There are no atheists in foxholes.

Sometimes, when I was a child, I would cry at church when the people sang hymns.
Sometimes I cry when I am at a play and people applaud at the end.
I cried on a tour bus in Hana when the driver stopped conducting the tour and sang a love song to a couple celebrating their anniversary.

I cried when my parents gave me a graduation gift.
These are not times I was sad; they are times I was overwhelmed.

Being overwhelmed can be a lot of things because it doesn't specify what the feeling is that has become too much to bear and it can be any number of things. Perhaps I have always been a little easy to overwhelm. Some people call this sensitive, not to be confused with empathetic, because although they are related, one does not necessarily mean the other exists in the same spirit.

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by something I cannot name. Yesterday Shawn looked at the brown dog as he was sniffing the crate in which he flew from Vancouver and the brown dog looked at Shawn quizzically and raised an eyebrow. Shawn raised his eyebrow back at the brown dog and said, This was your vessel. And I started to cry. I don't know why. It was funny to me, that comment, because it was surprising or strangely worded or something odd. Sometimes language has such peculiar nuances that it brings up unexpected feelings, indefinable feelings. I hadn't expected to cry. In fact I'd opened my mouth expecting a honking laugh and was totally taken off guard by the feeling of suddenly being overwhelmed. By what. What.

Being overwhelmed is a temporary loss of the ability to process emotional responses. That's my definition, anyway. I picture it like overfilling a cup. I'm the cup, the water is my feelings, and the overflow is my tears. I have some degree of control over it. It tends not to happen often in circumstances that aren't breakdown friendly. It happens much more easily at home where I am safe and in the company of my husband who accepts my erratic behaviour with good grace. Though I have this measure of control, being overwhelmed is a feeling that frightens me. I don't like losing my ability to control myself from within. And yet it's freeing to do so and find oneself loved, regardless of the spillage. I'm built to spill.

N used to call my spillage "the curse of being gifted". I call it my Lolita Response Complex.

Not really.

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