I Notice Everything : the curse and the gift ?

I notice everything, and I hate it. Here I am, 1:58 a.m, in my living room instead of being in bed, thinking about all the pain I keep witnessing and how I can do nothing about it. The silent battles my loved ones are fighting, and I can’t help them. Or the state of our world right now.

How can I expect to be happy when there’s so much pain, and I don’t know how to not notice it?

It’s a strange feeling when your life keeps replaying your favourite movie, but it never seems to have an ending. My life has become, or perhaps always was, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. How ironic.

How can a soul like mine survive this? The thing is, when you notice everything, you don’t only notice pain , you notice all the small joys too. And that’s what makes it so difficult to be sensitive, especially when you’re young.

When you notice everything, you can’t help but keep believing in a good world, in something that has never existed before, and that’s what hurts the most. Watching the people I love get hurt by their partners makes me feel powerless. Seeing them return, again and again, to the same toxic and abusive relationships hurts, because I know how much true, pure love they deserve. No one deserves to be treated as less than a human being.

Even the smallest moments like eating, drinking water stop me from thinking about those who don’t have the same privileges. It hurts so much that I find myself asking: Am I doing too much? Why am I like this? What’s even the point?

It’s intense to feel hurt so deeply, especially when you’re young, because you’re still learning life. Everything shocks you. And when you’re sensitive by nature, always described as a sensitive child, you end up feeling everything at once, so much that your own body feels uncomfortable, like your soul is trying to escape. You’re frozen, shaking, because processing the world around you is just too hard. Even when you’re aware of the world, the shock never stops. And the confusion makes it overwhelming.

“That is the kind of moment that reminds me of the scene between Charlie Kelmeckis and his doctor in The Perks of Being a Wallflower: ‘There is so much pain, and I don’t know how to not notice it!’ And when she asked what was hurting him, he responded, ‘No, not me, it’s them, it’s everyone! It never stops! Do you understand?’”

So what can we do about it? The truth is probably nothing; it’s both our curse and our gift. The art of noticing has made me someone who can understand the world, even in confusing times. My compassion is still there; it made me gentle, and I like to believe that it makes me kind above all.

When you notice everything, it means that you feel everything and everyone around you. You see what people are going through, and you know when to stay quiet and simply comfort them. You become someone people can feel at peace with.

But the unfortunate thing is that we often forget to take care of ourselves while taking care of others. We sometimes don’t know how to say no, how to say, “Wait, I need some time for myself first.” And that’s tricky, because when you notice everything, you either spend too much time in your own head and soul trying to understand why you do some things and not others, or you completely forget to keep swimming in your own soul because you’re too busy taking care of everyone else.

It reminds me of something Ariana Grande said on a talk show with Drew Barrymore: “It’s okay to have boundaries in a loving, respectful way. Boundaries will save your life.” And it truly touched me. We need to learn to take care of ourselves first so we can take care of others.

Yes, we notice everything, but what’s the point of noticing everything if we forget the good? What would be the point of living if we only noticed the bad?

So I decide to focus on the beauty of life. For people like us, it means that small moments are big moments. We notice the laughter of children. We notice the random greetings of a stranger. We notice warm smiles. And what I love most is that we notice art in all its forms: the colors around us, the first leaf of autumn...And when the world seems dark, we notice the small wins that keep us believing in hope ; stories of love and reconciliation.

And that’s not all. I believe that when we have this gift, we are more inclined to appreciate human beings, both inside and out.
For example, my sensitivity makes me notice every wrinkle, every spot, and every scar on my skin. And in a way, it always moves me, because my whole body tells a lived story. For me, it’s a testimony of life in all its forms, the most poetic as well as the most disastrous. It has brought me a certain gratitude and an even stronger desire to live, to one day be able to say: “Yes, I truly lived life with a capital L.”
Many people would not see it this way. They don’t understand that it is much more than simple marks of aging.

And what I love most is our instinct or, to be more precise, our emotional intelligence. As the character Maren Yearly in Bones & All so beautifully said: “It doesn’t matter if I’m right or wrong about that , it just matters that I feel it.”
I think that’s one of the lines that best represents people like us: the ability to feel something so strongly that we cannot ignore the signs of what seems good or bad to us, whether it’s a person, a place, an animal, or anything else.

That is what makes us special. The sensitive notice love and pain, kindness and malice, compassion and selfishness, happiness and sadness. It can be intense and difficult, but it makes us believers in our world.

So when we feel powerless or foolish for feeling like we can’t do anything, remember: our power lies in sharing that gift. I may be going through a hard time right now, but I choose to believe in tomorrow.

It is all up to us to know how to embrace The Art of Noticing Everything.

With love always,
Nohan Charlie Victor