Sharing Is Caring And It Can Be Fun!

Quick!  Name the commercial.
I was/am reading every single one of Kat's blogs entries (sorry about all the comments), and it made me want to do some sharing of my own.
In my last blog entry, I spoke about my last little episode of depression.  My excruciating awareness of each moment passing me by.  Melodramatic, I'm aware.
One of the comments I made on Kat's blog made me realize something else about why I may have also been feeling the way I was.
For years, I've always worn my heart on sleeve.  I still do.  It's my personality to be passionate, to feel everything, to wear my feelings where everyone can see them.
I used to hate this aspect of my personality.  I'm sensitive to everything.  I'm the first to admit it.  Some people would call this reckless, to be so open about the way I feel.
The last couple of years I've really started to embrace it.  I love my capacity to feel.  I love my compassion for everyone.
However, a memory sticks out.  Something that stays in my mind.  It's funny how insignificant something can feel when it happens, but it stays with you.
I've spoken about it with multiple people, but the first time I really spoke about it was with my mom.  I remember complaining about how much the things people say affect me, and how emotional I am period.  I am so passionate and emotional that I can literally have an intense intellectual conversation with someone, and find myself holding back tears.  I can start crying, or tearing up when I realize that I'm in a moment, or sharing something with someone that I will remember, that will mean something to me.
She told me it would get better with age, and honestly that was about four years ago, and while it has subdued somewhat, it really hasn't to the extent she made it sound like it would.  However, when I was about 21, after a somewhat callous conversation with a professor, it seemed that most people had no compassion, or passion for anything.  I started thinking about all the people that go to work every day, and don't think about anyone or anything outside of their own personal experiences.  Not like I had never thought about this before, just not to the extent that I started to.   I started realizing how numb most older people are, my parents, professors, and others.  My mother is emotional, and that's where I get it, but I see how little things that would upset me, don't upset her.  And I know this sounds stupid, but I started crying while I was driving home, great idea I know.  But I don't ever want to be so numb to not notice beauty in everything, to not feel life and love the way I do.  I can still well up, when I think about how amazing James is, how amazing what we have is. 
And while I realize it's an obvious good thing to not be so upset by small things, or fall apart at criticism or impoliteness (which I do not do), I don't want to lose those tears.
When I was a teenager, I remember these wonderful, beautiful conversations I would have with my father.  I think intellectually, my father and I are very similar.  We would talk about history, science, literature, or anything really.  History was/is a favorite of my father's, and I do have a hidden love for it.  Anyways, back to the point, I would find myself tearing up during these conversations.  My father and I are very similar, and as I've gotten older I find myself much more like him in many ways than my mother, and I fight less with him.  I'm very close to both my parents, however I think I "get" my father more.  I used to fight with him much more when I was a teenager, I think because of our similarities, and so when we would have these conversations it was amazing to me, those connections.  Realizing that deep down, my dad really did understand me. 
My mother is intelligent, but not intellectual.  It's funny because you always think of an intellectual as someone who has a college degree.  My mother has a bachelor's degree, and my dad dropped out after two years, but he is one of the smartest people I've ever met.  My dad is intellectual, and my mother attempts to be, succeeds with a couple of subjects, but my dad just has this insatiable love for learning, like I do.  My mother is not a lover of history, literature, or science.  She loves politics, but both my parents have that, which could be part of the reason I am so passionate politically.  For instance, my father could watch the History Channel for eight hours straight, even if every single program is about The Holocaust.  He loves the Discovery Channel, Nat Geo, anything educational.
I guess what I'm trying to say besides incessant rambling, is that I love these connections.  I've even teared up in conversations with friends, though I'm sure none of them would know.  I'm just afraid that with age, I'm going to lose passion.  I'm going to stop caring.  I'm going to lose those tears.  I guess it's just a self defense mechanism, or maybe it's a loss of naivety.  I don't see older people as seeing all the beauty and discovery in the world.  I can still see novelty in the world around me, I can still feel stirrings in me about pursuing my dreams.  I hope it doesn't happen to everyone.  I hope I just have some kind of special gene that allows me to keep that sense of curiosity and novelty in the same old things.  I hope I never become so focused on myself that I can no longer feel for other people with the same intensity I do now.  Numbness scares me.  Apparently it creeps up on you like old age.  I guess that's what happens.  A deadening, because I guess your soul is dying.  In order to cope, you have to feel less.  And I never want to feel anything less than the full scope of my emotions.  Isn't that what makes life special?

Some things I've been thinking about.

Do you ever stumble across journal entries or blog entries from years ago?
I had forgotten all about having a blog until a few days ago, and I discovered the blog I started my freshman year at UNT, when I was eighteen.
It was a kind of look at myself, kind of a mirror of my past.  However, I found that the majority of things I wrote in my blog were about boys. :) It was extremely vapid, but still funny, and an appropriate finding for the way I've been perceiving myself lately.
About a week after my birthday, I was in kind of a depressive funk.  For those of you who saw my posting about my birthday party on facebook, I had all kinds of jokes about being old, denture cream, etc.  After that, whenever anyone mentioned it or asked about it, I explained myself.  It's not that I really feel like I'm old.  I just never saw myself at this age.  Let me explain: when you're young you picture what your life will be like at 18,  and you anxiously anticipate 21.  Nothing really happened when I turned 22.  About a week after my 23rd birthday, it was like time was moving at the speed of light.  I couldn't stop thinking about every second, every minute, every hour, and how my whole life is just going down the drain.  I know it sounds like complete nonsense, but stick with me here.  I was so painfully concious of each minute, and I felt like I wasn't living my life the way I was supposed to.
When it didn't go away after a couple of days, I talked to James about it.  He told me this is normal, and what most people go through at 25.  I was still too concious of everything, and basically depressing the hell out of myself.  Then Saturday when James and I went to Germanfest with my mom and dad, I decided I wanted to talk about it with her.  She also told me it was normal, but with a cheesier twist: that I'm becoming a "woman", but that has already been in the making.
What it really is, is a glimpse at my own mortality.  I see that now, and talking to my mom actually helped me realize that.  I'm still a young woman, but I'm leaving a part of myself in the past.  In a way, I'm grieving my childhood.  I'm not so painfully aware of the seconds lately, but I'm so much more aware of consequences of my career decisions, my health, and of the actual act of growing older.  I'm so motivated now to do things I've been putting off for months, or years even.  Even though it still sounds weird to say I'm 23, I accept the fact that I will continue to grow older to ages I've never seen myself at, and I accept the fact that I will grow old, and I will die one day.  Even though it's terrifying, it REALLY REALLY is, I'm going to embrace it and make the most of it, because I owe that to myself.

And in honor of my old blog, I'm going to start the old tradition of including a five song "playlist" of songs that had special meaning this week, or I've been listening to a lot:

"The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth" - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
"Climbing Up The Walls" - Radiohead
"Get Gone" - Fiona Apple (about an ex I wrote about in my old blog)
"At The Bottom of Everything" - Bright Eyes
"1901" - Phoenix

First Post

This will be my blog where I talk about my life, the people in it, music, interests, causes, and passions.  Basically, anything I'm feeling or wanting to share.  It's really late and I need to sleep, but I will try to start posting sooner rather than later.