ReeseFire

When the question was first asked, there was a bit of a hesitation, but I let my heart lead, and I said yes. I regret that. I knew the discomfort was valid and warranted, but I have for years taught myself that when you love someone, you suck up the discomfort because the love is more meaningful, even more powerful. I’ve come to understand, however late, that thinking and acting upon those thoughts is faulty and dangerous.

Listening to your gut is imperative to living a life worthy of pride, worthy of peace. And my gut says that where I am is unsafe for my spirit. The conflict is that I am filling a need that would be challenging for anyone to fill, not because of what it requires of me — because I have the strength and the depth of character to achieve, nay exceed the immediate need. But what I lack is the ability to adjust and correct the terrain that is already tended. I lack flimsy boundaries.

I’ve done this before, but not ever again. I have helped parents whose choices for their children dismiss the existence of others outside of their small individual worlds. In the previous situation, the parents were so busy hating and attacking each other, that stepping in to rescue the children from the vitriol and the neglect seemed a no brainer. I eventually learned that people so selfish to verbally and emotionally abuse their own offspring could never appreciate the value of altruistic motives.

Being an empath is exhausting. I feel the weight of the good intentions and the desire to lay a path of opportunities without fears, but point of fact, no parents can fully avoid the challenges, and there’s no one way to ensure emotional, mental, fiscal, physical, and/ or intellectual success. All anyone can do is give the truest, purest parts of their hearts, be open in their thoughts, and filled with empathy, and hope that through the deepest forest of struggle, a glimmer of light gets through.

Here’s hoping.

Things on my job are changing. I have been at the same company for decades… multiple decades in the same department with ever-growing responsibilities, and for the past few months, the air is just a bit tough to breathe. In recent weeks, I’ve described the atmosphere of walking on dry sand on a hot day, and even though I know the terrain, I’ve walked this terrain, my feet are unsteady, and my balance is off. I want to walk in a different direction. I need my gait to quicken or to still, but I need the path, my path to change.

If I turn to my left, I walk towards the ocean, beautiful and complicated and inviting and terrifying. Whatever balance I have on the sand will disappear the further I walk into the cool water, but there is so much in the water to see and feel and experience. Maybe if I walk just far enough from the dry sand, I’ll find a place where I can do more than just step, step, step. I could step step step float move my arms in the water sit just enough for my shoulders to become warm and relaxed and ready to sway with the waves. Maybe if I was far enough away from the dry sand, I could remember the lessons of the walking, and prepare for the change of perspective, change of view.

What I’m doing now, how I am existing now is not working. I feel a little of my soul weakening the more I walk in this dry, familiar sand. But the ocean, it scares me. Soon I will have to decide whether my soul or my fear is stronger.