I’m sitting in the relative darkness and life is happening, all around.
In the bedrooms, my children are sleeping. In the branches, possums are creeping across the night. There are bugs out the window by the thousands, spiders spinning elaborate webs: the most stunning miracles of architecture.
And here, there is me.
Still wondering: what is it all for?
I still feel alone, in many ways, although I’m quite happy to be alone in my alone-ness. Everyone has their own version of alone. My version just so happens to be the way in which I view the world. Just a small difference. Just a tiny glitch of alone on the vast sea of everything.
I suppose I should learn to accept our society as it is. Everyone has vastly different belief systems, and I think that is entirely lovely, one of the shining pearls in the ocean of humanity. I just wish we could happily be ourselves, without the nonsense, though. To be truly authentically ourselves, without having to bend who we are to fit our art into trends. To fit our personalities into social groups. To fit our broken pieces into shining humanity: the great big flying flock of perfection.
I find myself currently wrestling with a box. A place I do not wish to be.
A box, largely self made, partially made by well meaning folk (much like myself) longing for connection and home. What is a box, in the context I speak, you might ask? A trend. A stereotype. A label.
I am (what they call) an Empath. It’s clear that my personality and many of my traits and sensitivities fit into this box they have called Empath, and it’s been so beautiful (and very handy) to have had so many resources and like minded souls to help me feel as though I’m not alone in the universe.
But as much as it thrills me to have found a beautiful little tribe of the sweetest, softest hearts to love: I am suffocating beneath this label. And I don’t want it. I just don’t. Because as like-minded as we who can identify with the label Empath are, we are also a whole world of different, in many ways. Not only that, but we are also very much the same as others who wouldn’t identify as highly sensitive. We are human. Just like everyone else. Not special, not broken. Human.
I want to be free. I am a wide-open, free as the wind that blows me, soul.
I do not want a box. I do not want a box.
I am ready and willing to help other sensitive muffins open to the fullness of who they are, but I just can’t move past this feeling of no, stop, reassess. Yes, it’s clear I am sensitive. But I don’t want this to be a focus in my world, I just want it to be something that is.
If I carry on with my new blog, Empath Days, this will tether me to a box I don’t wish to belong in, and that’s the part of this whole thing I can’t come to accept. Am I overthinking? Probably (I am me, after all). The frame ‘Empath’ has served me well. It has served as contrast and recognition, a mirror to help propel me forward. But I do think that’s all it was meant to be on my life journey. A rocket launcher. A breadcrumb. Not my life’s work. And certainly not my identity.
I started Empath Days (my new little venture, aimed at Empaths and sensitive folk) because I wanted to help others, like me, find their way and feel less alone. But I can do that here, I can do that at the supermarket, I can do that at school pick-up, ’round the dinner table. There are many wonderful Empaths (let me just use the term because it’s easy) out there whose purpose it is to guide other Empaths into wholeness through a specific channel.
I just don’t think I’m one of them. At least, not at this point in time.
Right now, if I am anything, I am a writer of my heart: a liver of my dreams.
If I do have a purpose it is to guide others to open and release from the boxes of this life. To find their dreams, to open their box. Not to encourage people to find a box and stay there. Are we not here to live? Are we not here to fly wherever, whenever, however?
I believe we are.
So I’m going to stop Empath Days in it’s tracks.
I don’t want to be an Empath. I want to be all of me.
I want to create what I create, and I want it to be beautiful, all of it, especially the journey to each sweet prize. The creative process: I want it to be free flying everything.
I want to teach what I’ve learned and drown in my passions.
I want to write my book, my poems, my soul.
I want to live, however I live.
Oh, and I want to love. (Always, always I want to love.)
So I’m going back to the drawing board.
I’ll be back, sweet bloggy friends, when I’ve had a chance to unscrambled my thoughts, a little.
xx Brooke
