Break the Cycle

Trigger: Other People's Emotions

I know it's been a long time, but as I explained in Chalice of Malice, I have not been in a good position to explore my anger. However, a chance fight in my apartment complex provoked a latent trigger. That trigger...is other people's emotions. As resilient as I make myself to be, I can be extremely sensitive to the emotions of people populating the environment in which I may be present, be it work, my apartment or the classroom. I may come across as mellow and happy-go-lucky, but in truth, I absorb a lot more emotional ebergy than is considered healthy for a human being to absorb. At the same time, I find this energy more difficult to purge. I feel the need to harbor it for people so they don't have to be overwhelmed by it. Why do I do this?

...I honestly don't know. I really don't have a clue as to why I committ this behavior.

I suppose I could say it was because I was an only child and was not exposed to many other children in my family. This, I heard all the adult arguments while in limbo between reality and the dreamworld. I could say that I harbored my relatives' pains to keep them from suffering. I could say I never knew where to look for an appropriate outlet for others' grievances. I could also claim I took the lesson of empathy a bit too close to heart. Sure, these postulations can explain why I started harboring other people's emotions. However, it doesn't explain why I still do it. What do I do to answer that question?

And then there's the question of what effects this absorption have on me. Well, for one thing, it's like keeping a secret, except sometimes the emotions are so potent your lips are subconsciously sealed on them. You couldn't blurt them out even if you had a gun at your head and a TNT vest draped on your mother. In this case, if emotions are top secret intelligence reports for the government, I might as well change my name to CIA. I've been witness to more arguments, fights and revelations than I can count, and some of them...I don't know what to say. One time I found my mom in the office bawling her brains out, holding an e-mail my dad sent to another woman. I asked her what was wrong, but she shooed me away. I knew what she was thinking and feeling, though, but until now I've kept silent on the event. That was about two and a half years ago. Thinking about it now makes me angry, because knowing as much as I (unfortunately) do about my parents' sex life, I'm shocked my dad would put my mom in such a position. So perhaps I still committ this behavior to try to figure out why people do the shit they do and to figure out what I can do about it, as I feel I can do something to remedy the situation. Of course, that mentality of me being able to at least partially fix some of this nonsense is probably among the many things that gets me into so much trouble. For this, I would like to defer at least part of the blame to the education system. Between being in the top eschelons of public education during my adolescence and having risen to the top from special education, I was bound to take the message of being in control to heart. The education elite were constantly being reminded that each of us as individuals had so much control over what we did, that we could map out our own futures and take on the positions of power. They didn't forewarn us of real life entropy, entropy that I've survived probably better than I thought I would. Of course, if I'm doing good for a college kid, I'd hate to be in the shoes of someone who's totally fucked! In any case, I was raised with the belief that the older I grew, the more control I would inherit due to an increase in responsibilities, responsibilities I pined to embrace. Do I still embrace them now that I'm able to embrace them? In a way, yes. I certainly have no desire to go backwards in time, to go back to high school when I was an even bigger emotional screw-up, hinging on dorkish melodrama. I'm mellower, have a bit more restraint and am better able to find more appropriate outlets for my still potent emotions. All of these traits evidence my increased control.

The control I have with sorting out other people's emotions, though, is still a very elusive creature to me indeed.