may be sensitive to light, and certain comments, and secrets, and jokes, and most people...

        I am feeling sensitive today.  Overly so, I would say.  I think I miss home; I miss people who know me really well and make it so that I don't have to try--I can just be.  Poor Drew, I wasn't too nice to him on the phone earlier and he doesn't deserve a grumpy wife.  I am feeling easily irritated by others, and getting hurt too easily.  For instance, a good friend of mine in the cast was talking with me when a girl sidled up to him mid-conversation (our conversation, by the way).  She obviously had something to say (to him),  and so he pointedly looked at me and said, Sorry, it's secret time.  Ouch.  It was just a stupid little thing, that if pressed, I am sure he would have said he was joking.  I mean, really not a big deal...Right?  But, I felt that little pang deep inside that reminds me I am always, irrevocably human.  That I cannot escape the awful fact that others have the power to hurt me--sometimes knowingly, sometimes not--but still, they hold too much power, in my opinion.  And sometimes I really hate it.  Because they go trotting on merrily, reveling in their secrets and loving their lives, and I am left feeling hurt and then feeling stupid and embarrassed that I even cared enough for them to hurt me in the first place.  Oh, the joy of having a sensitive heart, and though this may be sexist to say, being a girl.   Ok, let's take the sexist-factor out of it, and for the purpose of being specific, say being this girl.               

              I think I should start a group.  It will be called Overly Sensitive Anonymous, OSA for short (and because acronyms are so professional, not too mention impressive--admit it, you weren't so sure about Overly Sensitive Anonymous, but as soon as you read OSA, you were like yeah, that's a great idea, Jess, and if you weren't like that, please remember how sensitive I am right now and maybe you can just pretend to be like that. For my sake. Please?).  In this group, we will all think very long and hard before we say anything at all--just to make sure that we don't accidentally say something that could, in certain situations or by certain individuals, be taken the wrong way and, God forbid, hurt someone.  We won't judge someone for being hurt or say that they really shouldn't feel hurt--we will understand that they need their feelings to be validated.  Because to them, to us, feelings or perception equal reality.  We will cry together and not allow secrets, because secrets secrets are no fun and secrets secrets hurt someone.  And unfortunately, that someone was me. Earlier tonight.  Or did you forget?  Wait, don't tell me--cause if you did, then that could hurt my feelings. Again.    

            Alright, so maybe that is overboard.  Because here is the thing: I don't like it when I feel this way.  I understand that every little thing that hurts me is not necessarily wrong on the offender's part.  Sometimes, to put it plainly, I am just too darn sensitive.  Sometimes, I need to step back and realize that someone didn't intend to hurt me, or that objectively speaking, the situation really wasn't bad.  I am much better at this now then when I was say, 8 years old (I know, I know, you don't need to applaud too long for my staggering leap of maturity from 8 years old to now).  

            I have a very distinct memory of my whole family being in the living room of a beach house we had rented and my oldest brother, Josh, teasing me.  I was wearing shorts that I suppose, did not have the strongest elastic and had slipped below my waist band.  This gave cause for Josh, in a sing-song voice, to say to me, I see somebody's underpants, I see somebody's underpants...Well, I think I have already mentioned that I was a very modest little girl and the thought of him not only seeing my underpants, but announcing it to the world (which happened to just be my family at that point, but still) horrified me.  I immediately ran upstairs and just cried and cried...

          Looking back, and with my amazing amount of maturity I now have, I realize that Josh really wasn't being mean to me.  In fact, I just recently said that same thing to Ollie, my nephew, and we both laughed.  Again, it was a case of being too sensitive--which is something that I don't want to be.  I don't want people to have to walk on egg-shells or handle me with kid gloves (except maybe Drew can, every once in a while).  I want others to be able to make fun of me--goodness knows, I sure enjoy dishing it out sometimes.  So maybe OSA will be less of a place to enable the Bleeding Hearts of the world, and more of a place to talk some sense into them (into me).  

        But still--can't people at least refrain from telling secrets in front of me?  Come on, that's hurtful at 5 and it's hurtful at 95.  Oh, and you want to hear something funny?  Today, my most sensitive of days, Perez Hilton finally came to see A Chorus Line.  My dear friend, John, pulled some strings and got him an amazing ticket.  I went out to say hi to him by the stage door afterwards (and to get a pic of he and I for Jenna), and politely asked him if he enjoyed himself. To my utter surprise he proceeded to say, I hated it. I hated everything about it.  Nothing happened and there were too many characters, making it so that I didn't care about anyone. There was no intermission, and I was very dehydrated.  And that lady, Carrie (he meant Cassie, but oh well), who was supposed to be this amazing dancer finally did her solo and it was terrible...

        Well, don't hold back your true feelings on my account, Perez Hilton.  Lol.  I did talk to him for a while, but I ended it with, Thanks for seeing the show and sorry that you hated it!  Oh, and apparently if you take a picture of yourself wearing his new clothing line being sold at Hot Topic, then he will post the pic on his site.  So, there's that.  I really don't mind at all that he hates the show, either--honestly, it was rude of him to say it so bluntly, but I think it's funny all the same.  So see--this president of OSA is making a little headway, maybe.  

       Now, if he had told a secret to someone else in front of me, that would be a whole other matter.