Empathy
Difficulty is defined by relativity. To say that the past few days have been difficult is to turn up my nose and snob (literal) earth-shaking and population-massacring realities. The feeling of being a mere footnote in the minutiae of the world's history is overwhelming and I bask in it, awash in the oppressive and crushing humility being forced on my supposedly indestructible ego. In this place, there is no one else to shield me, no one to feel with me. It is a desolation cruelly contrived specifically, and only, for those like me who understand and empathize and feel.
I remember crudely reconstructed memories of being taught empathy. In my life education, it has been one of the driving forces of my decisions and has carved my history into the bedrock of unchangeable regret. I find great difficulty (the word!) ignoring what I adjudge to be oppressive, or unfair, or sad. And while this empathic impulse is magnified a hundred thousand times when these things happen to people I hold dear, there is still an unbearable self-torment to act on empathy when faced with people who are dead to me as they are alive, persons who are side comments in the novel of my life: complete strangers
I guess that, despite the utter fortuity of circumstances that pushed me into becoming a doctor, I was willing to be one, was willed to be one by the subconscious need to pursue empathy into its biopsychosocial conclusion.
Trapped in a snare of my own wicked creation, I cannot escape the onrush of each and every situation that materializes within my imagined sphere of control. I am troubled to no end by my pathology, it has become a burden that cannot be cast off, a tumor that is slowly consuming my heart, yet whose excision is too dangerous to perform without peril to my life, to my soul.
I am irredeemable from the dark night of constant empathy. I can only hope that the few stars in the empty twilight aren't blotted out by the oncoming storm of Armaggedon. And the threat looms near, hanging only by the age-worn string of the sword of Damocles, waiting to cast upon me my inescapable fate, bound as I am to a throne crafted from the bones of old ghosts.