I realized sometime in the middle of my college years that I’m weird. Up until then, I’d figured that everyone, when told tales of pain or illness, actually felt pain in sympathy. As it turns out, they don’t, at least not usually. As it turns out, only I get to be that lucky.

Today, for instance, a friend wrote that he was coming down with something, and that he’d shivered his way through a meeting. Reading this, the familiar twinge started up deep under my diaphragm and deep inside of the chest space nearest the my right shoulder, just as it always does. It feels like hot electricity, and the main part of it shoots at a slight diagonal between my lower ribs. And that was just for the flu! Things get a lot worse the more suffering is involved for the person who is actually afflicted.

And this works for emotional pain too. In fact, I can usually tell when people near me are upset or angry or stressed simply by paying attention to that line between my ribs, the hollow under my right shoulder, or a little space in the back of my throat that feels heavier the worse the other person’s pain. This unseen, unspoken version only works if people are physically near me, though.

I was just learning that this wasn’t exactly normal when I read a science fiction novel for a class. It was by Octavia Butler, and it involved a character who suffered from hyperempathy syndrome. If I remember right, this syndrome resulted from having a mother who was addicted to some futuristic recreational drug while pregnant. Kids suffering from this syndrome literally bleed if they saw others bleeding. I remember reading this and thinking, “Yes! I almost know what that’s like!” It felt so good to have it described that I later read the other books in that sci-fi series.

And yet, while it’s definitely uncomfortable, I wouldn’t give this internal sensor up if given the choice. I don’t know why, though. Maybe I’m just used to it.

[p.s. Comments are closed on this post and old comments are deleted because they had a tendency to get out of hand. Like nearly everything else in life, this is both a blessing and (occasionally) a hardship, so I’m not interested in bashing people who aren’t empathetic or in hearing about how empathy can be an utter curse. For me, this is just who I am, and I don’t know any other way to live. Usually I love it. Sometimes it hurts. Either way, this isn’t a manifesto.]

Thursday morning was a difficult one. I was wrenched out of sleep much earlier than my body thought was right, catapulted into a high-stakes all-morning workshop and demonstration, and then kept in mental high-gear all afternoon until about 4:15 (at which point my day wasn’t done, but at least the heavy lifting was over). And through it all, I was haunted by a curious and vivid déjà vu.

This wasn’t the good kind of déjà vu. It didn’t include any sense that the situation was about to become more beautiful, or more joyful, or more serene. No, this déjà vu was particularly troublesome because it stemmed from a dream I was having when I was wrenched out of sleep that morning, and what made it worse is that I couldn’t remember the dream at all. All I knew was that it had to do with me being in peril and possibly losing consciousness. Periodically throughout that day and most of the next, I’d suddenly have the strong sense that this is what was happening just as I was about to lose consciousness, and I’d have the urgent wish to escape whatever it was that was about to happen. The trouble was, I didn’t know what was about to happen, which made me even more anxious.

Meanwhile, the rational side of my brain knew that everything was related back to that unremembered dream, that I was not soon to be in peril, and that I was not, in fact, in danger of losing consciousness. This rational piece of brain poked fun at the cowering, phantom-haunted side of brain:

“Isn’t it funny that fainting is such a dramatic and romantic act in those Victorian novels you grew up reading, and yet when it comes right down to it, you’re this scared of drawing that kind of attention to yourself…

“Don’t know know you’re getting all worked up over a dream? You’re not even dizzy! Dizziness comes before fainting, you ninny.

“I know you don’t remember the dream, but you do know that it had nothing to do with being in a workshop. So why do you think this is related?”

And so the day went on, and I brainstormed solutions to problems, trained people on technology they’d never used, encouraged the nervous, laughed with the confident, and generally carried on with my day. But all the while, this crazy duel raged in my head with one side pleading with me to just go home and curl up under the covers where it’s safe, and the other side of me pointing and laughing at the frightened side.

I’m glad a little more sleep and a little less intensity at work seems to have helped those two sides settle down amicably and get on with the business of ordering my thoughts.

Today was a typical Saturday at home with the family.

8:30am: We got up in time to take Toby to the dog park to meet up with 5 of his doggy friends and walk two miles while throwing balls and sticks and whatever else our canine friends thought would make for a good chase.

10:00am: Mom started cooking pancakes and simmering blueberries. I sat watching her (a very important job, I assure you), making conversation, and sipping coffee. The rest of the family did whatever they felt like doing. (We do that a lot.)

