Empathy

Empathy is the ability to connect others on a very emotional and spiritual level.  It seems simple.  It seems very human.  It seems, on many levels, to be very logical.  As human beings, we are all connected, so it makes perfect sense that we should be able to relate to those around us.  We are all sharing the human experience, after all.  But some people do not possess the capabilities to relate with others; some just can't  resonate with other people's experiences.  So while we all possess the ability to empathize, not all of us can identify ourselves as being Empaths.

Being an Empath is much harder to define than, say, being a lawyer or a doctor or even a Sagittarius. Empaths don't need to touch or hear or even talk to feel what the people around them are experiencing.  It might be spiritual, or theological or maybe it's just cognitive.  But Empaths do more than just exhibit empathy.  They can't help but feel the energy around them.  They just do.

I started thinking about this a couple of weeks ago after I lost a dear friend, also an Empath, to the resounding noise in his own mind.  While we were all rallying  together to grieve the loss of our brother, I heard many of my loved ones say things like "I guess we will never understand what happened."  Those words were blood curdling and bone shattering and heart wrenching and every other reaction your body has when you know that something just isn't right.  Still, the only response I had to those comments was "I know what happened."  But I had no way to explain that to those who would never understand.

I was at a loss.  But shortly after I posted "My Brother's Keeper" to the blog, I got a text message from a dear friend, who in ordinary interactions, would never admit his own ability to feel the reverberate echos of what others feel.  That's just too much hippie shit for him.  But, make no mistake, he has it.  Not just empathy, but he is an Empath.  Don't tell him I said that. He'll get mad.   Anyway, after the "My Brother's Keeper" post, I got this text message that read:  "One of your greatest strengths is the ability you have to connect to a person's soul.  You search for a reason to connect instead of a reason not to connect.  This beautiful ability also creates havoc on the connection between your heart and mind."

I generally like to just blame the voices in my head and the energy in my soul to my mental well being on any given day.  But something about that text message resonated with me:  It's my ability, be it voluntary or otherwise, to connect with others that makes all of my interactions so emotional. Being able to see others for what they really are, not who they want to be seen for, is a pretty lofty task.  By no means am I implying that I see everything or know everything or, even, feel everything.  But I absorb the energy that others project.  Some people can control what they take in.  I haven't learned that skill so far.  Because I don't have the ability to prevent over-saturation, I'm more susceptible to love, attachment, and emotion.

On a late balmy July evening, about five years ago now, one of the women closet to me in the entire universe, my soul sister in fact, asked me:  "Angela.  Why do you love so haphazardly?  Why do you always love with more than you have when you know that most people don't have the capacity to love you back?"  For years, I tried to justify that question.  Not just to my soul sister, but to the many people who have had the courage to ask it after she did.  I have revisited that question out loud, and in my own mind, at least a thousand times.  I have wanted to be able to answer that question, not only to the people who posed it, but also for myself.  I haven't ever been able to.  I just like to chalk it up to my own crazy that I have never been able to come to terms with.

But that text message from two Saturday's ago now, explained it all.  I'm an Empath.  I love others because of their energy.  I love them because of their laughter.  I love them because of their pain.  I love them because I can feel what they feel.  It may wreak havoc between my heart and my mind, but I love people who need to be loved the most.  Even when they don't need me to love them anymore.

-Inner Peas

Beautiful World

When I was in college, my best girlfriend and I were very idealistc.  We would sit on my balcony in Fairfax and drink wine.  We would talk about hope and equality, as privilaged young white womenn like to do in the midst of their educational prime.  We would read Mark Morford columns and watch movies like Hotel Rawanda and be horrified by the injustice and inequity in the world.  For that matter, we were horrified at the disparity and discrimination that happened to our neighbors based on status, race, and orientation.

One night, in druken protest, we  picked up a bottle of the finest vintage the 7-11 had to offer and drove to the city.  Backpacks brimming with $3 wine, red solo cups and big bites and jalepeno cream cheese taquitos, We set up shop on the stairs of the Peace Monument, directly adjacent to the east face of the capitol building.  Karen and I sat there for many hours, and many nights after that, looking at the rotunda that symbolized the institution we believed in and the establishment we believed we could change.  It may have been the wine.  It may have been the taquitos.  It may have been the fact that we didn't get arrested for drinking wine out of plastic cups, within feet, of this country's hall of legislation.  But those nights on the steps of the Capitol, Karen and I were certain that we were going to change the world; that we were going to make it a more beautiful place.  To this day, I have no idea how we didn't ever get arrested.  Maybe because we were saving the world and even the secret service can't interfere with that.  

