On Being Sensitive…

(originally published on www.alcoholexperiment.com)

When I was writing my book and people asked me what it was about, my first reaction was always that it’s my story. For those who’ve known me since I was little, I’m pretty sure they wonder “What story?” For those who haven’t, I bet they expect some dramatic and traumatic tale. Yet, objectively speaking, my life has been fairly ‘normal. Of course, life is not an objective experience; it’s a subjective one.

 

As a child, I was made fun of. My parents would call me wimpy, as I would often get upset and end up in tears, even for seemingly silly things. You’d think that’d go away as I grew up, but it didn’t. As an adult today, I’ve come to accept that that’s the way I am, and I embrace it. I’ve learnt that there’s nothing wrong with me. I was just sensitive. And I still am. I feel all the feels. I watch movies and I cry. I watch talent show auditions and I cry. I get upset and I cry. And you know what? That’s okay. Crying is a way to express feelings and release them.

 

Some people are sensitive to sun rays. I am sensitive to feelings. And this is why I tell my story. Because on the outside, it may seem innocuous, but on the inside, I was full of feelings I didn’t know what to do with. I was carrying feelings I had never let out. The more I kept them in, the more they ate away at me on the inside.

 

It took me years to figure this out. I realised this only recently, in fact, as I was listening to an interview about a woman being sensitive as a child. I realised that we don’t become sensitive. We are born sensitive. This stayed in the back of my mind, waiting for its second part.

 

As I was browsing through Netflix, I noticed the movie 28 Days with Sandra Bullock. I remember watching it 17 years ago and crying my eyes out at the cinema. I didn’t even drink much back then. Not yet, anyway. Still, that movie resonated so much with how I felt.

 

I was curious and decided to watch it again. The movie starts with the main character getting drunk at a party and arriving late at her sister’s wedding the next day. When she gets there, her sister tells her, “You make it impossible to love you.” She smirks and shrugs it off, but the arrow goes straight into my heart. Later during the movie, her roommate cuts herself as an act of self-mutilation. She explained that she wasn’t trying to kill herself. Sandra asks her: “But doesn’t it hurt?” Her roommate replies: “Yes, but it feels much better than everything else.” I can relate so much with that. At some point, her boyfriend tells her how life is just painful and that everyone uses their own way to run away from the pain. I’ve been there too.

 

Seventeen years. It’s taken me 17 years to really get it. And get out of it. Ironically, while she is in rehab, Sandra Bullock’s character often has to wear a neck sign because she doesn’t know how to ask for help. I watched that movie with a new set of eyes, and dare I say, a new mind as well.

 

And I’m glad I did. And I still cried. But when the movie ended, I felt infinitely grateful. Because 17 years later, I’m on the other side of the fence. I watched that movie and just like Sandra Bullock, I felt that I, too, had been given a new life, a new chance to be happy now. Way happier than I could have ever dreamed of…

 

Staying alcohol-free isn’t always easy, it often comes with its challenges, but if you stick with it long enough, you’ll find that you don’t need alcohol to escape reality anymore, simply because your reality will have become one you actually LOVE.

 

In my course, BYOB – Be Your Own Booze, I teach women to reclaim their Inner Power and transform their reality. It’s never too late to write a happy ending. You own the power to make it happen. Say YES and let today be the first day of your new life in HD.

 

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