Intensity

Although I don’t often show it on the outside, I’ve always felt things pretty intensely. It can be a happy event or a sad one. But it doesn’t have to be an event. It can be a song, or a TV show, or a painting, or a movie. It can even be a commercial.

I’ve been that way all my life, and I’m finding that as I’m getting older, it is actually intensifying. That’s kind of a scary prospect for me, because sometimes these things are almost overwhelming. It’s a great big tsunami of emotion that I seem to be helpless to control at times. I’m finding it happening a lot lately with music. When we went to see “Viva Elvis!” (the Elvis Cirque du Soleil show) in Vegas a few years ago, Ken looked over at me and I had tears rolling down my face. I got choked up at “Rock of Ages.” I’ve been listening to a lot of Stones lately, and sometimes as I sing along, my voice will catch because the music has made me verklempt.

It’s an odd way to show happiness, I know. Sometimes I feel such sheer joy at things that I can feel it oozing out of my pores. It certainly escapes through my tear ducts! These intense feelings happen most often with happy things, which is good...because if the majority of them were sad things, I can see how people could get completely overwhelmed by their emotions.

Sometimes I wish that I could moderate this a little bit, and as I said, I’m a little trepidatious over the fact that the intensity seems to be...well, intensifying. But then I think that I am grateful that I have the capability to be so moved that I am brought to tears. I would much rather be this way than be jaded and cold. Not that I don’t have my moments of coldness; when I need to, I can work on the clampdown and effectively shut it down. I do this in moments of great stress, or when someone has treated me badly—or thinks that they can exert control over me and manipulate me. If you try that with me...well, good luck with that. I can be a high-ridin’ bitch when I need to be, just like Dolores Claiborne and Vera Donovan.

But most of the time, I’m just a little ol’ softie. I fully anticipate weeping copiously at the Stones concert, and I’ve warned Ken about it. In moments like that, I’m okay, nothing is wrong...I’m just caught up in the fun of it and enjoying the ride. As Third Eye Blind sang, “the four right chords can make me cry.” In my case, that is literally true. And I’m okay with it.