Anyway, Karen and I aren't friends anymore.  Too many drugs.  Too much alcohol.  Too many idealistic thoughts that didn't pay the bills.  But when I think about those nights at the Peace Monument, I always think about how we both wanted to perpetuate a community where Love prevailed and hate wasn't an issue.

Naturally, I think of Karen today.  Not just because I think of two privileged white girls breaking all the rules of national security, drinking wine, looking west at the Capitol building.  I think of Karen because we were supposed to be celebrating these victories together.  Not that they were ours to celebrate.  But we were supposed to be sitting on the marble steps of the Peace Monument...Giving a big middle finger to the assholes we elected.   We were supposed to be sitting there saying "Told you so.  Look!  It's our people who made this a more beautiful world."

BUT!!!

To be continued...

Bookends

I left Kodiak five years ago today.  Alaska fundamentally changed my being.  Largely, because my son was born that first winter there.  Of course, becoming a parent for the first time changes us all.  But it also changed me because that's where I learned the value of community.  It's where many of the friendships I cherish the most were forged.  Alaska also gave me an understanding of how light and darkness are both equally powerful forces; forces that should be respected and should be regarded for their control and influence.

The end of my time in Kodiak was dark.  Even though it was summer and there was nearly 20 hours of light in every day, it was dismal.  I had finally found my place in a community and I was beginning to understand my role as a mother, friend, advocate.  But I was leaving this place that I had a purpose in.  My marriage was deteriorating very quickly.  I had spent six months being told that I had failed as a wife, which is possible.  I had spent six month trying to be as far away from that conversation as I could get.  I got tired of being told I was going to be left.  It was an infuriating discussion that was on repeat and I couldn't turn down the volume.

So, as so often happens when life is beyond reason, I was drinking a lot.  I was going to seedy bars and talking too much and too loudly.  My marriage segued from emotionally destructive to physically disastrous.  While I had been the victim of the initial emotional threats, I became the physical aggressor.  I was the perpetrator.  I came home from bars drunk, looking for fights.  And I always got what I wanted because the fights ensued.  And not the kind of fights you can take back.  The kind of fights that resulted in being physically restrained in hotel hallways.  It was a dark time.  It was a period that looking at myself in the mirror made me nauseous.  It was a time I didn't ever think I would get out of.  And I had no idea what was coming next.

I had agreed to come back to California to be a family. At the very least, I agreed to come back to be closer to my people. But the uglier things got, the uglier I became, I didn't know if I could maintain the lifestyle.  So, instead of coming here, I went to Texas instead.  I got on a plane with my son and flew to Houston and I didn't know how long I was going to be there.  Or if I would ever leave.  My marriage had turned into a nightmare.  The kind of nightmare that you wake up from, in the middle of the night, scared to go back to sleep because you know it's just going to pick up right where it left off.  I didn't think I could do it.  In fact, I knew I couldn't do it anymore. My life was a fucking cataclysmic tsunami.  I couldn't exist like that anymore.

That was five years ago now.  I was convinced that I was at my absolute worst then.  In hindsight, I can tell you, with all honestly, that was the ugliest I have ever been.  But that was NOT, by far, my absolute worst.  The last five years have brought much more detriment than that June five years ago. And right now, I am absolutely in another one of those really difficult places  I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had never decided to come back from Texas.  I wonder if I could have saved us all more so much uncertainty and heartache.  A lot of tragedy came with me when I flew back to California When I revisit my decision to come here, I wonder about it as if I could rewrite history, as if I could go back and make things different.

But then I think about all of the other shit that has happened over the last five years.  The love.  The friendships.  The people who have enhanced my life whether I wanted them to or not.  The people who have relieved me of my prejudices.  Those who have let me hold them when they were at their most frail.  The people who have insisted that they hold me when I was convinced I was broken.  The beginnings.  The endings.  The reunions.  The human experience that only comes with living life on life's terms.  All the life that has to be lived before you can honestly understand its value.  That's when I see that the hard times that have come and gone aren't the story.  I can't rewrite the stories.

I'm starting to see these two Junes, five years apart, as bookends.  The bookends hold the stories in place so they don't fall down.  Bookends are decorative and dramatic.  And really heavy.  They have to be to keep it all in order.  They scream "LOOK AT ME!  I'm holding all of this together."  But the bookends aren't the actual story.   They aren't the details.  They aren't what's important.

-Inner Peas

My Brother's Keeper

My circle is small.  But it is strong.  My circle sometimes takes different shapes.  But it's always connected.  My circle relies on each part to help hold it together.  When one part is weak, the other parts bring the strength to maintain connectivity.  It's kind  of  like lava.  It fills in tired and weathered cracks inside the terrain and reinforces its own structural integrity.  Turns out, my circle may not actually be a circle.  It's more of a series of dots on a map that are linked by an invisible roll of  duct tape.  But for the purposes of this conversation, we will refer to it a circle in order to avoid any metaphorical confusion.

