I like to think of myself as a “highly sensitive person,” too. But I didn’t always feel that way.

It once bothered me to be the boy who always cried when I spoke about my father’s death, who grieved over a dead squirrel in the highway, who didn’t want to hurt the guy across the goal line when playing football.

Maturity has allowed me to be more comfortable with myself.

I now know that those of us who feel pain most intensely, also get to feel the “good emotions” profoundly, too.

I get to love more deeply.