Empath

Catching up on all things sci-fi and enjoying every second of it, but I can't help come up with characters or stories when watching series, and so here I sit, unable to sleep because I have this story, or at least this character bouncing around in my head, and instead of sleeping, or even working on DA like I know I should, I'm cranking out this bad boy. I don't quite know where it's going, or what it's going to become, but I just want a bit about being an empath.Turns out there's a lot of music references in this, so I'll be all multi-media happy and try to link in a bit of the music I'm talking about.

Empath

The best way I can explain it is through music. Imagine a world where everyone carried small pocket speakers with them that played background music depending on what was going on in their lives. If they're happy, then their speakers play happy music; If they're bored, the music gets irritatingly boring. You wouldn't ever have to ask 'how are you doing?' because you could know exactly what is going on by just listening to the music they had on play. With enough practice, and knowing what certain people have for music preference, you'd start to pick up on smaller things with their music. They might be playing a happy song, but you know that with them, when they're playing that particular track, it's not happy they're feeling, but annoyed. Then there are people that can't seem to figure out which album they're listening to, and just as you think they're going through a hip-hop phase and you're starting to get use to that background music any time you're around them, they start blasting country for no good reason. That's what it's like to be an empath, or at least that's the way it is for me.

Let's make one thing super clear right now, telepathy and empathy are two separate beasts. I've never met anyone that's either a telepath or an empath, like me, so I can't say with perfect accuracy, but empathy is feelings, the soundtrack surrounding people, you get the general feel of what's going on, but there's not a chance in the world that you're getting precise details unless everyone else turns off their speakers, and you spend a solid hour listening to the music of a person for a long time trying to figure out what in the world is going on in their life where it's okay to loop the opera Carmen with the Beatles, I Want to Hold Your Hand.

Telling people that there's a difference, always brings up trying to compare the two of them. Both of them are intrusive into a persons feelings, and both of them people think are totally made up or just a cheap trick, but the difference to them is a big one. It's hard to explain the difference to a person who hasn't really had to go through the pain of what it means to be an empath, or what I'd guess is the frustration of having to be a telepath. The difference, from what I could guess is where I have to deal with music, telepaths have to deal with people talking. They don't have to guess, they don't have to filter through the hints of the messy world of feelings, they get direct thoughts. Empaths have to deal with theme music constantly playing, but telepaths have to deal with people always talking to them, saying exactly what is on their mind.

The second thing this always brings up when people finally believe me that I'm an empath is how cool it must be. Wow! You're an empath! Isn't that awesome? It's like you're a super hero!

No.
No it's not.
It's nothing like that.

Okay, I lied, there are moments where it absolutely kicks butt and you feel like a super hero. There are moments when you walk into a room, have a conversation and know exactly to the second, when a person is lying to you. To play poker with a group of friends and know when a bluff is coming is devastatingly powerful. Playing with a toddler and having their parents not know why they're crying, but you just know what they're feeling and what to do to fix it without ever having them say a word to you makes you a super baby-sitter. Then there are animals. I could go on for months about how awesome animals are. Do you know how much easier it is to be around animals when you know exactly how they're feeling? And then compared to stupid people who can't figure out what in the world they're doing and the music they're playing is jumbled and constantly on shuffle, animals call things out from a mile away. Then there's the fact that they can tell when you know what's going on. People don't believe you when you say that you know how they're feeling, that you can hear the music that they're playing, but animals they get it. They totally get it when you tell them that you understand what they're feeling. I've never once had an animal have doubt and do the mental equivalent of saying , 'no you don't, you never could understand what I'm feeling'. There are honestly times where you get done with a day and you feel like you should have to hang up your cape and take off your tights because of how awesome the day was, but those are few and very far between.

What people don't tell you about being an empath, and that cool ability to hear everyone's theme music as they walk around, is that it never turns off.

Do you know how amazing it would be if I could turn this stupid thing off? How much happier I would be? How less frustrated I would be with people? If I could turn this off, I don't even know what I would do.

At first, it's sort of cool being able to hear that the person next to you on the bus is listening to some old school grunge music. Kudos to them. If you were trying to be nice, you could say something to try to get the music to change to something happier, but sometimes grunge just needs to be grunge. It's even cool when you get home and your mom and dad are playing completely different tunes because then you know exactly where they are. Again, if you're feeling nice you could spend time to try to get their songs to sync up, or you could just get over it and head to your room because you know that when Dad is playing classic rock and Mom is playing Madona that there's going to be a fight and you don't want to be in the middle of it. It's nice at first, but first there's the problem of privacy.

