Understanding...

 

Things in my life have been challenging for so long, I'm almost always just on the edge of losing it.  It's less about losing my temper & more about having a mini to massive meltdown.  I can maintain some level of facade if things are going OK, but I don't have much left to deal with anything going sideways.

In the past, when I've talked to people about my family they don't get it.  They don't understand how someone could fall so deeply into being drunk or addicted.  They can't fathom just leaving things behind.  They don't see how these people could just explode & leave chaos in their wake. 

The thing is, I do.  I do see how it happened.  I don't agree or accept it, but I understand it.  I can see very well how easy it would be to just let go & dive into oblivion.  To just go out the door & never return.   I can picture everything that my parents did & how they got there.  I've done my best, when I could to avoid their paths, it hasn't always worked.  Sometimes their ways would've been so much easier, at least for a while.

This is why I don't buy the sympathy & empathy bit.  Too many people can't wrap their heads around people like my family.  So much for their alleged empathy.  My parents were very broken people.  It doesn't excuse what they did, but it explains a lot.  They were broken by people before them, like their parents.   The cycle goes on, until sometime steps out.  Stepping out of a thing like isn't easy & often not successful.

You can't have empathy or sympathy for something you can't relate to.  To do either requires an understanding most people don't have.  In my case, I hope they never have.  I don't ask for your sympathy.  It'd be nice if you could be more understanding, compassionate & kind.  But I have no need for you sympathy or empathy.  Those things are nice, but being nice is cheap.  Being kind can be hard & costly.

Take care.

Cya...

Fixed & Feeling...

 

OK, the AC is fixed.  It was a little pricey, but that was expected.  That's less on our plates, especially since it's supposed to get hot this weekend.  Yay for good repairmen. 

Talking about feelings seems to be a rage & has been for a while.  I call BS on a lot of these conversations.  Everyone has feelings, emotions & issues.  It doesn't mean we all share those same experiences.  

People like to talk about empathy & sympathy.  I don't think most people actually get those concepts.   Sympathy is understanding what someone is going though due having undergone something similar.  Empathy is the act of feeling someone else's experience.

When I was younger, when life & myself were much more chaotic, there were times I'd get very uncomfortable.  I'm slightly claustrophobic.  It's not about small places, it's about feeling trapped or constrained.  Sometimes when if I was having an off day & would be at a packed mall or store, I'd get anxious, even fractious. 

I've had people tell me it was due to me picking up on other people & their energies.  They were endowing me with empathy.  It wasn't empathy, it was bad math.   It was my weird reaction to small places & feeling like a trapped pinball with limited options on where to bounce.  Of course, when I got to a less congested area I felt less apprehensive.  It was bad math flow issues & my reactions.  It wasn't my ability to feel the energies of other people.

My roomie is going through a significant loss & I can try to be supportive.  However, I can't empathize or really sympathize.  I've never gone through something like this & have no real experience.  I could sympathize with her frustration over the AC issue or the worry it wouldn't get fixed before the heat set in.  I had & was experiencing the same.  But due to my life, I'm ignorant of the matters she's going through at this time.   

There's nothing wrong with not being able to sympathize with something.  You can still try to be supportive.  When I was just starting out on HIV meds, I had a bad reaction to a med & it left me utterly exhausted & so weak I could barely walk into the doctor's office.  My roomie had a serious health issue a while back that put her in a similar condition.   Later, she told me that until that point, she had never truly understood what I was going through or what that level of exhaustion was truly like.  Before she was trying to be supportive, unfortunately later, she could sympathize.  

Being supportive takes your willingness to be there.   Sympathy requires experience.  Empathy is a fantasy, super power or some person's need to interject themselves in another's situation or trauma.  They aren't feeling the other's experience, they're trying to highjack it.  They're trying to be relevant.  Support is being caring.  Sympathy is having knowledge.  Empathy as it is defined now, is narcissistic, manipulative crap.

Cya