Empath –

(chiefly in science fiction) a person with the paranormal ability to apprehend the mental or emotional state of another individual.

I consider myself an empath. Which means I know that I can safely say that I know most times what’s in someone’s heart. I know how they are feeling aside from the times they have interacted with me or not. They must not even know me for me to feel what they are feeling, I even feel peoples’ physical pain. While some may call it a special ability, I feel it’s also an incredible curse, for empaths are ultra-sensitive people. We sense, and we feel deeply. Which means when people like me are out there trying to create relationships, we are looking for connections who feel as deeply as we do.

I found one such partner. She had been abused in the childhood just as I had been. She understood me beyond words can ever describe. She even understood my silences. I then laid myself bare in front of her – all my secrets, all my wishes, all my dreams, all my follies, for I had no option but to trust her as I had quite literally put my life in her hands. But that’s when she started staying aloof, distancing herself from me, quite unnervingly so. I didn’t know if they were her own pitfalls that were finally surfacing or if I had made my truths known far too early for her comfort. I started doubting myself with her and around her. My self worth started dissipating faster than pure sodium in water and it created sparks, only for all the wrong reasons. I started feeling I had humiliated her, deserted her when all the while the reverse was true.

I never abandoned her. I never broke her trust. I was true, honest and yet she rewarded me with pain, humiliation, started desiring someone else, a close friend. The time we spent together started getting shorter and before I knew it, I could barely feel her. I would be asleep when she would return home and she would be asleep when I left for work. I found that I could no longer trust her as she started revealing my secrets and follies to my family who had never been my support. I was further humiliated, broken down to bite size pieces for others (my family) to further chow down on me. I gave everything for her and I got pain, humiliation, mistrust and the worst was not being trusted. The facade she put in front of others was so foolproof, no one could know what she was doing not even me.

And then one day, in another one of her bids to stay away from home and me, she ended up being molested. I found her in the hospital, dazed, angry, and further distant from me. We had simply lost her from coverage. No one could reach her. And when I tried to hug her to comfort her, I could no longer feel her seeking my arms for warmth or comfort. She made it look like it was my fault. Such was her mask that all of my family felt humiliated for she never came back to us. She went away, leaving me alone. I still loved her. But I felt like I wasn’t getting any chances to prove my worth again.

I’ll admit it was painful at first, blinding pain, to hear stories of her breaking down in the middle of the road, crying, yelling, howling but I couldn’t help her anymore. She had moved away from me on her own accord, and she would return on her own accord too. I could not force her, for she had started finding peace and love away from me, from someone else. I kept doing my best, hoping against hope that one day things will turn for the better.

Then I shifted base, new city, new company, new people. It took my mind off from my personal issues for a while, I’ll admit. She has moved in with me again, possibly because she had run out of money. And the same year, I entered my spiritual initiation. I started discovering why I was special. Why was life different to me and why I had noticed things differently. It helped me mature further and I stopped feeling the pain from my earlier years, but only now do I understand that while I didn’t feel the pain, I had only suppressed it. I had crushed it and stowed it away to the corner of my heart that I would never touch. I had way too many issues to address and who had time for something that wasn’t going to help me in my future life anyway. But God, I was wrong, so wrong!

After she finally moved away and we officially separated, she remarried within a few months. It was then that all of my crushed feelings flowered back to life, and such was the force, that I couldn’t handle it. I broke. I was shattered and with no help in sight, I resorted to medical science. It helped me sleep better for a while, but never addressed any issues. And oh how I slept, my body took a beating, and so did my immunity. I was no longer infallible to diseases.

But I recovered, though it took a few years. In moments of sheer inspirations, I started picking up hobbies that are now my bedrock of comfort. I started using my gifts better. I found friends. I found strength. I found my voice and I found my words. It’s like the universe had conspired to bring me back to things I had always been good at, I had just forgotten.

So how do I feel about her now? She betrayed me. She did almost everything that a heinous woman can do to an unwitting man. It took her 7 years to realize how true my love for her was but it was too late. She would no longer be mine and I was simply never hers. We had moved on and separated amicably. Yes, I’ve hated her, for she broke my trust and blamed me for her mistrust in me. I was put thru a test that no man should have to go thru. It was in spirituality that we found each other’s true nature and an ability to forgive and to start respecting each other again, although it wouldn’t last long.

She passed away last year. Pandemic took her. It was a strange sensation. At first, I didn’t know how to react. But soon I found that for me, my time with her had been over 3 years ago. It was my yearning heart that kept some fire alive and it may forever do so. But now, I have moved on. And I find the best comfort in forgiving her. We taught each other a lot. She was as mature as I was spiritually, and our last years together were our best and we ended on a high.

If I still have grief from my past years, it is mostly for the children we lost to miscarriages, the pain I buried within me to comfort someone who never sought the comfort I could provide, the lessons from humiliations that she handed to me. I now realize that these were lessons that beckoned me only thru a soul mate, to hasten my journey, to tell me that my true worth isn’t in finding it in others, but by finding it within me, to tell me that I’m here to heal my feminine.

Yes, I’m hurt. I may forever carry those wounds, but I move on with LOVE and COURAGE. I look forward to a life that’s worth living, to live in the places I haven’t visited yet, to learn to love without boundaries again, to eradicate my fear of getting wounded again. There’s much to do and so little time. Bless me, oh spirit, since I won’t be going far without you.