some gut spilling
i just noted this in my reply to dani about her roof collapsing, but I thought it bore elaboration, some self reflection and genuine concern on my part. Maybe I just need to let it out, have someone tell me I'm wrong or suggest a solution, I don't know, but here it is.
I feel that one of my most terrible character flaws is an inability to show empathy to people. I'm talking directly, face to face, you tell me you lost your love or your mother died or something, you're crying your heart out to me and just want someone to be there... and I don't feel like I do a good enough job. Maybe it's a projected feeling from having seen too much melodrama on the screen in my lifetime, but I feel like I should get right there with you, tell you it's going to be okay, hug you, give advice or an anecdote that takes your mind off it... but I never feel like I'm able to do these things. I feel stiff, detached, rigid. I feel like hugging me when you're sad must feel like hugging a stone statue. Maybe it's not, but that's how it feels. If my brother died tomorrow and I was so devastated I thought I wouldn't be able to go on, if I was sitting in a room with my mother while she cried her eyes out on my shoulder, I feel like to an outsider I would look like I never knew the guy, like I didn't even care. Like I just wanted to get my mom off my shoulder so I could go do something else, even if I didn't, even if I was so distressed my insides were crumbling.
People always tell me I have a great poker face. I don't really know how it came about. I don't feel like I'm making any effort to cover up my emotions or feelings, but apparently I just do by nature. It worries me sometimes. I don't know if I've ever cried directly in front of somebody, and it's not because I'm afraid to have somebody see me that way, it's a knee jerk reaction. It's like when you're in the bathroom and there's one guy in the next stall and for some reason you can't pee. You don't feel stressed about the idea of someone else in the bathroom, you pee fine with 10, 20, 30 guys in the bathroom, but you just can't. That's how crying is for me. That seems like emotions for me in general. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm far more of an open book than I allow myself to think, but it never seems that way to me.
Maybe I'm just only ever upset enough to reach the point of crying when I have no one to absorb that emotion with me in the same room.
Then again, I just read a line in Chuck Klosterman's Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs that commented on the idea that people never really know what kind of person they are, that extroverts always think they're introverts and vice versa, so I wonder slightly if that theory could be applied here.
I feel that one of my most terrible character flaws is an inability to show empathy to people. I'm talking directly, face to face, you tell me you lost your love or your mother died or something, you're crying your heart out to me and just want someone to be there... and I don't feel like I do a good enough job. Maybe it's a projected feeling from having seen too much melodrama on the screen in my lifetime, but I feel like I should get right there with you, tell you it's going to be okay, hug you, give advice or an anecdote that takes your mind off it... but I never feel like I'm able to do these things. I feel stiff, detached, rigid. I feel like hugging me when you're sad must feel like hugging a stone statue. Maybe it's not, but that's how it feels. If my brother died tomorrow and I was so devastated I thought I wouldn't be able to go on, if I was sitting in a room with my mother while she cried her eyes out on my shoulder, I feel like to an outsider I would look like I never knew the guy, like I didn't even care. Like I just wanted to get my mom off my shoulder so I could go do something else, even if I didn't, even if I was so distressed my insides were crumbling.
People always tell me I have a great poker face. I don't really know how it came about. I don't feel like I'm making any effort to cover up my emotions or feelings, but apparently I just do by nature. It worries me sometimes. I don't know if I've ever cried directly in front of somebody, and it's not because I'm afraid to have somebody see me that way, it's a knee jerk reaction. It's like when you're in the bathroom and there's one guy in the next stall and for some reason you can't pee. You don't feel stressed about the idea of someone else in the bathroom, you pee fine with 10, 20, 30 guys in the bathroom, but you just can't. That's how crying is for me. That seems like emotions for me in general. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm far more of an open book than I allow myself to think, but it never seems that way to me.
Maybe I'm just only ever upset enough to reach the point of crying when I have no one to absorb that emotion with me in the same room.
Then again, I just read a line in Chuck Klosterman's Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs that commented on the idea that people never really know what kind of person they are, that extroverts always think they're introverts and vice versa, so I wonder slightly if that theory could be applied here.