ex-paths

it's hard to know what to say when someone you know is hurting. and it's hard to imagine anything harder for a person to go through than the loss of a child. i can't fathom it really, anyway.

so this friend of mine told me recently that someone described him as an empath. i have to say that i didn't really know what exactly that was. i had to look it up. apparently it's when you can literally feel what another person is feeling. and you know what? i think i was one. once.

i think i learned not to be one too late. i could have saved myself a lot of grief if i'd learned earlier to not allow anyone else's pain in to such a degree. if i hadn't been empath-like, i could have carried myself better and a whole series of terrible events might never have happened and i'd quite possibly have lived in one of those happily ever after dream kind of lives.

but that didn't happen. what did happen is that i'm now permanently encased in iron or something. i'm steely, really.

and that's not to say i can't be empathetic anymore. and that i can't be sad for others, but i seriously am so encapsulated these days that nothing really ever gets past a certain layer. i can say and do all the right things, and i can feel for people, but i won't let myself actually feel what they are feeling. or rather, this hardened layer of scar tissue or whatever, doesn't allow me too.

it's really better this way. really better.

my hurting friend told me today, "i'm not bitter." meaning that she's bitter as hell and in pain with it. another person i know who went through something similar, completely lost her life-long certainty that there was a god. and yet another person i know when this same situation happened to her- turned to god. so one's bitter. one's angry. and the last one still has tears in the corners of her eyes. just ready to spill at all times.

personally, i just think it's better when you get to the point where you don't feel too much at all. you can be calmer and stronger. and more there for other people. you can tend to them because you're not having to deal with yourself.

maybe it's just growing up finally. and realizing that you have to learn that you can't carry the weight of the world all the time and still be of help to others. maybe it's that you learn you can't be a baby and be consumed and encompassed by your own feelings so you have to learn to shut them the hell off or shut them away from you.

i'm pretty darn too old to have finally figured that out. but how it was- was how it was, i guess. nothing i can do to change it now. i feel like i live in another country now sort of. not my own. an expat of sorts. i'm an expat empath. i think it's a better life.