I have always struggled with this, even has a small child and never knew what to make of it. When asked to explain, either people would stare at me blankly after my response, or nod with a grin on their face, reach over to grab my arm and look deep into my eyes saying, "that's because you're an Empath. I am too!"
At first, it was almost a relief. Here was a category I fit into. My mind could make some sense out of it, and therefore gain some peace. Both which proved temporary after a while. It doesn't really matter what it is, I realized I wasn't looking for an explanation, or some diagnosis to what seemed like a disease or curse on me. I thought I wanted understanding, but I didn't truly need that either. These were all like band-aids to cover a wound. I associate(d) - still do, to be honest - with this wound so much that I was convinced I needed to wash it out completely before it being bandaged up. Did it ever occur to me that maybe there was no wound? That all these years I was covering a piece of my flesh with rags, warning people about a wound that was in fact a beauty mark. If something causes discomfort or pain, does it immediately mean then, that it must be a wound?
Here's someone who is so sensitive, that she has absolutely no control over her feelings and emotions. They are at the complete submission and mercy to external influences around her. And the intensity of external affairs hits her with an impact that could be compared to a tiny insect disintegrating under pressure.
After such a series of storms over the course of these past months, my body and spirit felt comatose. I respond to stimulus, embark in conversation with an almost automated tone. I eat lifelessly, and can barely taste the food in my mouth. I think to weep at my insensitivity, but I don't even care enough to. So on some level, to witness my body still be able to respond to my grandmother's pain was surprising and almost hopeful.
I'm not an emotional corpse. I still have some sensitivity. A lot, I discovered...
She hobbles toward the bathroom and begins vomiting. I sit down and breathe through my own onset of nausea. Through every process, I remained a witness to it and did not resist or urge the process... just went along with it. Perhaps I even developed this as a child as a way to relate to people. If one is able to feel another intensely through empathy, then it undoubtedly draws the connection closer in still. Where did my need for connection develop? I have asked myself long standing questions related to my mother and father. Questions whose answers evolve and diminish. In the end, it doesn't really matter why or how... two things I valued so deeply all my life. The why and how... I could care less about now. For the first time in my life, I didn't frantically try to save her somehow, or fall into despair at her condition. I made myself available if she needed, and otherwise just sat with her through it. It was beautiful, in a strange way I cannot explain.
It was around mid day when I sat, a girl of my size and height curled perfectly into the embrace of her tiny frame that I began to think. My mind kept telling me to do something, anything. To matter in some way. And my body just remained there, quiet in my grandmothers arms.
My brain has grown so accustomed to filtering out the beauty and focusing on pain in life. After a lifetime of witnessing people's pain and mirroring it in my body, I didn't know what life was if not identified with suffering.
After all, so much negative thinking and impulsive actions with a sole intent of diminishing pain and bringing peace left me with a series of broken relationships and shattered, almost schizoid sense of self.
But here we were, my grandmother and I, in silence. Nothing but the breathing and her heartbeat against my ear. I closed my eyes and witnessed it. The gentle beatings of her heart, the continues way it goes on, like the ticking on the clock in her dining room. Perfectly synched, as if frozen in time.
Lamenting on not being productive my last few days in Toronto, I suddenly thought when else would I have the opportunity to lay in my grandmother's arms and hear her heartbeat? Illness had slowed her down on this day. Normally, she runs around like a busy bee unable to sit down and rest.
It was in that moment that both happiness and suffering disappeared. My tiresome ideas of life and philosophy and all that bullshit just disappeared in the silence of witnessing.
And on that note, here she comes again to cuddle. I am grateful to have spent my last days here with her.