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Also known as "damnit" today.

Over the years I've come to believe that I am an empath.  Sometimes under certain conditions I can feel the emotions another person is feeling as if they were my own.  It's not the same as empathizing, I don't feel sympathy for another person's hurt, I see them hurting and I hurt as I imagine they are and over the years those feelings that other people encapsulate have become more distinct more real, more tinged with other things.  Yesterday was one of those days, though today had some leftovers.

The thing is, it wasn't a normal, I am interacting with a person I am close to / know well and then got feedback from their emotion.  No, it was one of the much more rare instances where instead of getting a little bit of feedback from someone I could see, I got mugged by the emotions of a person I could not see.  This happens every once in a while.  Someone who I am very close to gets a surge of thoughts or emotions that I in turn am effected by them.  There have all been all sorts of crazy things that have happened to me over the years that have made energy seem like the only viable explanation for spots in my life, and this is one of those things that certainly fits.

It's not the first time.  Back in college one of my then girlfriends and I were able to transfer energy back and forth to the point where so long as one of us had rested we'd both be able to stay standing.  She could in turn sense my emotions and the feelings I was giving off... which made trying to de-stress around her interesting.  But the moment that particularly shocked me, even when, at that point, I used energy more and was around other people who used it, came when I was in Italy walking around a museum, happy and calm, and she was at home in New York.  Apparently her brother who she cared a lot for was boarding a plane and she was worried for him, so worried for him she had a mini panic attack... which I felt all the way over in Italy.  One moment I was smiling, enjoying life, walking around a museum and the next I was overcome by panic myself.  Obviously, there was no immediate danger to me, my parents were nearby, and as far as I could tell I was safe.  Nothing in particular that I should be worried about.  So I calmed myself, rationalized, grounded.  Then I felt the point where I felt panic, traced it back, sent focus and calming to the point where it came from, until it stopped being panic and calmed.  I didn't know at the time I was interacting with her.  That came later when I called her.  But having your entire emotional landscape just sideswiped out of the blue is one of those things I can't really explain without energy, without being an empath, because it happens so rarely.  The alternative I guess is that I'm schizophrenic :-P.

It's happened a few times since then.  My buddy Ian survived a fire where he lived, but all his stuff went up in smoke.  Something like a year and a half later he broke down.  A person I knew back when I was living in Mojave got ditched by the side of the road and the rage she felt was something that made it's way back to me.  Today, I still don't know whose emotions found me.  Something that was fear, rage, and anguish.  As I think about the particular way in which the anguish felt - the pain of losing something, frustration for what wasn't - I suspect I may have my answer.  *sigh*.  If I'm right though there's nothing I can do for that one, I just have to let it burn out.  If I'm right it's someone I was sleeping with pining away for me.  They fell for me, I didn't fall for them.  So I cut things off and for the last month or two they've been trying to find ways to get back with me.  I guess on the upside if those were her emotions that I felt that means closure will come soon and that can be one less thing for me to worry about.  I've never been much a fan of breaking hearts but sometimes you can't spare everyone.  Sometimes it's you or them and when it comes to matters of the heart if you don't choose yourself you're only doing the other person a disservice.  If love isn't mutual, what's the point?

So today was a bad day to be an empath, as it so happens everyone once and again.  But the flipside being that there are many good days to be an empath.  Love is something you get to experience two-fold and when people around you are happy it's enough to make your heart swell.  Besides, I think I would have become a very callous person if not for being unfortunately sensitive in this way.  There's nothing to do for it now though.  Being an empath is it's own truth.  Being happy or sad about it is mostly wasted energy.  Only thing I can do is try my best to make sure I bring more good into my life then bad so I'm buoyed by positive energy rather then poisoned by negative energy... but I think that's good advice for anyone :-P.