Empath Feeling Too Much? (why I feel everything so deeply)

It’s 11 PM and I’m sitting in my disaster of a room, scrolling through my phone while pretending I’m about to write. The coffee’s been cold for three hours. Whatever.

I’ve been someone’s partner, someone’s boss, someone’s employee, someone’s problem, someone’s problem-solver all day. I’ve answered emails in the language of politeness. I’ve smiled at people I wanted to strangle. I’ve been seventeen different versions of acceptable.

Now it’s just me and this laptop that’s running too hot because it’s old and I’m too broke or too lazy to replace it. The blank document stares back like it’s daring me to justify my existence.

I don’t write to “craft worlds” or “build bridges to the universe.” I write because if I don’t get these words out of my body, they’ll rot in there. I write because it’s cheaper than therapy and less destructive than the alternatives.

Some nights I write fury – sharp, jagged sentences that would hurt people if they read them.
Some nights I write grief that’s been sitting in my chest so long it’s part of my anatomy.
Some nights I write the stupid joke I couldn’t tell anyone because nobody would get it.

I’m not “pouring my soul into stanzas.” I’m just trying to make sense of the noise in my head. Trying to prove I exist beyond the roles everyone needs me to play. Trying to remember I’m a whole person, not just a collection of obligations wearing a human suit.

The page doesn’t judge. Doesn’t need me to be inspirational or grateful or okay. It just takes whatever I give it – the mess, the contradictions, the sentences that don’t quite work but feel true anyway.

Maybe someone will read this and recognize themselves. Maybe not. That’s not why I do it. I do it because the alternative is carrying all this around until it crushes me.
So here I am again. Same disaster room. Same cold coffee. Same ancient laptop. Same person who’s tired of being everything except herself.
Time to write something true.

And So She Lived

There was a girl who felt too much.
Not special, not chosen,
just wired wrong,
or right,
depending on who you ask.

Where others had boundaries,
she had open doors.
Where others had shields,
she had windows.

If this were a fairy tale,
the fairies would have offered her beauty,
wealth, love, the usual wishes.
But this isn’t that kind of story.
Her gift -more like a curse,
it was simpler:
She could feel.
Feel the cashier’s hidden grief,
the bully’s desperate fear,
the mother’s exhaustion dressed as anger,
the killer’s void that used to be a heart.

Everyone warned her she’d break.
That feeling everyone’s everything
would hollow her out.
That empathy without borders
is just another way to disappear.

But here’s what they didn’t understand:
When you feel the whole spectrum,
when you can’t shut out the pain,
you also can’t shut out the joy.
The random kindness that saves someone’s day.
The love that survives everything.
The hope that has no logical reason to exist.

She learned
to hold someone else’s rage
without becoming it,
to witness someone’s breakdown
without trying to fix it,
to feel a stranger’s suicidal thoughts
and not make them hers.

Some days she wanted to give it back.
This “gift” of feeling it all.
Wanted to be normal, numb, protected.
Wanted walls instead of windows.
Wanted to walk through a crowd
and feel only her own heart.

But she couldn’t turn it off.
So she learned to swim,
to swim in it instead,
to let the feelings move through
without drowning in them,
to be a witness, not a savior,
to feel it all without losing herself.

She became a walking permission slip
for people to be human.
Messy, broken, healing, human.
And so she lived.
Just someone who couldn’t help
but feel the world.
And the world, it turned out,
desperately needed to be felt.

 

(2018, © Julia Delaney)

Be Alive 🌱
Love ❤️, Julia

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