Empathy

As I sit here listening through the baby monitor at the bub doing what sounds like sawing a log -- and I'm not talking about snoring, I'm talking about something that actually sounds like he's SAWING A LOG -- I am tempted to peek in on him, but I've learned not to tempt fate. One peep at my mug and he's libel to make a crappy day even crappier for me. I'll just let him build whatever skyscraper he's in there building and hope that Mr. Pei gets pooped eventually and passes out.

I am experiencing today what I fondly like to refer to as a cluster fuck. And I know, I'm supposed to be curbing my language so that the dear sweet bub doesn't take after his mom and become a trash-talking street walker, but today is the exception. When you wake up with a headline like this -- Twin Bombs Kill Scores in Baghdad: Two mentally disabled women were used to carry bombs that were detonated remotely in Baghdad, officials say -- the day's bound to be good.

Take for instance, having a telephone conversation with my mom. Every one is the same. She starts talking in this uber-cheery voice, making a lame attempt to sound fulfilled and happy, when she and I both well know she is just waiting for me to ask her what's wrong so that she can tell me her woes. It's like, she doesn't want to be a downer all the time, so she tries to pass off her life -- at least in the short term -- as happy and contented so I won't think all she does is boohoo all the time. When really she is just lonely and dying to get a compassionate ear. And I understand that, more than she'll ever know. But you know what? Even empathy has a price. I am not about to dump my problems on to her and add to what I'm sure already feels like the weight of the universe.

Isn't it funny that no matter what situation each of us is in, we are always trying to make the most of it. No one is completely happy, even when happiness might seem but a fraction of a moment away. It's like with the Internet. All these hundreds of thousands of people all yapping at the same time, but does anyone really hear? I suppose they do on some level, but usually someone will see that sadness or whatever reflected in their own, and it will become a catharsis for themselves rather than a true reaching out to help that other person. We're all so in our own heads that it becomes almost impossible to really understand any one else.

Someone I care about enormously asked me to try and understand them today, on a really deep and intimate level. But to understand them in that way would mean giving something of myself up. Something important and fundamental, that I am just not willing and ready to lose. But you know what? The sad truth is, I've already lost it... I guess that's what hurts the most.