I’m terrified of this subject. I have a history with empathy that I’m not proud of and now, as I embrace my God-given sensitivities, I feel like an imposter. I know empaths and connect with them quickly. The literature, memes, and stories all speak to my own experiences. It all seems very important to me and I dread the damage that can be done when those skills are employed without care.
It’s not a theoretical fear. I realized I was empathic when I was ten years old. I predicted my parents’ divorce by three years and started to experience the pain of the world. I was a curious kid in a gifted program and started to pay attention to world events. I knew how lucky I was to be in a school district that could afford a program that treated me more like a human than the regular classroom. I was an imposter there too, lower income than most of the kids and an IQ just high enough to grant me access after further testing. We got to discuss world affairs at a higher level and I felt a stink of self preservation in much of the talk. I was overwhelmed by the problems of the world and felt them as I tried to sleep. It was too much for a ten-year-old to manage, why wasn’t everyone crippled by this weight? Why do we operate like crushing suffering isn’t all around and inside us? I didn’t talk to anyone about it. I was shedding friends and turning inward, feeling like a freak. I knew my parents were going through something impossible and didn’t want to turn to them. They encouraged individuality in both me and my sister, but I still felt like I was too far off the spectrum of normal humans.
My emotions were too hot to regulate. I relied on my rational brain to solve what I perceived to be a problem of poor wiring. I made a judgment about reality that I didn’t reconsider for far too long: the world is made up of victims and victimizers. I felt like a victim of reality. I felt tied to all the victims and that we were all drowning under the force of the victimizers. I chose to be a victimizer. It couldn’t be worse than this feeling of slowly dying and I knew I was at least smart enough to put up a good fight.
On the first day of seventh grade, schools had merged and there were new dynamics and cliques forming. A big kid, Steve, was picking on someone in homeroom. I knew I would be next. It wasn’t heroics or any type of compassion that set me on this kid. It was my turn to be a motherfucker that no one would mess with. Mind you, I was the smallest one in the room and Steve was the biggest. I came at him from my desk, smiling and joking and tearing him down. Fuck, it makes me so sad to think of the person I became in that moment. I just knew where to hit. I knew it because I could feel his pain and I went right there. I took my insecurities and weaponized them, acting like I was so fucking smart and this kid was a waste of flesh. I got some laughs, I got that hit of serotonin, I was hooked.
I wasn’t a traditional bully, and maybe folks would remember me differently, but I believed in a dominance hierarchy and would fight to protect my place in it. I would claim it was a fight for independence, but that was only partly true. My independence meant cutting myself off from others unless it served my purpose, then I would use my empathy to get what I wanted. Reality has a way of getting twisted when you deny truth. I went so far as to deny that “empathy” existed. I was denying my Self.
Then I discovered booze. I had been exercising an oppressive control over my Self and found relief in this elixir that loosened my grip. And then, when the pain and guilt got too close, I could use more of the drink to numb it away. Voila!
I had grown and cultivated a monster inside me and I confused my Self with this Shadow. I let myself be the bully when I was drinking, I was terrified that this was the true me. Alcohol was medication for the disease I had become.
I don’t know how much Mary saw the true me. I was clouded from years of practicing being superficial and clever. I think she liked the edge I had honed, she knew I could protect her and our children. What she loved was something I hardly saw, a deep potential for love that would empower her and our children. Our relationship was always about children. Everyone knew Mary was going to be a mother. I’ve never known someone as naturally suited for the role. Something told her that her time was finite and that she would need a husband and mate who could thrive after she was gone. That’s why she gave me boys, I would definitely have screwed up more with girls.
Now one of those boys is eleven years old. He has big feelings and I’m trying to meet him there. To do that I have to let go of my fear and embrace my empathic journey. I didn’t have someone who understood, but he can have that in me.