Empathy

Empathy is a wonderful quality to possess but it can be really tough on leaky faucets like me.  Ever since I was a little girl I would "feel" everything way more than most.  When I see people experiencing emotions, I imagine myself feeling what they are feeling and it gets magnified like crazy.  If someone is crying  because they are happy or sad or hurt or any other strong emotion, I can't help but cry with them.  I don't even have to know them.  I just imagine what happened to them happening to me and I burst into tears with them.

I had a rough weekend this last weekend.  My husband and I went to a movie that I'm sure you've never heard of.  It was called "My All American" and I could have swam out of the theater because of the amount of tears I shed.  It was a true story and happened when I was 10 years old and I had never heard of any of the people involved but it could have so easily happened to me that I couldn't stop imagining how everyone involved must have felt.  I was feeling for just about every
character in the movie. It is about a college football player who dies of bone cancer in his sophomore year of college and the people he leaves behind.  I cried for his mom, his dad, his coach, his fiancé and especially for him.  I felt everything they felt and I was dying.  I am the mother of a college football player.  I am married to his father.  I have grown very close to coaches who have grown very close to my children.  I have loved and married a college athlete.  It could have happened to me and I felt that so strongly.

I came home and saw on Facebook that some very close friends in my ward had to part from each other as one of the families moved away for a couple of years.  Looking at the pictures of their children, who are best friends, reminded me of when our family's best friends got moved out of our ward by boundary changes and we were heart broken.  Then that lead to thinking about the mother of that family who was my best friend and how she is in Heaven now and the tears just wouldn't stop flowing.  I was feeling for every one of those young moms  and their children who were now parted from each other for what will feel like a very long time.  They are all young enough to be my children and grandchildren but I felt their pain and sadness as if if were my own.  That's hard.

Once I'm in emotional meltdown mode it is very hard to stop.  Every little thing that feels sad in my life gets magnified so that I just can't seem to stop crying.  Sunday mornings are tough for me because that is one of the times that I miss my young family the most.  So, Sunday rolled around and apparently I wasn't quite done crying so I just let it all out and the weird thing was that I was still thinking of all of the people that I had already cried for, the movie characters and the ward friends and they just all jumbled up into one really good cry.   After I was finally done and dehydrated I felt much better.  None of those people benefited from my tears for them so I really wish I could get a grip and not have to have sore eyes for two days over people  who don't even know I'm feeling for them, ha ha! So, just so you know, if I know and love you then I am going to be crying for you during all your ups and downs whether you like it or not:)