Basket Case

So I've come to a conclusion lately; I'm an emotional person. Not something I'm totally thrilled about.

I've never thought of myself as very emotional, I don't drip and ooze and stamp my foot everywhere that I go. I have a high pain tolerance, I'm adaptable, and I'm fairly easy going. And yet, according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), I'm an INFP; Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Perceiving. One of the most emotional of all personality types on the planet (somewhere between 1-and-2% of the word shares this personality type with me). Funny how that works. Thinking on it I've realized that I am a highly emotion being, and I do let those emotions dampen the shared air. Just ask my mother, I used to cry if they rearranged the table setting at dinner and made me sit on the end. And I don't mean cried as in a temper tantrum, but more like an emotional breakdown at being ostracized (by an extra six inches) from the rest of the family. At least Violet has told me kindly that I'm not an explosive polluting type of emotional person, instead she parallels me with Aunt Chatty from Anne of Windy Poplars

"Mrs. Braddock was quite right in saying Aunt Chatty was sensitive. I discovered that at supper-time. Aunt Kate had said something about 'Chatty's sixty-sixth birthday.' Happening to glance at Aunt Chatty I saw that she had . . . no, not burst into tears. That is entirely too explosive a term for her performance. She just overflowed. The tears welled up in her big brown eyes and brimmed over, effortlessly and silently.
"'What's the matter now, Chatty?' asked Aunt Kate rather dourly.

My family has a term that they prefer to use when relating my emotional instability, a word that I despise even more than the oh-so-quaint concept of toe jamb- basket case. Anytime they discuss a time or event when I reacted emotionally that always have throw that in; 'Oh yeah, she was a basket case.' Of course the story they like to use as evidence of my said basket-case-like-disposition refers to a drug-induced emotional instability when I was twelve and visiting a third-world country for the first time. If you experienced all those strange things in the dead of night on weird meds, you'd have been a basket case too.

So I'm trying to decide how I feel about being emotional. Although realizing that I feel something about being emotional is a rather ironic step into the proverbial pot hole (as it were). Hmmm, I'll have to get back to you on that one.