If you’re extremely emotional, almost to a fault, then you understand exactly where I’m coming from here. I feel like I’m surrounded by these people who are able to contain their emotions or seemingly not have any. I’m constantly feeling something, and usually everyone can tell because I wear it on my sleeve.

I feel like my emotions just ran six marathons and are in this perpetual state of sitting in the car trying to muster the energy to get out and go inside to lay down. I also feel like everyone around me is just constantly wondering what’s got me so out of sorts. It’s always something. He said this, she did that, I’ve fallen short of my goals in yet another aspect of my life.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not emotion shaming, I’m really not. If anything, Odyssey readers, you’re just this faceless audience into which I can launch my emotions like bursting open a feather pillow and watching the contents float slowly down. Some of you will catch the feathers, but a lot of them will fall through the cracks. They’ll get stepped on and ignored and later swept up by someone who’s trying to clear the venue for someone else.

I love being able to express the way I feel through my writing, but I kind of feel like I’m beating a dead horse here. I’m constantly expressing the same feelings, and who are they helping? Where are they going? Who is listening?

I’m so freaking tired of being emotional.

Now maybe we’re to the part of this article where I can hopefully muster together some sort of advice or some helpful words. You and I, we’ve got big hearts. Nine times out of ten this can be the best thing in the world. When you’re happy, you’re ecstatic. But when you’re sad, you’re so far gone that you can’t seem to pull yourself back up again. You may feel like having this big heart makes the target so much larger. Unfortunately, it does. It makes it a lot easier for other people to hurt you, and it makes it a lot harder to put yourself back together once they have.

We both know deep down that this doesn’t make us weak, but it sure as hell does feel that way. There’s nothing wrong with the way we are, and there’s nothing wrong with the people who don’t feel the same way we do. If I’ve learned anything through my relationships with people, it’s that you can’t force someone to understand your emotions and you can’t force them to feel the way you do. But, what you can and should ask for, is the ability to feel how you want and not be shamed for it.

Anywhere from “yes, I saw a puppy today and that made me really emotional”, all the way to “yes, I feel heartbroken and I don’t know how to fix it.” Never let someone tell you that you feel too much. In a world of cold and stoic people, you are the marshmallow in a bowl of Lucky Charms. We are few and far in between, but there are many of us. And let’s be for real, Lucky Charms would just be off-brand cheerios without us.