Diary Entry 7 March 2021
I am a highly sensitive person. I feel everything. Double and triple as much as all others. I feel energies very strongly. That’s why it is very hard for me to handle large cities. To be in a classroom full of assholes. To have a father with many faults. To talk with a person who was just in a fight or unfriendly. I have no filters. Everything flies straight at me. Everything flies at me. Straight at me. I am a true person. A person that is true to itself. A person who doesn’t have an easy time with blocking anything out, as I see everything very clearly. I perceive everything stronger than other people. I am intuitive.
Makes sense why I feel the most comfortable around babies or younger children. They have no filters. They are true people. Just like me. We have a strong connection. We fit together. To be around people that aren’t true (to themselves or others) isn’t easy for me.
I am different. I feel everything differently, on a different level than other people. I feel different, always have. I am different.
At the age of eight – at least that’s the first memory I have of it – I felt a feeling which is indescribable. Uncomfortable, shame, disgust, aren’t the right words to describe it. I think it has got to do with something sexual. Or not. Anyways, I don’t wear any tight clothing due to that feeling. Sometimes it appears when I think someone is looking at me or when I see them doing so. And sometimes it even appears when someone is just present.
In the past the feeling arose as fast as lightning. It came from one second to the next. I could’ve just been walking and people were behind me and then this terrible feeling came up. I wanted to leave as fast as possible. I wanted to hide so that no-one could see me, so I could shake this feeling off of me. I often changed my clothes – to looser ones – so you couldn’t see my body. It – the feeling – was spread through my whole body, like another layer of skin that was glued to me.
The thing is, I am fine with my body. I accept it, but because I have that feeling in me – especially towards dad – I only wear loose clothing and don’t show it, even though I would like to.
No-one ever described that feeling to me before, that’s why I don’t know how I should describe it. There are no words for it. It isn’t that I don’t feel comfortable in my body, it’s more that I feel uncomfortable around other people and the feeling transfers into my body, which is why I don’t show it.
They’re two different feelings, shame, for example: not wanting to talk to my parents about certain things or not showing myself naked. But the other is much worse to handle. It is almost unbearable, which is why I sometimes have to leave the situation in which it arises.
The difference is, some people don’t like certain things about their body, but they might still wear tight clothing and show it, – like my sister. With me it’s that; if I wouldn’t have this indescribable feeling in me, then I would also show my curves, because I like my body. I feel comfortable in it, but I don’t show it due to the feeling that arises in me around certain people.
It makes me want to hide. I don’t want to be seen, I want to disappear, so I won’t be looked at by the people that make this feeling arise in me. And so, I can’t feel their presence and therefore don’t have to feel this way. I actually want to disappear from the feeling itself, but because it isn’t possible, I distance myself from the people, so I can handle the feeling better, and it doesn’t grow stronger.
I often break into sweats then, I become hot and my head gets dizzy. I want to leave. My mind wants my body to wear loose clothing so the feeling isn’t so strong, but it’s still there nevertheless. Sometimes I become stiff, often I change my cloths, put my hair in front of my breasts or I fiddle with my hair so I cover my chest. I turn my backside away from the person, so they can’t look at it.
Obviously it has something to do with the ‘privates’ – when they get looked at… As if I was sexually abused at some point, even though I have no memory of that… But this isn’t fully true, because I also felt it towards my sister and the feeling was strongest in my stomach, and in that moment it wasn’t in relation to the topic of sex.
Shame is different to this uncomfortable feeling: When a person is present and ‘could’ look at me or just simply is present…
Over the years the feeling grew. Every time I feel it now, it is unbearable. It is so bad and unpleasant, I simply want to sink into the ground. In the past I used to just feel it for a few seconds and before I had the chance to change clothes or disappear, it left me again and I continued on normally. Then it arose for longer, maybe five minutes and during that time, I went away to be alone. Then the time-period increased, and I changed into looser clothes. Then sarcastic comments from my father came along: “Your boobs are as big as watermelons.” ‘Oh no, then he must be looking at my body’, I thought. This is how the indescribable feeling grew. Sometimes I felt it the entire day. With more comments and experiences, it grew. Then it became a week. A month. And now it has been with me continuously for over a year.
In random situations, with random people, it arises. Yesterday for example, when we went for pizza, I saw a girl crossing the street and I felt it. I mean, I am feeling it non-stop for a year already, but there it surfaced again.
Why I feel it non-stop is due to all the experiences, but why it stayed with me then, is because a girl wrote me a letter saying she was in love with me, and that was the last drop in the bucket to make it overflow. After a while the feeling transferred – even stronger – onto dad, because so many things went wrong between us during that time. He made more and more mistakes, and what didn’t help was that he couldn’t accept I simply couldn’t look him into the eyes or couldn’t be around him – due to this feeling.
It is still here today, and I have no idea how I should describe what it feels like. I have no idea how it started and why I feel this way… but I would say this feeling is harder to handle in daily life than the feeling of sadness.
I am so deep in despair, and it is nerve-racking and annoying when I can’t describe it and there are no words for it, or I find none. Like this I can’t expect anyone to understand it… I just want to disappear when I feel it and the best word I can find for the feeling is: discomfort, but that’s not enough. It is more.
And because I can’t describe it, no-one can know what I mean… I hope I can find the right terminology for it soon and I can find out what the feeling is and how it started…
We are still living in granny and grandads house and sadly dad is here more often now. With ‘sadly’, I actually only mean that I have to feel this terrible feeling all the time now, and it comes to the surface a lot, – especially lately.
Thank you so much for reading! You can’t believe how much it means to me! L.
