8 Signs You Have Way Too Many Feelings

1. You are often moved to tears by things that should absolutely not move people to tears.

There’s nothing quite as humbling as the experience of stumbling across a particularly poignant fabric softener commercial, featuring some small children and maybe a teddy bear or two, and being moved to heaving sobs. It’s almost an out-of-body experience, where you can feel the tears burning the corners of your eyes and you’re either a) alone, in which case you let that shit flow with abandon or b) around actual humans, in which case you tense up all of your face muscles so as not to let those shameful face droplets fall. There are entire genres of video you can no longer watch, such as ‘moving audition backstory on talent competition shows,’ or songs that you know will cause you to curl into the fetal position with its first opening chords. Basically you just cry a lot, but whatever, it probably cleanses toxins.

2. You feel an intense emotional relationship with pets.

Whenever you’re in someone’s house, the first thing you say is either a giddy “Puppy!” or “Kitty!” depending on the species of the animal at hand. Your disposition for the rest of the day will be heavily decided by whether or not the animal decides it likes you, and a nice little belly-rub session can be the difference between never wanting to return to said house, and never wanting to leave. It’s just that you can express the complex — and often terrifying — levels of love you need to express with them, if only in the form of behind-ear-scratches, and you don’t feel you have to put on some kind of mask of being a neutral, reasonable person.

3. You anthropomorphize everything.

You’ll burn yourself on your toaster oven, then slap your toaster oven out of anger, then apologize to your toaster oven because you didn’t mean to hurt its feelings or make it feel as though it wasn’t good enough for you. You bump into an end table on the way out the door and you briefly stop to say “excuse me,” because you wouldn’t want that end table to think that you were the kind of rude homeowner who doesn’t care about his or her furniture.

4. You dwell on minor incidents for way too long.

There’s nothing better than being in your bed at the ripe old hour at 1 AM, when you know you have to be up extremely early the following morning, and being tortured into sleeplessness by your own mind over that idiotic comment you made while drunk and meeting your friend’s new boyfriend over three years ago. You’re going to replay that comment, and the weird silence that followed it, for a good two hours as you toss and turn and attempt to escape yourself, and you’re not going to sleep until your body has physically exhausted itself with discomfort.

5. You go through the entire range of human emotion on a regular basis.

You’re walking to work and you see a puppy — TODAY IS GOING TO BE GREAT — but then you realize it’s all homeless and dirty — WHY CAN’T I JUST ADOPT EVERY ANIMAL, WHY IS GOD SO CRUEL — but then someone else comes up to realize it and you realize it’s not homeless, just walking without a leash — OH GOD OKAY SOMEONE LOVES IT — but that owner kind of looks like an asshole and is rude to the perfect little puppy who did nothing — I’M GOING TO BREAK INTO THIS DUDE’S HOUSE AND POOP IN ALL OF HIS SHOES, ONE BY ONE — and then you realize you’re late for work, and your whole body breaks into a flailing panic as you crazy-dancing-used-car-man-run to the bus stop.

6. You constantly jump to the worst possible conclusions.

“My friend hasn’t responded to my text message in 30 minutes? She is either dead, or has completely renounced our friendship. Either way, I’d better throw my phone into the nearest body of water to stop torturing myself by checking to see when she is going to get back to me. *Frantically re-reads text to obsess over every last character and decide what part of it made them hate you so much.*

7. You are always worried that you’re bothering people.

*Gchats someone*
*Immediately regrets it*
*Pre-emptively apologizes for distracting them*
*Discovers that they were just in the bathroom*
*Takes the opening and promptly information-dumps on them about all of the ridiculous things that you’re going through at the moment*
*Immediately regrets being all emotionally slutty*
*Closes Gchat*

8. You are simultaneously obsessed and disgusted with love in general.

If anyone were to look at your Tumblr, they would be convinced that it was either moderated by two people who didn’t particularly like each other, or that you slipped into extended fugue states on a regular basis and started phantom blogging. It’s a perfect 50/50 blend of incredibly cheesy image macros of couples cuddling in a king sized bed in a log cabin, or it’s text posts about how much you hate dating and people and how love is an enormous scam (with the occasional sprinkling of porn, because Tumblr). But this a good thing, because it’s an extremely accurate portrait of how you view the world in general. Your body is merely a meat vessel for two warring currents of emotion, and you are frequently faced with the sentimental hurricane that is wanting to be in love forever because love is just wonderful and wanting to isolate yourself in a fort of Snuggies and Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers. It’s tough being you, but let’s be honest, it’s also kind of the best.