I'm too sensitive

When I was a kid, there was a gypsy moth caterpillar infestation in Massachusetts. I remember them covering the blacktop at my nursery school. And they terrified me. To the point where I got pleasure from stepping on them and watching their green, gooey guts ooze on to the cement. That was the only time in my life I've ever willingly, knowingly hurt another living thing.

A few weeks ago a carpenter ant crawled on to my boyfriend's bed and my heart hurt when he smacked it with a book. Then I made him switch sides with me so I didn't have to sleep on the dead ant remnants.

I think this aversion to hurting living things comes from my own highly sensitive nature. I look at that ant invading our sleeping space and I think about his little ant family and how sad they will be when he doesn't come home. Because: crazy person.

But I've been on the side of that ant family -- wondering where my loved one went and what I did to make them go away . I don't which came first -- the sensitivity or the constant hurt. But they surely fed each other. The person who hurt me most was my dad. He disappeared. He'd often reappear months or years later, full of apologies and promises to do better. He would for a while, then he'd disappear again.

This made me feel extremely unimportant. Like I wasn't special enough to keep the attention of the person I was supposed to matter most to. The pattern absolutely gutted me. Every. Fucking. Time. As a 40-year-old woman, I have laid in my bed and sobbed just thinking about times when my dad disappointed me. And, not surprisingly, this experience has colored my relationships with men.

In my 20s, I stuck to what I knew and dated men just like my dad. Did they love me? Would they stay? The push and pull was normal to me. It's what all the relationships I observed as a kid looked like. My grandparents. My mom and my stepfather. They all had this tension. By the time I hit 30, I was over it. I did a 180 and dated only the safest of the safe.

Now, at 40, I'm trying to find balance with someone who has just the right amount of unpredictability to keep me engaged, but is also committed and kind. I've felt really safe. Until last night when something trivial triggered those feelings that I wasn't special enough to keep the attention of the person who's supposed to love me the most. I told him I was hurting and he ignored me. And now I am convinced that he's going to disappear.

It's a slippery slope. And completely irrational. But I am so damaged that it's where I go. I honestly don't know if I'm overreacting or being "too sensitive;" I very well could be. But the feelings are real as fuck. There's a boulder on my chest and a tornado in my belly as I wait to find out if he still loves me. And for the first time in years, I am allowing the uncertainty to wash over me.