Hyper Senstivie about Hyper Sensitivity

I've put off writing here for various reasons, none of them very compelling.  Tonight, sans dinner, I have the time and energy (ever notice how digestion robs one of energy?) to tread around an idea purling around my brain of late.

The idea?  That I am an HSP, a HyperSensitivePerson.  Proof?  I cannot recite, with attention, the stanza from The Ancient Mariner:  The spirit who bideth by himself, In the land of mist and snow, Who loved the bird that loved the man, Who shot him with his bow.

Tears spring to my eyes and if I dwell upon it I would cry, not only cry but boohoo.  Or, last night watching an Irishman canoe the River Shannon, talking about a male corn crake calling uselessly for a female who will not come, I bawled.  Filled a hanky with snot and tears.

I cannot watch certain tv shows or movies (have not watched The War Horse or Avatar despite them being given as gifts on DVDs because I know I would cry and I'm sick of crying at the behest of others).

Much of my adult online media digital life is spent avoiding things which will reduce me to snotandtears.  Ditto people.  I like people but spend an inordinate amount of time avoiding them, avoiding social obligations, avoiding minutes - which seem like hours - of seemingly scripted small talk.  I know, KNOW, it's harmless, it is the oil of social connectivity, what we use as a substitute to smelling each other's bums.  Nevertheless, these things exhaust me.  Why I am not a party goer, a ladies who lunch lady, why I have few friends, something I regret but which comes with the territory of being me.

I am my mother's daughter after all.


Don't know whether I still have the poem but when going through Mom's things after she died I found a poem she'd written in defence of being a watcher rather than a doer, that the world was full of doers but the world needed watchers to appreciate the doers.   I do do.  But I do privately rather than publicly. 

I do wish I was otherwise.  Life, in many respects, would be easier.  But would it be better?  To fit into the mold of what a 'good' person should be?  That those with a strong sense of community live longer, happier more satisfying lives?  How lovely for them.  But if my nature is one that is exhausted by social interactions, who finds what others take in their stride abhorrent and excruciatingly sad, is that so awful?

I think observing the Creation takes all types and if some of us are too much affected by the seemingly mundane, so be it.