There. I said it. Bring me the mask from "Silence of the Lambs".
OK, I haven't worn another man's face yet, nor I intend to, unless I can't find a better idea for Halloween. But I do have moments where I just ponder "Hey, I should be feeling something right now other than total neutrality".
Since I was a little kid, I noticed that I don't really register emotions normally in some situations. In cases where I was supposed to feel stressful or scared or empathetic, I was dead inside, without the emo connoation of the term.
Yeah, the title is misleading and it's there for the shock factor. I DO feel and I DO have empathy. Sometimes the latter manifests out of nowhere and it's quite deep, but also fleeting.
And that really makes the whole situation more interesting.
I could be walking down the street, see an old man and feel sad on an existential level, about the state of humans once they get passed their productive years.
At the same time, that said man gets hit by a car, his brain makes a magestic 10 meter vertical and I am sitting there, slurping my double chocolate ice cream, with caramel chunks, like I am in the cinema.
That has never happened, so I may be wrong on this. But there are more mild situations where I've been the distant, harmless cousin of Tend Bunty.
For example:
Back in school, we got in trouble using a desk as a skateboard to slide down the stairs and accidentaly hit a girl (yeah, just a fucking scrath on her leg, what a cry baby). Naturally, we were sent to the principle's office, where an obnoxious teacher started lecturing as about our behaviour.
(Note we were 12 or 14 something like that.)
"You are a disgrace, you could have killed her. You can be expelled or even go to jail (L O L). I am calling your parents BLA BLA BLA".
My friend started crying and said he was sorry. I just couldn't even muster the required energy to fake an emotion. I felt NOTHING.
The teacher was looking at me, waiting for a reaction, something he could work with. An apology, a sign of reform.
They called our parents in and all that shenanigans. I overheard the teacher telling them:
"...at least the [other kid] cried, he responded. [Your son] didn't say a word. He seemed confused, no remorse at all. I don't know.."
I thought "Am I suppose to feel something? It seems that everyone is expecting me to feel bad, but I don't".
But I almost cried when I lost my favorite pen some days later. What the fuck was that...
Perhaps I am reallocating the emotions, dunno.
I have more examples like that, even some gloomy and grim ones where I was supposed to feel SUPER sad but I didn't.
I even had to fake emotions just so I didn't offend other people. As I grew older, I realized that I care about a selective few. But to such deegre, that I don't get bothered with anything unless it includes those 3-4 people or ME.
Yeah, ME. That was the piece of the puzzle that was missing.
I had a fucking ego the size of Hillary Clinton's hypocrisy. I just disguised it very efficiently.
What if I told you that highly empathetic people are also garden variety narcissists?
It seems like an oxymoron, but think about it.
If you assume that everything is your responsibility and everyone is dependent on you... where does that put you in the dominance hierarchy?
For an empath, everything revolves around them. "I feel bad for him/her, I have to do something, it's in my control".
ME ME ME.
I know it's kinda blurry, but the people who need to understand this, get it.
You care so much about anyone, like you are their patron, one step above them.
It is a double edged sword...
Anyway, if you noticed, I used past tense when I was describing myself. That's because as I grew older, I developed more nuanced emotional responses that can potentially include more people. While I still retain some of my maldaptive features, I can safely say I won't go the the asylum any time soon.
You can sleep without fear I guess.
-Thatredbeardguy
More super duper posts from me:
I also have a T W I T T E R I don't use.
