Christmas is tomorrow. Christmas. I should be excited. Christmas is something to look forward to. But I am not looking forward to it. I am actually kind of dreading it. You see, I feel very different than my family. I am very different. And it makes it hard for me to be around them. Because when I am around them I feel like I am very out of place. I feel like I don’t belong. I feel misunderstood.
You see, I am an extremely sensitive person. I pick up on everything that is going on around me. I feel things very deeply and am very affected by the energy of the people around me. I get excited and I get upset and I have high highs and low lows. And I am different than my family. Does my family care about me? Yes, they do. I know that they do. I know that I will never be left stranded on the streets with nowhere to go. I know that I will never be in a hospital alone. I know that if I am in a bind they will be there for me. I know that they care about me. But I still feel different from them. I am still different.
This is something that is really hard for me to accept. I do not want to be different. I want to feel like I belong. Like I fit in with the people whose same blood runs in my veins. Because who am I if I don’t? Is it ok that I am different? Is it ok that I feel deeply and am extremely sensitive? I used to think that it wasn’t. I used to think that I needed to shut that part of myself down. I tried to. For years I tried to. But my attempt to shut down some of the most important parts of me brought me very close to the edge of death. Literally.
It is ok that I am different. As much as it hurts me and makes me sad and upset, it is ok that I am different than my family. It does not mean that there is anything wrong with me. It does not mean that I shouldn’t exist. It does not mean that I will never belong anywhere. My family cares about me. I will not shut down the most important parts of who I am so I feel like I fit in with them. They may not ever understand me. I may always feel out of place when I am around them. But there are other people who understand me. There are other people I feel like I belong with. It may not be with the people whose same blood runs in my veins, but there is a place where I belong.