It's More Fun With Your Hands Up!!

I don't enjoy extreme emotion. I enjoy being ecstatic about as much as I enjoy being in sorrow. I don't like either.

I've tried to analyze why this is and I have decided I am this way for 2 reasons: one, I am a highly sensitive person and extreme emotions are very, very extreme with me and it's exhausting and two, growing up my "feelers" got worn out with too much emotion.

Growing up I never felt calm or bored. There was always something extreme going on. People dying, people angry, people leaving, people divorcing, people sick and on the verge of dying, people being killed. It was just too much feeling and my "feelers" got wore out.

When you get really, really happy - ecstasy, euphoria, etc. there's always the coming down from that high which is not enjoyable at all. And, well, sorrow and grief, they speak for themselves. I always worried that I would never be able to find my way out of the darkness of sadness.

So, I like mediocrity, mundane, boredom. I love it when NOTHING exciting is going on.

Anyway, for the past few weeks I have had to live in extreme emotion. One of my students died tragically in a car accident. A happy, talented, handsome young man - gone. It's been very difficult to make it through the days without him in class, his classmates tears, the funeral, the memorials, the events dedicated to him. Until last week his class work was still in the basket to be graded.

Then, yesterday we had the final "night of celebration" for a group of young ladies that I have been mentoring for several months. At the celebration, their fathers "blessed" them. The dads very eloquently told their daughters how special they are and how much they are loved. It was very moving. To tears moving.

I've been on this roller coaster of emotion and I'm ready to get off now. I never really could put my hands up because I was afraid I would fall out of the car and I don't really think it makes the ride more fun, more dangerous maybe, but why add more fear to fear? 

Don't do anything fancy to my turkey this year. Don't mess with the sweet potatoes or dressing. Just give me plain ole boring Thanksgiving food. Let me sit on the couch fat and happy. I don't want to be moved to tears. I don't want to get worked up to a frenzy over a football game.

Just like when a tuning fork that has been hit finally finishes vibrating and is silent - that's the way I want to be.