journal excerpt

I feel too much. And looking back I've always been that way, it's just that lately I am discovering things about myself that I should already know.  I'm deep and sentimental. Completely. When I feel something, I feel it and I feel it hard. And it is something I don't necessarily love about myself. Because it makes me different in the sense that I  hurt too much and normal situations to others let me down. Especially when I am feeling deep and sentimental and open and others don't react in the way I want them to. So it is twisted, and I know that. And it can be a problem...well, it is a problem actually.  So I've gotten good at masking them-my emotions. Not to the point where I hide them, I just don't try to allow myself to always feel to the extent that I normally would. Sometimes I convince myself that people don't mean what they say to me. I tell myself that it is a joke. I turn my deep-feeling-self into an awkward person who doesn't really care about emotions...because if I let myself feel too much and listen to their words and believe them...I don't want to be let down. Crushed. Humiliated. But all of this also goes the other way. When I mask this, I am also masking my happiness meter. And I don't like that. I don't like always being afraid of getting hurt...Not doing things to save myself from unknown sadness. That's not me. And if it is, it's not who I want to be. Because I want to be happy. And I am, I just dislike how drastic all of my emotions are. So lately I've been trying to balance them. Find a happy medium...but it's not as easy as it sounds. And to you, maybe I sound ridiculous. And I probably am. And maybe I just need to hear someone say "Erika, you think too much and too hard. Get over everything and just live." And that's what I want. I just want to live. But I'm here stumbling trying to find which parts of me are really me and which parts are just my fear.