Quarried from Hard Words

Apparently, it is time, once again, to pull The Way of the Empath by Elaine Clayton off the shelf. I could make a little note in my planner every couple of months: “Begin again with The Way of the Empath,” and it would likely coincide with the almost regularly scheduled whisper in my Soul that says the same thing.

Living as an empath means embracing the ideal of heart-centered intelligence by attuning to the experiences and well-being of others. Empaths seek to live a life of generosity through sensing and quiet knowing. This intuitive intelligence—this psychic clarity—is the hallmark of “knowing from the heart,” the pinnacle of empathic knowledge.

People seem to forget this about me. Then again, how many have ever had a clue? I didn’t figure it out until less than a year ago—after a lifetime of trying to conform and perform and excel in a rationalist’s world, and I still have a hard time taking it into consideration, which means that, when things get a little messy, I continue to accuse myself of “doing it wrong,” even when it’s not hard to see that I was not the one shrinking in fear or standing immovable in ego, pride, and the need to control anything and everything.

Perhaps the crux of my problem is that I want to believe that everyone else is better than they are: something you do—according to Josef Pieper—for someone you love, and something that I’ve seldom been able to manage for myself. Instead, I gaslight myself, struggle to not put myself last, and am left to wonder: if I were able to put myself first, would anyone else manage to place me in—I don’t know—the top five?

The Poets
by Eavan Boland

They, like all creatures, being made
For the shovel and worm,
Ransacked their perishable minds and found
Pattern and form
And with their own hands quarried from hard words
A figure in which secret things confide. . . .

Is it even okay to express my pain to anyone other than my therapist and my journal? Is okay to tell my story as my story: in prose, not verse; memoir, not fiction? Yes, I’ve shared here and there, with this person and that. Most of them have been willing to listen to the juicy, sordid details and have braced themselves for the anger and anguish, but it never takes long for me to go too far, to a point that makes someone else uncomfortable (something I was long taught is a great sin; something that effectively controlled me for most of my life). And I understand; it’s my thing, not theirs—but a supporter in the crowd along the racecourse beyond the first few miles can mean the difference between a finish line that gets crossed and one that never even comes into sight.