This Is Why Sensitive People Hurt MY Feelings
I feel emotionally bullied by people who think I’m a bully. The older I get, the more I notice that I always seem to be hurting somebody’s feelings. I say one thing, someone understands another and nine times out of ten, conversations end with me scratching my head and tracing back my steps to figure out the exact moment that I insulted them. I’ve yet to figure out how to successfully communicate with sensitive people, but sensitive people don’t know how to communicate with me either. My sensitive friends tend to forget that when they insult me by twisting my intentions.
“There is no life without communication,” countless spiritual Twitter accounts tell me. Well, Universe, why did I tweet, “Communication is ruining my life!!!” on March 1, 2014? Because for my first love and I, it ruined everything. I’d grown up modeling, and although it was never a passion, I could always fall back on it during times of professional confusion. When I finally decided I wanted to stop modeling, I fell into a career purgatory. I worked random jobs here and there. I tried my hand at styling and fashion PR, but nothing felt right. My boyfriend’s music career was soaring. He loved his work and I only had him.
After acknowledging that my lack of direction was beginning to take a toll on my relationship, I knew I had to pursue the only thing I had ever felt passionate about—writing. I decided to move out of the apartment he and I lived together in and rent my own studio that I could turn into the ultimate writer pad. I never wanted him to feel used, and success is something I’d never be happy without, so I gave myself the necessary conditions to make both of those things possible. Although I wanted to be the one sleeping next to him for the rest of his life, I knew the only way he’d be happy would be if I had a passion as big as his–I knew I had to move out.
He didn’t take it that way. He thought I was leaving him. He felt abandoned. He slept with a girl on the first night that I moved out, in spite of my decision. My selflessness completely backfired because of his selfishness. He couldn’t see me, he could only see himself. It’s been over a year since I tweeted about communication, and since then I’ve only experienced more misunderstandings, loss of friendships, and too many hurt feelings to count. Communication is still ruining my life.
Around the people I love, I don’t think before I act and I don’t think before I speak. I like to use descriptive words with negative connotations in the most endearing of ways. I expect them to be themselves around me, and I call them “crazy monsters” because to me, that translates into “perfect angel”. I don’t think it’s right, but when people are overly sensitive to everything I say, I have a hard time believing I’m wrong. With sensitive people comes a double standard—they feel as though they can dish out any jokes or judgements, but there’s a very small spectrum of what they can handle in return.
I’m a strong woman. I can take your criticism, and I can take your jokes, but I cannot take your sensitivity. Sensitive people victimize themselves instead of taking responsibility for their own insecurities. My insecure friends become so engrossed in themselves that they cannot see their lack of faith in me hurts more than my silly, frivolous statements hurt them. And if life is communication, doesn’t that mean that the way I communicate makes up who I am? So if my friends don’t like who I am, why do I like who they are? My sensitive friends fear being misunderstood so badly that I begin to misunderstand them, and that’s sad to me. I don’t want to be in relationships where one person edits me into an entirely different person, where I have no space to be myself. But maybe I’m the sensitive one.