10:30am: Yummmmm. Pancakes with yogurt and blueberries (if you were smart) or with syrup or cinnamon sugar (if you were boring or afraid of blue teeth or something). It was at this point that the Question of the Day arose. Looking back, it seems that the Question of the Day (which always involves a dictionary or one of our two encyclopedia sets) always comes up over brunch. Today, the Question was: does the action in a book, play, or movie start “in media res” or “in medias res“? I knew it was “in medias res” but everyone else reasoned that it really should be “in media res” because “media” is the ablative case, and “in” takes the ablative case. It took me a second to remember back to my high school Latin and decline the noun to the accusative “medias.” Then it took me a second longer to remember that “in” can also take the accusative case if the meaning is “into” rather than “in.” Still, everyone argued that “into the middle of things” couldn’t possibly the the correct translation of that phrase because everyone knows that the action starts “in the middle of things.” Well… Everyone was wrong. The dictionary said so. And now we all know the correct translation of “in medias res” is that the audience gets dropped “into the middle of things.”

noon-ish: Mom and Sis and I play the piano. Typically, Mom plays the base clef notes, I play the treble, and Sis plays either the supplemental instrument or the vocal part… or any other notes that need playing. This arrangement works best if all three of us counts in the same rhythm, and if we all agree on the key signature. Just sayin’…

2pm: We decide to watch “Animals are Beautiful People” while Mom bakes a cake and some cookies for Lil Bro to take back with him to college.

4pm: Sis, Lil Bro, and I play online for a while, primarily catching up on scrabble games (even with each other). Meanwhile Dad and Lil Bro get hair cuts.

7pm: I write while others read, do homework, or watch TV. Mom mixes dough, cuts veggies, and puts pizza in the oven.

8pm: Yummm…. Made-from-scratch-pizza. Why do I ever leave this place?

The rest of the night: Maybe we’ll watch a movie. We’ll probably play Liver Pool Rum (a card game having 7 increasingly difficult hands) which has been our game of choice since I was a very young girl.

You can see why I hated to move away from this.

I wonder what it is that makes people (myself very much included) reluctant to express appreciation. Is it just me? I often either feel uncomfortable telling people I appreciate them or their work, or I just don’t think to do it because of course they know that their presentation was enlightening, of course they know that their support made projects possible, of course they know that their kind words lifted my spirits.

But it turns out that they don’t necessarily know these things, and that these things are important for them to know.

A while ago I wrote to a “famous” person (famous within the small-ish circle of people who not only do what I do) thanking him for a presentation he did at my workplace, and I was surprised at the response I got. As it turns out, “famous” people don’t often get positive feedback on this sort of thing because everybody assumes that good presentations are normal for them.

Last week, the pianist who accompanies the choir I direct gave her notice because of negative feedback she’d received about other groups she works with in the same church. Only then did I realize I’d never told her how much I appreciated her skill, her ability of mold what she does to my needs, and her ability to accompany rather than dominate the choir. I’d left each rehearsal calling “thank you!” to her over my shoulder, but how was she to know that I didn’t just mean “thank you for showing up”?

And now, with Thanksgiving approaching, I was considering writing to each of my handful of close friends and explaining what I appreciate about them. I only got through 2 of the 5 letters I was going to write, but I trashed those letters. They seemed too sappy.

What makes this so hard?

Last night was the exhibition tournament for our student quizbowl team. This meant that the champion teams played each other, and then the all-star players competed for fun against a makeshift faculty/staff team. I was on this faculty/staff team, for the second year in a row. Last year, we named ourselves the Sacrificial Lambs, and I distinctly remember not answering a single question all evening or even feeling like I could have attempted an answer. This year we were The Placeholders.

Introducing us, the all-star team coach explained that while historically the faculty/staff team has done alright in the challenge, it has been unable to beat the students for the last 4 years… and that in terms of score, “the last two years were not close.” He did concede that last year we were playing against the team that later went on to win the national championship, so we couldn’t really have been expected to win.

Well, last night I contributed a few answers, which was good… but I was reminded that answering trivia questions is not a talent I posses. I buzzed in precisely two times. The first time, I was beaten to the punch by one of my own team members who hit his buzzer a fraction of a second before I did. Luckily he knew the correct answer, so the point was ours anyway. The second time I buzzed in only to be told that I couldn’t answer because one of my teammates had already locked our team out by answering incorrectly. I hadn’t realized we weren’t allowed to try again… Oh well.

But I redeemed myself by easily answering a whole string of bonus questions. Here’s how it works: if a team member answers a question, then the team is given 30 points worth of bonus questions that all relate to a single topic. Well, just when I had resigned myself to being the useless member of my team yet again, we got a bonus set that asked us to listen to three descriptions of dance moves and produce the French ballet terms that named those movements. Nobody else had a clue, but I could name them without even thinking. I mean… Plie, jete, and arabesque? How much more basic could you get, right? Yippee! 30 points, all mine.

Now, if I just knew ancient Asian kings, scientific and mathematical formulae, pop culture, art history, anatomy, 16th century poets, philosophy, and Supreme Court history… Oh, and if I could release that knowledge from my brain to my tongue…