Are You Over-Sensitive?

I was chatting with a friend today about our both being over-sensitive. Why is it that situations and moments many years past still haunt us and hurt as much as they did when they first happened? I'm a pretty strong person, able to juggle lots of responsibilities and can be depended on for most anything. But just one negative comment can send me crashing to the emotional floor. Strange, isn't it?

I remember when I was in school and a "friend" thought my hair would look nice pulled back with barettes. We couldn't afford hair barettes, so I used two shiny red buttons with bobby pins to sweep my hair back on the sides. When she saw what I'd done, she laughed at me and embarrassed me in front of others. To this day, I can't forgive the pain, or the humiliation, she caused.



Then there was the time when I was in the Air Force and someone called me out on a phrase I'd used since my youth... "I hope how soon..." (Like, "I hope how soon Christmas comes" or "I hope how soon these clothes dry"...) Her telling me, in a not-so-nice way, that the phrase didn't make sense and what was I really trying to say, was enough to make me feel stupid and back-woods. It's too bad, too, because she ended up missing out on all the positives that having a friend from a different part of the country could bring.

There are many more such incidents that cause pain to me, or others, because someone thought their opinions or ideas were superior. But although I know it was a reflection on them and not on me, the scars are still there. Bullying has been around since the beginning of time. Too bad that we haven't been able to overcome it.