Sensitive

To soften?

I’ve been described as sensitive by every man I’ve seriously dated. It’s not always been said cruelly. Delicateness is possible when having clarifying conversations with someone about what that sensitivity means. ‘You’re quite sensitive, aren’t you?’ can open a productive and loving talk about your needs, the origins of your pain, the places that you shield most and that need the most care. In my current relationship, it’s been just that. Something to build on, the start of communication that allows us to know one another better. My sensitivity isn’t a grenade or an awful malady, it’s mine and it’s ours and it’s fine. 

In the past, though, it’s been a source of all kinds of unkindness. One ex-boyfriend was totally incensed by it. He ignored all the ways that it made me a loving and empathetic partner to him and reached straight for frustration when I wasn’t able to brush off mistreatment, required conversation and repair after a fight, cried if I was upset, felt my feelings and (shock horror) allowed them to show on my face.

Because of this, I tried to put my sensitivity away. I scolded myself when something stung or I needed extra time to process a change or a disruption. It was an error in my programming that needed to be corrected. I wasn’t trying hard enough. I wasn’t a proper person. I would need to fix this in myself. I should toughen the fuck up.

I feel differently now. I accept this part of myself as not only real but also fully deserving of care and consideration. I am sensitive and so I must find ways to live well alongside that. I ask for consideration and I give consideration to myself. Where upheaval and stress can’t be avoided, I set aside time for rest and repair. I talk to myself as I wish to be talked to by others. I apologise to myself after cruelty. I look for ways to make any situation easier on myself. Being good to myself on a fundamental level and accepting my sensitivity completely has made me more flexible, rather than less. Knowing I will catch myself means I push myself further and try new things.

Before I saw specialists to diagnose first ADHD and then ASD, I broadly labelled myself as a ‘highly sensitive person’. It seemed to fit. Uncertainty has always made me feel like my skin was being peeled off and I can react to a small change of plan like I’ve been told the world is going to end and what would I like to do with the remaining 45 mins? If I wanted to socialise for 6 hours, I’d need 12 to properly decompress and recover afterwards. All of this I understood as my undesirable but inarguable elements. Until recently the conclusion was: here I am and sorry about that.

Conversations about sensitivity are fascinating to me. Some people admit it furtively, apologetically, and only once they trust you. Others list it as a virtue. “They’re so sensitive” can mean so many different things depending on who is saying it.

Personally, I think that it takes a great deal of strength to live in the world as a sensitive person without trying to re-arrange yourself or make constant apology. To open, to try, to ask hard questions, to live a full emotional life, to feel to your full depth, to map your needs and meet them, to resist being cruel.

I am learning that nobody will celebrate my own sensitivity besides me, and if I decide that it’s an unforgivable character flaw then the world will waste no time mirroring that back to me. Things will be so much harder and more painful if I return to a place where I treat my own sensitivity as something shameful. So I will do my best not to.

Sensitivity is sensitivity. It’s its own distinct thing- not a prettier word for weakness or cowardice, not a cousin of sadness, not the absence of strength. Nor is it synonymous with a heightened moral code or any additional goodness. To be sensitive isn’t to have achieved some kind of purity and softness that other, less sensitive people, can’t hope to access. It’s just a different way of experiencing the world. 

I am learning to like it very much.

I am looking for all of its gifts.