Do you ever feel ancillary? It’s like this feeling in the pit of your stomach that tells you that you don’t matter quite as much as you would like.
If I‘m being honest, I feel that way all the time. I’m not being dramatic. I’ve just come to realize that I interact with the world in a much bigger way than it interacts with me.
It’s the curse of the empath. The ability to feel so much, so deeply, so quickly. The ability to bring healing to pain, comfort to suffering, order to chaos.
People are drawn to me in their time of need, and it is my instinct to heal them. I have been told over and over again that I have an incredible ability to love people. And I know it’s true. It’s easy. It’s not even a choice. It just... happens. I love them and I give whatever I have, whatever I am able, to help them.
And when they are healed, they continue on their journey.
And I’m left. Alone.
It’s not surprising, I suppose. We visit our doctors when we are sick, our therapists when we are troubled. You don’t exactly want to bring them home with you. No—that would indicate a much bigger problem.
Once we leave the hospital, we want to forget that need for healing and the whole process ever existed. We don’t want to remember it, we hope we will never have to go back... so we walk away and if we can help it, we don’t look back.
We are healed. We are better. And while we are grateful to those people who helped us find that healing, we don’t want them around as a constant reminder of the time when we were weak or sick.
And so it makes sense that the same happens in our social relationships. The advice givers, the healers—the empaths—are taken to like a trip to the ER...
And shed just as rapidly. Left to fade along with the pain of yesterday.
To all my empaths who feel alone, who give so much and seldom receive the same in return...
You are more than ancillary. You are more than the gifts of healing and comfort and order that you so freely give. You are more. And I see you. You are not alone.
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