Highy Sensitive

Today I found out I’m a highly sensitive person. SHOCKER...not really. I could have told you I take things too personally, but this I think can also be a good thing. When I feel something, I feel it completely, no half way for me. I want to give the people around me all I can but it hurts when they don’t give it back. I think this was one of the problems with my relationship with Brian. I felt so much in the beginning but never felt my feelings were reciprocated so slowly I closed up until it was too late. There were too many nights in the beginning that I almost cried myself to sleep. (note to self, why did you keep this up?) I have to believe that through the course of the relationship his feelings came closer to what mine were from the start.

Thinking about this now, it’s part of the reason I’m not looking for another guy. Sure some of my friends tell me I need to find someone new and move on, but I can’t. (They even check out guys and tell me what stores they’re working in :-P) Even though I’m the one that ended it, I’m not over it. I gave one person a HUGE part of my life for a year and a half, more than I’d ever given someone else, I can’t just move on. I believe I owe it to myself and to Brian to give myself some time to discover who I am by myself. Work on the areas I need to.

I think, at least in some respect, I tried to be the person my partner wanted me to be so I give up a little of myself. Sometimes this is good, sometimes it is bad. I am different from who I was before I dated Brian, I like some of the things that have changed, they won’t be leaving, but some of the stuff wasn’t me. I need to make changes that make me feel like myself still.

I know now I’m not one of those people that need to have someone to FEEL complete. How can you rely on someone else to do that for you? If you do, you’ll never be happy. I need to feel complete single so that when I decide I’m ready for another relationship I can be complete with that person, rather than because of that person.

I wonder at the people that jump from relationship to relationship, do they not respect themselves, do they now know how to just be, do they not respect the people around them? The people I’ve seen that have jumped into relationships very soon after another ended have all turned out bad. They weren’t ready to fully love, to give fully. Don’t you owe it to the new person to be 100% theirs and not have half of you still dealing with the loss? If someone could explain that to me I would greatly appreciate it. My only thought is that you didn’t really care about the person you were just with so losing them wasn’t that big a deal. It’s like losing a sock, you shrug your shoulders and get another one out of the drawer.

I think of what I’m going through as a type of mourning. That someone/something died, because it did. You pay respect to the dead, why can’t you do the same for ended relationships?