Privacy is this crazy little idea that for some reason or another, you shouldn't be inside people's heads. You shouldn't be able to tell that a person is depressed and contemplating a serious amount of self medication through alcohol. There are times that you don't want to hear what people are feeling, especially when it has to deal with you. Go on a date with a person who isn't thrilled with being there, and the only thing you want to do is reach over the dinner table and smack them as they continually play Chopsticks but then lie to you about how great a night they're having.

Then comes the ethics. What in the world do you do when you find out that a person isn't feeling well, even though they don't tell you? What do you say to a person that is lying to you, even though you know that they're lying? When do you step in to help people, and when do you let other people's problems be their own problems? It's an impossible balance beam to walk on, and if you ever try to find a place in the middle it eats at you of trying to figure out if it's worth it to spend time trying to fix someone, and then the debate starts on wither or not you're even meant to fix someone because they might not be broken.

The worst thing that can ever happen to me is getting stuck with a group of people. Small groups, especially small groups of people that I've been around long enough to get used to their favorite songs to broadcast, can be ignored. Instead of knowing that the music is there, it becomes white noise that I can try to ignore, but is always present. That isn't too annoying, the pain comes with new people, or big groups of people. Imagine yourself trying to get to know a new person. You don't know their name, you don't know their personality, you don't know a single bit of information about them, but all you know is that out of that speaker in their pocket they are playing Cotton Eye Joe on a loop. It's impossible to get to know a person on any serious level if for the first hour you meet them, all you can hear is Justin's Bringing Sexy Back.

 
Then there's the danger of groups that you're not used to. Again, a group that you're used to, and you get used to their songs and can tune them out to a dull roar, but a new group of people - cacophony.

Trying to sit through a half hour of that is taxing, what's only worse is when the person that won't shut up in reality is also playing the most annoying music on top of what they're talking about, and you can't hear physically or mentally, anything else that is going on with the rest of the room.

Then comes the biggest problem, trying to figure out what is 'normal'. After a week or two around family and friends that I want to be able to read, and I think it's perfectly okay to keep those mental ears open to whatever music they're playing and I know ho to interpret every single change of rhythm and style with whatever they're playing, to go back to school to people that I work with and am distant with, normal starts to become very relative. I forget some times that normal means that I shouldn't know some things, that I shouldn't know when people are lying, or that I shouldn't know when someone is cheating on a test.

The worst part about trying to understand what normal is, is coming to the very clear, very specific realiziation, that if you open up your mouth, that if you say anything about what normal is to you, to anyone that is actually normal, they brand you as crazy. You can spend time with a person, learn to know exactly what they like, exactly how they think, exactly how they feel about everything in the world around them, and they get used to you knowing everything about how they feel, but then when you finally admit it to them, when you finally say something about it, that's when you get the crazy card pulled. Being 'normally' empathetic, and caring is one thing, but when you cant' turn it off, when it's with you all day every day, when people just don't know how to turn off their music, and you can't help but listen, that's when normal turns into a padded cell. Honestly, I want to make it stronger, I think that it's an interesting skill,power, gift, talent, whatever you want to call it, but I know that I run the risk of going 'crazy'. With no one else out there willing to step forward and say that they're like me, I'm just the crazy kid who thinks that he's an empath and can feel what people around him are feeling.

There are only so many options to how I can live my life.
I can try to think that it's not there, do everything I can to ignore the music that is being played and be 'normal' while lying to myself about what normal actually is for me.
I can embrace it, and go full crazy town. Be proud that I'm an empath and only thinly veil the truth of what it is that I can do. A lot can be attributed to 'just a hunch' or 'dumb luck'.

There is the option that somehow, someway, someone like me finds me and helps me understand how to balance it. It's cute when people try to help, but really only an other empath would be able to actually feel how I feel with this parlor trick of a super power. The only down side is that the only way to get that, is to push the crazy envelope, hold on to what I think normal is, and hunt down someone that cringes at social gatherings, but seems to know exactly what is going on in the minds of everyone around them.