Feeling everything so deeply is weird. Someone’s normality of ‘sad’, is my depressed. Their ‘depressed’ is my suicide ideation. What even is the norm for an emotion? Who said that the level of ‘sadness’ that the word ‘sad’ holds, must be this or that?
My level of feeling an emotion is some sort of unprovoked trigger button that decides for itself. I will go from the happiest person alive to the most depressed one in less than half an hour. Sometimes out of nowhere, in a split second, too.
And I am not here to dismiss or diminish anyone’s feeling. Your ‘sad’ is still important, and valid. It’s your normality. And my normality is different, but both can co-exist, and both are valid.
I like to picture it as my vocal range. It took me a decade before accepting my singing voice as it is, and for a long time I believed it was ‘less’ than others’. Other women can sing higher. Other women have a bigger range.
That technically was untrue. On a spectrum, my range is just placed somewhere else than theirs, meaning I can reach lower notes than them, maybe. My range is not based on talent or luck. I can in fact stretch it with practice.
It’s the same concept with my emotions. My normality is just placed differently than others’ on that spectrum. My ‘level 0’ of an emotion is your level 10. And my ‘level 10’ is a feeling out of your limit of comprehension. Just like my highest note (even with practice) cannot get past a physical limit.
It doesn’t mean your emotion is less valid, it simply means we don’t relate to the same extent. It means I might express feelings and emotions that don’t make sense to you because I’m describing this huge range above your level 10.
Things that wouldn’t require such reaction in your normality will provoke the deepest and strongest emotions in mine. And that is valid, too.
