Sometimes I Wish I Could Turn It Off

I've been Quite Emotional my whole life.  I feel all the feels, and I feel them Big.  Really big. 

I'll cry when I'm happy, but I'm also someone who cries when she's frustrated and just so angry.  I laugh so hard tears run down my face.  And when I'm sad... when I'm really sad, I just can't cry.  But I'm stormy. 

I laugh with my whole soul, too.  I love way too hard.  I want to belong, and when I don't, I take the rejection personally.  Words can break my heart.  And they really do.  Knowing that there are words that should be said, but they never are kind of kills me, too. 

I've been told I'm too thin-skinned, that I read too much into what people say and do or don't say and don't do.  I've been told that I'm over-sensitive.  Unable to take a joke.  Too emotional.  High-strung.  Neurotic.  That I'm a walking raw nerve.  I care too much about what other people think. 

It has always felt like a liability.  My buttons are right out there for everybody to see and push, and off I go. 

I really wonder about the people who can be stoic and self-contained and self-possessed.  Those are the people who are the ones people admire.  It's harder to come up with ways being stoic and self-contained and self-possessed is a liability.  I can't even imagine the way it must be, to sail so high above as to not be affected much or at all by the bumps, bunny-hops, moguls, and potholes that trip me up every day, multiple times a day.

And I wish I could turn all of it off, you know?  Just flip a switch and go from Feeling All Feels So Big It Takes My Breath Away to Not Feeling At All.  Or if it's a dimmer-switch, feeling just enough not to be a jerkface.

Man, I'd hate to go through life being a jerkface.

But I can't help but dream about going through life less emotional than I am.

Back during Ted Nolan's last stint as the Sabres Head Coach, he was giving an interview one time and he mentioned that he was "a really emotional person," and instantly, Ted Nolan became a Friend in my Head.  Here was this big, tough, sports dude who had played ice hockey of all things, and who coached a team of other big, tough sports dudes, and he was okay enough with himself to say in an interview, "I'm a really emotional person."  I noticed that people generally didn't use that against him, being "a really emotional person."  There would be snotty social media comments about the team and his coaching style and a disconnect between the team and his coaching style and lack of results and wins.  But I don't remember seeing any criticism that "Nolan is too emotional to be a hockey coach." 

It shifted my perspective just a little bit so I can at least be okay enough with also being "a really emotional person" to tell people that I am one.  Kind of like a warning label, if the red hair wasn't enough of one of those. 

I still do wonder if life would be easier and if I'd feel like less of a liability in it if I could just turn off feeling all the feels, have a thicker skin.  But on the flip-side, just like I happened across Ted Nolan casually commenting that he's a really emotional person, maybe I just haven't found all the members of my Tribe yet, and when I do, it'll be like the Bee Girl from Blind Melon's "No Rain" video finally finding her Bee-ple.