do you feel easily?

someone asked me if i felt easily and my immediate response was to brush the question off and to answer in anything but the affirmative. because for some reason, there is a perception that feelings are weak. or at least, showing them is. and i thought i didn't think much about this whole topic until i couldn't get to sleep until i'd put it into words. do i feel easily? absolutely and completely, yes. it is one of my most prominent and defining characteristics. i feel easily, and deeply. i have a heavy heart, i have always known this about myself. but it is so because i'm so full of feelings. feelings that suffocate me. i feel sadness that is mine, but i also feel sadness that isn't mine, sadness that belongs to all the world, and i feel it so strongly that i am completely and utterly debilitated by it. i remember my mother holding me for hours when i was much younger while i sobbed so severely at the injustice of the rwandan genocide that it made me physically ill, and she told me that while right then the pain was rendering me useless, my ability to feel it would one day (when i had learned to control it to an extent) be my biggest strength. i know she is wise, but i'm not sure she's right on that one. not yet, any way. because i still feel that my feelings are far too apparent, and far too severe, and that's why i've been so inclined to so much hurt. i know that the upshot of this is the ability i have to feel the beautiful, wonderful and truly happy things in life in a way that i know some people can't. but sometimes even that is felt so deeply i'm incapacitated by it too. so where does that leave me? it leaves me exhausted and useless, whether i'm happy or sad. it leaves me heartbroken by so much, even by beauty. and it leaves me seeming weak. and as soon as i seem weak to myself, i feel weak. and that's not a good place to be when you're trying to protect yourself, and all the world too.

i feel too easily, and too much. but i'm trying not to.

""I feel too much. That's what's going on.' 'Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?' 'My insides don't match up with my outsides.' 'Do anyone's insides and outsides match up?' 'I don't know. I'm only me.' 'Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and outside.' 'But it's worse for me.' 'I wonder if everyone thinks it's worse for him.' 'Probably. But it really is worse for me.""

Jonathan Safran-Foer