The first thing people tell me about myself is that I’m very sociable. Or that I’m the one to drive a conversation and make other people feel important. I have this charm about me that makes people want to get to know me and be around me. All these things and more have been said to me since I was a little kid, and I’ve internalized it.
Being told the same things, again and again, you begin to hold a high standard for yourself. I thought of myself as a social butterfly because of it. I wanted to embrace this self-fulfilling prophecy head-on. Except when I can see the opposite of what I’m supposed to unravel before my eyes.
I can feel myself pulling away from some of my closest friends due to my own commitments. Or even worse, I’ve become too boring or annoying to be around. I’m easily forgotten in conversations. I get overshadowed when I do talk about something involving me by someone else interjecting about their own life, and everyone focuses on them instead. If I do say something, it doesn’t get the reception that I’d hoped for, and someone else gets more of their attention. My friends prefer other people to be around besides me. I’ve lost the ability to connect with others because I feel like I don’t particularly fit in like I used to before. I don’t feel like I’m important anymore.
I know that most of this is probably in my head and I do acknowledge that. There just happens to be some moments when I can tell I’m clearly being left out and there’s nothing I can do about it. It feels awkward that I have to almost win back my friends and remind them that I’m around, too. Of course, most of this can be solved with a simple conversation, but I’m not the type of person to talk about my insecurities and be overly vulnerable. I succumb to my writing and just ride out my sadness alone.
Through my own way of dealing with unpleasant feelings, I can tell that I’m closing myself off to others. It sucks knowing that I can probably figure out how to prevent this from happening, but I fall back into old patterns. I’m used to being alone because I keep to myself a lot. Being alone becomes an issue, however, when it becomes loneliness.
It’s moments like these that I realize why I make such a huge effort to make sure people are valued when I talk to them. As an empath, I can easily understand and feel for others effortlessly. I don’t want them to feel the same type of sadness that I do.
The best thing about feelings is that they are not permanent. Feelings come and go, but they do return. It’s not bad to let your feelings overtake you; at times it’s pretty healthy. Being stoic and unemotional all the time is not good because you don’t learn to understand yourself or what the best way to handle your low points is.
My outlet when I feel sad is writing, or staring out into the great beyond hoping to get an answer that I’ll never get. We all have ways to get through our unwanted feelings. I just want y’all to know that I get them too, despite my happy disposition. We’re human and we feel and we should never feel ashamed about that.