I bruise easily

So today it is my birthday – the day of ME! So in honour of this and all things ME, I thought I’d share a few insights into ME.

P.S. I am chuckling as I write ME a lot.

P.P.S. I really like doing P.Ss.

Just as Natasha Beddingfield once sang, I do indeed bruise easily. In fact my right thigh is currently covered in bruises due to relatively light self-massage of my hip flexor. And whilst I am physically sensitive, I am also very emotionally sensitive, possibly falling under the category of a ‘highly sensitive person’ – read more on HSPs here.

I used to see this as a weakness and beat myself up (more bruising) about how my reaction to a situation was so much more extreme than the next person’s. Now, thanks to personal development and support from others, I see It as an enormous strength. To feel as deeply as I feel feels like a privilege. And not to be too American about it (sorry in-laws!), surely life is all about ‘the feels’.

It can be physically exhausting to feel things so keenly and so I sometimes adopt a few techniques to shield myself from the fullness of feeling and/or to recover from them.

Conversely you may think of me as someone who is ‘feisty’ – this being the most frequently used term about me in my working life. I used to take issue with this as my feminist heckles rose, thinking that this term wouldn’t be used about a man in the same situation. It felt like a way of saying ‘watch out for her, she’s got opinions!’ I’ll bet you five magic beans that this word is rarely used about men. So I recently looked up the dictionary meaning of the word feisty and was somewhat surprised by what I found.

Here is the Collins definition:

feisty (faɪsti) adjective

If you describe someone as feisty, you mean that they are tough, independent, and spirited, often when you would not expect them to be, for example because they are old or ill.

Whilst I would love to be considered all of the above, I still feel its perhaps something of a slight when used solely about women. In any case, I will take that, thank you Mr Collins, and wear the badge with pride.

My husband recently referred to me as a Fragile Warrior. I think this is perhaps the most accurate two-word summary of my personality to date. When I read that phrase it immediately resonated with me. Whilst I bruise easily, I am always – always – poised like a coiled spring to go into battle on behalf of other people, tenacious and determined. It seems like a contradiction in terms but it fits me. So here’s to all the Fragile Warriors out there on the day of ME.

May you celebrate and stand proudly in all your fragility, feistiness and fierceness every day – birthday or unbirthday.

Thanks for reading!

Kym

#change #anxiety