Sensitive Meanderings

It’s become a ritual now. One I look forward to every morning. I come to my desk, boot my computer, put on my headphones, click on a link to a radio station from Belgium called Smooth Rivera,” open my journal and begin to write.

I wasn’t writing at my desk before. I would sit in my lazy-boy chair at the kitchen table. I would even perch myself on the kitchen counter if I could find a spot of sunshine to sit in. These days my desk has become my creative space. Perhaps it always should have been.

Sensitivity. That’s what I want to write about this morning. Something I read last night has lingered in my mind and that’s where the pen wants to take me. As I contemplate how to begin a bird lands in the tree in front of my window. I look at him and he seems to be watching me as I meander on the page. Perhaps he landed there to draw my attention to the tree as I contemplate the subject of sensitivity. Sensitivity is something that’s always been part of me like the branches on a tree. And like branches on a tree, my sensitivity has grown, developed and strengthened me along the way.

As a kid I was like a little radar station sending and receiving beams to and from those around me. I would pick up people’s vibrations and often make them part of my own. It was like entering their body and their psyche and registering what they were feeling and where they were at emotionally. It was a way for me to stay emotionally connected to emotionally unavailable people. It was also a way to keep myself safe in a sometimes chaotic world, and a very ingenious way for me to protect those I loved even though, it wasn’t my job to protect them, it was their job to protect me.

I still have this built in radar. It’s a gift I’ve come to recognize, appreciate and embrace as part of me. I wouldn’t want to change this about myself. I am grateful for what it gives me – a deep sense of connection to people but I’ve become wiser over the years on how to use this radar, this acute sensitivity. It is much more balanced and better adjusted than it ever used to be. Now, even in high winds of fierce velocity, I don’t get sucked in or knocked down as easily.

Do I still get hurt and feel as deeply? I most certainly do. I feel the wind whip around me. I feel how it dries out my skin and makes my body weary. I feel it tug at my heart. I feel it shake me and make me fearful, but, beyond the fear, beyond the hurt or the uncertainty of the moment, there’s a deeper knowing that I stand on a solid foundation and that I can stay connected to my gift of sensitivity.

I wouldn’t trade it for the world, this place where I see more, feel more and have the opportunity to be more than I’ve ever been before. From here I feel like I’m always in motion, which for me is a good place to be. I’m forever moving, stirring, seeking, evolving, becoming. That is the life I feel within me. It’s a place of openness, a place where I can connect with other people’s energies: a place where I feel great love, but also a place where I feel great sadness and grief. I cannot separate one from the other, nor would I want to. Both are necessary for me to be the me that I want to be.