I've discovered something rather embarrassing about myself.

I'm delicate. Really delicate. I work hard to maintain a physical and mental equilibrium and just about anything can tip me over the edge.

If I'm physically uncomfortable for any amount of time I'm liable to throw up. I'm pretty sure that's why running 5ks makes me feel so ill. My body isn't used to it and doesn't like it. As a side note, this is also the reaction I had the first few times my optometrist put contacts in my eyes when I was just a young thing. He had to numb my eyes before I could have contacts in them without needing to hold the barf bucket. Needles, bad smells, icky sights (e.g., mold, broken bones, blood) all set me to dry heaving.

I think I may be even more emotionally delicate than I am physically delicate.

I'm pretty sure everybody knew but me. It's embarrassing enough to be delicate. It's even more embarrassing to not know you're delicate. All this time I've been wandering around pretending to be a strong sort of person

I've been finding my life particularly overwhelming of late, with no apparent reason. Easy things have become hard and hard things are impossible. I had a brief verbal scuffle with the Ma earlier today over the issue of not having quite enough soup and it resulted in some bad feelings on both sides. Over soup. Later, I nearly started crying in the middle of thigh work during my workout. It was so hard and awful and I didn't want to do it anymore.

I've known for several months that I'm a delicate sort of person. Knowing isn't helping me handle my delicate nature any more effectively than I did before. It's frustrating.

Struggle.

I recently received a very small package from the Little Brother--the best thing that's happened to me in the past few weeks. I'm not allowed to open the package for about another month. I don't mind. It makes me smile just to see it sitting on my desk, waiting. My tiny package is a small piece of the Little Brother. I love having even that small bit of him around.