Musings

46. Empathy (Trigger Warning)

I've always found it harder to empathise with people when I've been through a similar ordeal as them.

You see their self-inflicted wounds and you just turn away, praying they don't know that you saw or that they could be the first to tell you why they've chosen that path.

And then you start wondering if they're trying to show you because they just don't have the words.

Of course they don't.

If they had the words it would be noise from their mouths and not dried blood written across their limbs.

You hear them explaining troubles about their cheating partner and you try to offer some hope, but you too have lost that edge.

Where you once held answers and comfort and hope, you can no longer speak even the meekest word about it.

All your pain and experience is sinking to the bottom of your chest cavity faster than a torpedo.

The feeling of inadequacy (as though these people think you are just a shallow blonde with no worries) because someone has not borne witness to your suffering is a most degrading one.

It almost makes all of the heartache worthless. Completely invalid. Wrong.

You try to come across as knowing their pain, knowing their circumstance, knowing, knowing, knowing, better than any of the others.

But all you can muster are the uncoordinated bafflings of a person who's biggest known trauma was having an ordeal of a relationship.

And the tip of your tongue burns with insistence - just say it, tell them all you know! You can't let them see you as so normal, so un-troubled, so carefree, so inexperienced.

But your mind chooses to avoid the tendrils of the words that are lodged in your heart, the ones that could save lives if only for a day more, for giving someone common ground. Letting them know I've felt it too.

The mind blanks and finally chooses the stark, sterilised, white words of an analyst, trying to pick a problem and solve it all at once as if it never needed to be made into such an issue.

In the end you brush it off because it's more trouble than it's worth to tell them your side of the story.

Maybe you fear that they would tell your loved ones. Maybe you know such knowledge isn't safe in those hands just years from now. Maybe you aren't ready to open up those chapters of the book until you near the end of the next read through.

All you know is that you don't want it to define you in public but you need it there in the private shared moments. Even your fuck ups become debatable and you somehow try to regret them for seemingly getting you nowhere.

Your only thought from then on seems to be 'How will I explain this to my final man, my husband, best friend, confidant? Should I tell him - is there even relevance in telling him?'

It's always wondering. Wondering who should know, who does know, who should never know, who will judge you, who will dob you, who will shun you, who will cry for you and for their actions, who will change their path because of it, who will kiss your soul, who will repair it anew?

[Please reach in to my heart and protect it as you promise you do.

I need your Guardian Angels on me day by day because alone I know not what to be.

I tried that in the past and it almost killed my soul.]

You feel as though your character lacks substance because you are now healed.

And sometimes, you wish you weren't better, and that you didn't have to sugarcoat your experiences because then they'd understand you as you do them.

Maybe in the end you aren't as healed as you'd like to think. Maybe the words on the tip of your tongue just need a little push because you're still just you and you don't skip chapters.