Cursed Blessings

"Our greatest passion coincidently is also our greatest curse." It is eerie how spot on these words were for me today. This has been one of the hardest struggles that I have encountered and it's been only more of a challenge in the past year. The truth is that I love my love for people, but there are times where I wish I could have control over that love for people.

We all have those gifts that we have been blessed with that often times we wish we didn't have. Mine just so happens to be the gift of empathy and to be honest it is such a burden most of the time. It's hard for me not to feel for the humans who surround me whether I know them or not. It's harder for me to not feel even deeper than they do themselves (or so it seems). It's this heart throb burden that I wish I could turn off but apparently I do not have a controller to do so.

As I had this conversation today, I was just continuing to think of the purpose of this gift that fills me up but also makes me so miserable at times. The reality is that it only frustrates me because the people who surround me do not think the same way that I do. They do not process the same way that I do and they don't quite understand this part of me. This has only sent me into the frustration of why I have been "blessed" with this. I can't explain it and often times it seems like I am just being a pansy who is emotionally unstable. I feel like some kind of freak until I have conversations like today where I realize that I am not the only one.

The conclusion that I have come to from this conversation today is that we often times feel like we are alone in our everyday struggles. This is a common conversation among most people, but that doesn't mean that it isn't continuously forgotten. Every single day I forget that I have other humans who are going through the same things or that struggle with the same thoughts that I do. Especially when it comes to the thoughts about this burden that is heavy on me. It is hard for me to talk about because I feel that it is worn down especially because I am a verbal processor (and an over processor at that) but my closest group of friends are not. However, even so, I am not alone. There are others out there who do think in the same way that I do and that is a comforting thought.

This whole thought process isn't a shot at my friends because I do have an incredible group of friends, but it is more so a thought through the human mind. We all have those things that we think we are alone with and we all are careful to speak of them, but the truth is that there are people to listen. It's the understanding of how to convey information and learning to work together through struggles. There is that tension of learning other people's communication skills while not losing how you communicate yourself. These gifts that we have been blessed with have purpose and meaning, but the truth is that they do suck sometimes. The goal now is to figure out what to do with them and where to go from here. My goal is to find purpose and joy even in the most burdensome times.