Don’t take it so personally.
Stop feeling so much.
Why are you so sensitive?

These are the phrases I’ve heard from as far back as I can remember, the words thrown at me by others as if verbalizing them would somehow change who I was, how I’ve always responded to my environment and surroundings.

The purest fact at the heart of it all is that, yes, I’m the Sensitive Girl. I feel things deeply, am not afraid to be vulnerable and emotional in front of others. I listen intently to peoples’ words rather than speaking first. I take things to heart. I analyze and overthink, an anxious mind housed in a body both delicate and fragile.

But it’s okay. Really.

I accept myself along with all of those emotions, the ones that can often times get overwhelming, have accepted that I’m a crier rather than someone who will lash out in anger. In fact, I find pride in the fact that I feel so deeply, that I’m in tune with myself and the world around me. I’ve always felt it’s made me a good judge of character, someone who can pick up on what other people are feeling.

So it has never been me who has a problem with my sensitivity, but rather everyone on the outside who seems to take issue with it. I’ve been told countless times, by countless people, that I need to “toughen up,” that I need to grow a thicker skin if I’m to survive in this world, one that is supposedly nothing but vicious and cruel towards its inhabitants.

Maybe it’s just a simple matter of opposing viewpoints, but I don’t see the world that way.

Maybe it’s a choice, the spin we decide to put on our own surroundings. And if it is a choice, then I’ve so far chosen to wake up each day feeling lucky. Lucky that I live in a world that is so vast and full of such wonderful people, ones who are willing to reach a hand out to me even though I’m nothing more than a stranger to them. For me, the world is the place where I can sit in tall grass and feel the sun on my face, the breeze running its strong and knowing fingers through my hair.

So let me tell you something about being the Sensitive Girl: It’s okay. It’s okay to be that girl.

And I, for one, would never want to take back feeling all of those emotions. Not the ones that have forced me to break down in embarrassing “crying at work” tears, or the ones that have made me feel despair so devastating that it’s literally brought me to my knees. I don’t regret one single tear, not one instance when someone looked at my running nose and red-rimmed eyes and they told me I was overreacting.

The reason why is this: feeling all of that pain so deeply has allowed me to be free enough to feel the amazing things in life even more fiercely.

Those people who always seem so stoic and stone-faced, the ones who are able to get through the worst of experiences without a single tear, well, they aren’t any stronger or any more powerful than I am. They’re not any more put-together or adult-like just because they have the ability to pull back their emotions from the world.

Everyone deals with their issues in their own way and for some, “dealing with it” means wrapping those dark emotions up neatly and stacking them somewhere deep within themselves. Maybe they’ll deal with it later or maybe they won’t. Either way, that’s not me and it never will be.

I will always be that girl who feels. The one who replays every dumb thing I’ve ever said on repeat late at night while I’m trying to fall asleep, the covers pulled tight around my chin like the child that I used to be.

So yes, I’m the Sensitive Girl, the one who feels way too much.

But because of that, I’m free.