A while ago someone had mentioned to me, “You’re so positive, Jenny” and I thought about how weird it felt to hear that about myself. Almost immediately I had to respond that I used to never be like this, and they couldn’t believe it.

When I was younger, I sometimes watched and read heavier movies and books than my age group tended to gravitate to. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy children’s books. They still made up the majority of what I read. I don’t remember how or why, but somehow I would occasionally end up straying from the children’s books in my local library only to find myself picking up a book surrounding more emotionally heavy themes. Sometimes of suicide, sometimes of abuse, sometimes of tragedy.

Maybe it’s because of this that I ended up the negative tween I was. I’m not exactly sure why I was such a ‘Negative Nelly’ then, but for now I attribute it to this. My attitude then was more ‘half empty’ than ‘half full’, and I didn’t see anything wrong with it. I was a cynic to the max, but in my head I was being realistic to the max.

Because of my refusal to see more positives than negatives, I didn’t feel a whole lot either. It took a lot to get me to shed tears, and I used to be the token friend that didn’t cry at the saddest scene of the saddest movie. Again, I saw nothing wrong with that at the time because I saw that as being emotionally strong and mentally sound. But I can’t say that I was happy then.

Actually that’s wrong. I was happy at times, but they were fleeting happinesses. I never really felt fulfilled. Not until I hit puberty, which is when I flipped my attitude around. I harshly toned down the negativity and piped in more optimistic remarks. My smiles felt more frequent and more genuine, and I laughed less sarcastically and more heartily. I grew to love encouraging my friends more instead of only jabbing at what could be wrong.

And it’s funny thinking back on how stone-hearted I used to be, because those who know me now see me as one of the most emotional people they know. The smallest things could trigger me into a flood of tears. I don’t even have to see or hear something depressing, I could simply think about it to get me all sad and teary. I once cried intensely at a scene in a movie, which wouldn’t have seemed so ridiculous to my roommate (who I was watching it with) had it not been for the fact that the movie was a horror-thriller. She couldn’t comprehend why I required so many tissues for my tears at the smallest sad scene in a largely more suspenseful film. To this day, she never fails to laughs at my expense when telling others this story.

Often I do think that I’m too over-emotional. But then I think about how much more human I feel when I do, and think about how much more I’ve learned to love people since. Human nature can be riddled with cynical traits, but it’s also full of sympathy for others. From way back when, Jean-Jacques Rousseau has stated that man in a state of nature is driven by 2 principles: self-preservation and compassion or pity. After feeling so little for so long, feeling everything makes me just love life, love others.

Of course, every now and then the little cynic in me still creeps out to make a negative statement, but it’s more of an occasion and less of a trait. Becoming more positive and emotional has allowed me to feel more of the human in me that I used to think was okay to suppress when I was younger.