For the “Oversensitive”

When I was a young girl, the only way to get me to learn anything was to make me laugh. A frustratingly dark and imaginative child, I remember being taught how to tie my shoelaces by thinking of it as a rabbit that had to be strangled.

After a furious competitive temper tantrum with myself my mother had me in a fit of unstoppable belly laughs with her unconventional but very understanding method. And that’s the first time I associated something dark with laughter. A mechanism that has shaped every bit of me and my world view. I learnt that finding the comedy in life was the only way to survive it for me, which is not to say I use comedy as a defence mechanism, I do however use it to carve out my path.

I have a brain that sees the final solution to all its problems in destroying itself entirely, it sits next to its own personal cartoon missile launch button. Such is the way for people who do not “Over-think” so much as “Over-feel”.

It’s not all negative, I can be at a fireworks display and openly sob at the fact that we are all watching the sky together and feeling the same thing. I get irrationally angry when someone misunderstands me or my intentions, as so often I feel that if they knew me, they could read my mind (an assumption which is of course, completely false). Losing myself in laughter can result in intense euphoria for days.

Overfeelers like myself are incessant, intense, and require skip loads of self control to keep emotions in societies palletable bracket. Needing and wanting to feel all of the things at once is a gluttonous, and greedy mindset, it throws you from overworking, to having sex for days on end, regretful of every moment where you could’ve felt more, been more present. It’s addictive and volatile, and half the time if you were looking at a person experiencing all of this? You’d never even know.

So you see this is where laughter and comedy is a guiding light. A person can’t control themselves when they are laughing, it stops every thought in its tracks, it can’t hurt anyone (if it’s not at someone), and it makes you surrender to it physically and mentally. It is my own personal Jesus when I want or need to push my own cartoon button. It took me a good long while to learn that when I reach “fuck it” I can choose to explode in a fit of tears, self loathing and anger, or I can breathe, look at the situation I’ve got myself into (think your handbag breaking right at the end of a long day, or stubbing your toe in the middle of a heated discussion with a significant other) and let myself see through the feeling fog, and into the other side. Surrender to it, get lost in it, and trust humour to catch you and put you back on the ledge of reason. (See what I did there, like the edge of reason).

As an overfeeler I tend to take myself incredibly seriously when unchecked. As far as I’m concerned to be a creative you are allocated a certain amount of time to disappear up your own asshole, as it often produces the best work, but you have to crawl out for day to day life and revel in the ridiculousness of yourself and everything else, this has made me an infinatley more bareable person.

I have several mechanisms for the exhausting “what ifs” of my brain (more on that later) but what I’m trying to say, is for an overfeeler it always seems to feel like you are your own island, and that’s simply not the case, there’s loads of us, all trying to hold on to our brain fireworks, lest we let one off in your face by accident.