Don't Put the Key to Your Happiness in Someone Else's Pocket

"And she always feels things so deeply"

- Liane Moriarty

Have you ever read a line in a book and had it just stick with you - like having the wind knocked out of you?  Or like the gum on the bottom of your shoe that won't come off? 

When I read that line in What Alice Forgot, I thought - that's me.  I finally know what "too sensitive" on report cards really meant.  Or what my boss said at summer camp in college when she had me wear "Extra Emotional Erin" on a button for the last week of camp.

I feel things to the tips of my toes - the good, the bad and the ugly.  When someone is in a bad mood or a good one, I am there right along with them.  Feeling their highs and their lows.  Another word is co-dependence, but that's a conversation for another day.

In my childhood it was NOT a good quality.  It made me the perfect person to pick on for the mean girls as a tween.  I am sure if you knew me at that time, you'd have more than one story to share.  But as an adult it often serves me well.  I read rooms well and can sense what someone needs often before they do. 

I have been thinking about that a lot lately.  As I navigate the challenges of adulthood and life long commitments, as opposed to childhood transience, I think about being too sensitive to other people's moods and feelings.  It makes it difficult to be OK with Just who I am when I am constantly worried about everything else around me.  It also makes it difficult to be 100% happy when I am so focused on others' feelings.

So now I pause and try to stay in my own little space on the chess board.  For practice, I'm testing out a new mantra...

 

"Don't put the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket"

 

xo friends...