that I am doing something, I am taking steps to get out of this situation. But I can feel this thing bearing now on me every second and it feels so big. It's fear and anger all blended together and I don't know where one starts and the other begins. For the past few weeks I have woken up in a panic and I can feel “it” looming over me. I have moments during the day where I can feel myself working through some of it. But I am constantly chiding myself, telling myself how stupid and pathetic and weak I am for not being able to work through this thing, and it hurts so much. It's every situation where I felt too sensitive and inadequate to do the task at hand and every person who made me feel weak and the combination literally feels like an anchor dragging me down. It has been for years. For the first time I finally want to stop feeding it and let it go.

Wrong

I feel writing about being highly sensitive is infinitely more difficult than writing about any other subject. With most topics, the words just flow, but this is so much harder. It simply doesn't feel as natural to think, process and type out the highly sensitive part of myself. I find this incredibly ironic, because let's face it, as HSPs, we're highly sensitive all day, every day. I feel like I, and many other HSPs, are just getting comfortable with who we are, so delving into the technicalities can get pretty awkward. I wish I was more comfortable with myself and eagerly await the day I can fully feel like myself and be okay with that. The more I read and learn about HSPs, the more I feel okay with myself every day. I think about the year's of self hatred I put myself through and it makes me angry. I feel angry at myself and angry at everyone else, even if it's irrational. It's probably no one's "fault" that I became so self loathing, just an unfortunate set of circumstances. Trying to fit into the non-sensitive box can really do a number on you. Until recently, I sincerely didn't believe there was another way to exist. In of her podcast I believe, Ane Axford(fellow hsp, if you haven't checked her yet, google her asap!) stated that we learn to view ourselves as wrong. Those words have been following me around for months now. Because of my experiences, I gradually started to see myself as all wrong. The way I looked, my interests, my thoughts, my dislikes... they were all a problem to be fixed. The harder I tried to fix them, the deeper I dug my hole of self-loathing. I'm happy to say that I'm slowly learning to stop living this way. I can feel the change within myself and want those around me to experience it too.

The word

I'm definitely not in a writing mood. I feel out of practice, and like I might be pretty crappy right now. I always feel good after physical activity. I told my sister to hit the ball and think of something that made her really angry. Embarrassingly, I found myself hitting the ball over and over with quite a bit of gusto, shrieking and yelling the whole time. I want to do what I was put on this earth to do. To communicate, and I feel as if I have no voice. Until now I haven't thought of my sensitivity as something that could help propel me into success, just a problem holding me back. It's given it so many different names: anxiety, depression, ocd, social anixety. At times, it's possible that it propelled into actual disorder because I didn't know how to manage it. But deep down I knew it was this “thing.” Sensitivity. I still don't fully like the word. I know it's the single most defining factor about me, and that scares the hell out of me.

I think about my sister and how she is the most amazing artist, yet she cannot paint. She doesn't paint because she's afraid of what's going to come out of her brain. She's afraid of really being good at something and all the pressure and the uncertainty. It's too much sometimes. I wonder if this is how I am with writing. All of these words and feelings that I didn't know existed just coming pouring out of me. That's the thing. I'm not sure I didn't know they were always there. It's as if my fingers pull them out of my brain where they were all jumbled up. I'm not sure what happens when I write, but sometimes it feels like someone else takes over. And when I do it I wonder why I don't do it every day, all the time, except that maybe it's too much and I don't know if I like myself enough yet to do it. I'm afraid of not being good enough. I'm afraid of where my feelings might take me. I'm afraid of what you will think.

Up stream

So today felt pretty shitty, and I have had worse days and I will bounce back from it. But it just sucked. As soon as she mentioned it was full time, all the alarms bells went off in my head and my heart went to a screeching halt inside. What do I wanna do for the rest of my life? Well, I wanna be healthy and look good. I want to have a lot of sex. I want to spend my life with him. I want to live in peace. I want to not worry. I want to be making a difference. I want to be writing. I want... I want to give something that the world needs. Someone like me... all I can really see myself doing is being a professor or an author. I feel so big and most jobs feel so little, like I'm trying to squeeze my giant self into a little box. Of course, because I am wispy and lithe and look very young, it's somewhat common that other people think I should fit into one of these containers. I'm not sure if someone like me can be happy and successful in this world. That's what I'm really afraid of. I remember the first time I saw your face. I remember seeing your face after not seeing you for a year and a half. I remember watching you walk towards me and not really knowing how to act. I remember blocking out my emotions because to let them free would have be too overwhelming and I would have cried. I'm in love with you and I think about losing you and it literally seems like the worst thing. Being with you is like eating and breathing the most delicious air and food. I remember the look on your face when you saw me and how happy and cute you were. I feel that tidal-wave of emotion when I look at you now and I can feel my eyes well up with tears and I just can't understand what I did to deserve you. Your existence makes me feel like I must be doing something right and I must be a good person. And I know that somewhere, deep down, eventually it will all be okay. Writing is all I really want to do some days.

Introduction

I'm not sure of I want to go too far into the purpose of this blog, other than to tell you that I'm writing about my experiences as an HSP and hoping to connect with other HSPs. I have good HSP friends, but I can always use more. I'm in my early 20s(almost mid!), and I hope that doesn't turn off older HSPs from connecting with me. I hope we can all find common ground on this discovery of our sensitivity. Side note: I bought Ane Axeford's Sensitive and Thriving program and it's absolutely a lifesaver. I won't spoil the contents here, because I think it's very important to buy the program and support her talent. She makes insights about your life as an HSP that will blow you away. Well, well, worth the $75, and I'm a hard up college student. Some of what I talk about her if inspiration I'm drawing from the program, because she is so very, very brilliant.