On the Monday before last, my circle stopped being a circle.  We lost part of our connection.  We lost a link.  We have a gap in what we were.  Even though our loss has brought us closer, we are still without one of our fasteners.  The hugs, the tears, the talks all remind us that there is a chasm in who and what we were.  I just need to relive some of this for a minute.  It's going to be an uncomfortable conversation, mostly for me, but I just need to write it out.

I got an IM on that Monday afternoon from a dear friend.  Office communicator popped up with a message that said "I need to talk to you."   Being difficult, as always, I replied with "What did I do now?" No response.  Probably for about 30 seconds.  But something told me it wasn't good.  45 seconds.  Still no response.  Around 55 seconds I got the reply that read "It's not about you, but its not good."  Again, being difficult, I told him, "I'm don't think I like your tone."  And I didn't.  I didn't like it at all.  It made me uncomfortable.   It made me worry.  And it made me reel with fear.  The seconds that I awaited the reply were ticking in my head.  All of them.  All of the seconds were screaming so loud inside of me that I could feel every single one.  Tic.  TIC.  TIC!!!  The longer I waited, the more I squirmed in my chair; the harder I stared at the monitor and the phone.  One of them had to give some sort of interaction.  But neither did.  

I finally picked up the phone and dialed the number.  My friend answered, as if he wasn't expecting my call:  "Service Center Administration, Can I help you?"  I said "What the fuck is happening?"  He said only two words.  Those two words were the name of a dear, mutual friend.   The first thing I said was "No."  The voice on the other end of the phone told me that he didn't want me "to read it somewhere or hear to 3rd hand."   I was silent for a minute.  It was an excruciating moment of absence.  I was waiting for something.  Something to tell me that I had jumped to a conclusion that wasn't reality.  That something never came.  I whispered into the phone "hedidit."   It was  a statement, not a question.

It's funny.  I didn't ask how Drew was.  I didn't ask if he got in car accident or fell down the stairs or drowned on the North Shore in a one of those random surfing things that happen to those kamakasi kids who live without fear of mortality .  I just knew that he was gone and I knew why he was gone.  All I said was "hedidit."  Then I wondered why I wasn't surprised that he did it.  

I talked to Drew on a regular basis.  Several times weekly, at least.  I knew he was in a bad place.  And I know that bad places and bad things happen to all good people sometimes.  But Drew was smart and funny and pretty.  So, even though he was in a bad place, he was going to get out of it.  I knew that.  I felt it way deep down in my soul.  I knew that Drew was going to come out the other side of this fucked up island living/working/surviving situation and was going to do something so much better.  He just was.

Back to the phone call I was forced to make on Monday afternoon.  I was so convinced that Drew would be just fine as soon as he got out of Hawaii.  So, why was I not surprised to hear that he was gone?  Why didn't I question the cause of his death?  Why were the tears that I cried as I grieved his loss also tears of guilt?  Because I am my brother's keeper.  And I failed him.  I failed my brother.  And I have to carry some responsibility knowing that I didn't do right by my brother.

Now, as I have documented very well, I am not a theologian.  I'm not biblical.  And Christianity certainly is not my spiritual refuge of choice.  But I believe the stories of the bible can be very resonant in humanity.  In the story of Cain and Abel, after Cain brutally murdered his brother, God asked Cain "Where is your brother?"  Cain replied, and I'm paraphrasing here, "How the fuck should I know?  Am I his keeper?"  Then God was like "Uh.  Yeah.  Kinda.  You are.  You were a total dick to your brother. Now he's dead and you are dead to us"  (Genesis 4:8-11).

One of the last conversations I had with Drew was when I was feeling particularly pathetic.  I told him:  "Now be honest, Bro.  Why am I so unlovable?"  He laughed that laugh he had.  I never knew if it was patronizing or if it was omniscient.  But he laughed that laugh and said "Angela.  You are not unlovable.  You are just really hard to love."  And because I didn't know if he was being patronizing or if he was being omniscient, I laughed.  Then I called him a dick.  Just to make sure he knew I was being patronizing.  Or pissed off.

I think back to that conversation and I wonder how he was so sad and I couldn't see it.  I see people.  I see their souls.  I see their desperation.  In life, I didn't see that in Drew.  But as soon as I made that Monday afternoon phone call, I saw it all so clearly.  I saw my brother struggling.  I saw him suffering.  I saw him in silence.  I am my brother's keeper.

And I failed him.

-Inner Peas