Fayekenstein and the High Sensitivity Effect
She rose from the bed. Having slept for the past 13 years, she was no where near good shape to move as gracefully as she wanted to or even remembered how her muscles worked. She knew she died, she was certain of it. The silence and comfort of death was what she had waited for her whole life, but now she was tapped back to life.
A huge headache, bad breath, knotty hair, pale skin and ribs protruding through the skin. Definitely not a sexy look, even for a person who was dead for over a decade.
A tall dark thin, yet handsome man hovered over her. How much worse can this moment get for a girl, she thought to herself. He was in shock more so of her rising than her crappy new look, thank goodness. Also in all politeness, he held out his hand to help her up from the rusty thing of a bed.
He explained that he had left the life as a rich man to work years and years in his secluded little shack, counting cells, pinning tissue together, making concoctions advised by the best magic doctors in the world and puling out his own hair, not for scientific purposes, but because he got so insanely lonely and frustrated. All of this in order to restore life into beautiful beings, first starting with a dove, a pony, a few puppies and now me. The reason why he decided to go this route in life was never clear to me except for the fact that he was just freaking insane.
I told him he chose the wrong person to restore back to life. I was never known to be fully happy when I was alive: always negative, moping, reckless, lazy, and lost; didn't create world peace or anything of the sort. I mean, I DID die from self-inflicted wounds; a knife a few times to to the heart.
To be alive was to be in constant pain, to be alive was to be in a limbo; a floating head of a machine being dragged around by the physiques of the active and ignorant body. Where it took you and whatever situations it put you in, it did not care. As long as it's purpose in life was able to be fulfilled. Stupid body.
After a few months of getting used to my restored body; learning to walk again, removing some webs from between my toes and combing out and removing dirt and insects from my hair and under my fingernails. I also had to catch up with current events and change my sense of fashion. God, no one told me it takes forever to be become undead.
He made a huge dinner on the 6th month to celebrate my six months of revival. Unfortunately, I could not enjoy wine that night for my liver was half rotted during the process of death. Gladly, I was still able to enjoy a 16 ounce of ribeye steak, a few pounds of pasta, and a few slices of Devil's chocolate cake. Why didn't my stomach rot away instead, dammit!
We discussed the differences of how I am now compared to my past life. I was hoping he was genuinely interested in my life stories but I knew most of it was for his research and experiment purposes.
I explained to him that I was cursed with the High Sensitivity effect in my past life. I was always unable to function normally; lights and sounds were like bullets to the brain, my mind observed ten times as fast compared to the average person when entering a room, when having a conversation with someone, or when just simply sitting around. The quickness and speed of my judgement was always slicing my mind, creating scars of insecurity, depression, anxiety and full disfunction-ality throughout my entire life.
He looked at me in horror. Was it the new shade of lipstick that I was wearing?
From his research, he told me he has heard of the High Sensitivity effect but never met anyone with it. Um, possibly because he was secluded for so long? Whatever it was, he seemed intrigued by my explanation of the effect and longed for more and more. I didn't think too much of it but knew that I suffered immensely with mental instability in my past life because of the effect.
Because of this, we spent the next few weeks testing my sensitivity. It involved a lot of lights, both pleasant and unpleasant music, putting me in closets to putting me outside or in the woods and of course, asking me lots and lots of questions with the answers being recorded with his old cassette player. I was dead for 13 years but was apparently still more updated than he was!
I'm not going to exaggerate at all but from the experiments we did with my sensitivity, I found out a part of me that I totally disregarded when I was alive before. Hear this: What if High Sensitivity was a gift instead of a curse? I finally understood that he saw this monster in me as blessing, while I always saw it as what it was; a monster. Now I realize it was only a monster that was troubled and frustrated because it was being misunderstood, misused, and undervalued. Story of my life.
This realization came about because I had been to hell and back, seen the other side and was more grateful to be here today, on earth, being able to hear, feel, see, touch, taste. A second chance at life, a second chance at trying to understand myself, a second chance to prove to myself that I was all along just imprisoned by my bitter mindset in my past life. I was ungrateful and selfish. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I undervalued myself, my persona, my special pizzaz, my THING that I had to offer the world. Thank you unnamed tall, dark, and thin yet handsome man! Now, to find a way to use it?....saving the world of course! Better undead than dead.
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This piece was written to expose the troubles of a Highly Sensitive person. From personal experience, being highly sensitive can be a curse, yet if you are aware that you are a person of this sort, it can be seen in the opposite sense; being able to sense trouble in safe situations, being able to process empathy and emotions deeper and more genuinely, being able to read between the lines and have observation skills of an owl. Yes, you are different. Yes, it is hard and annoying and definitely CRAZY. Yes, it can be painful at times and frustrating. BUT when you hone it in, admit to it, and be proud of it, just like everything else in life, it will turn its sneaky head and become the most amazing thing you can have in life.
If you are interested in learning more about The Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), this website is elaborate: http://www.hsperson.com
I also found this book very relevant to HSP: http://undervaluedself.com/thebook.html
