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Have you ever had a toxic relationship? Whether it be romantic or friendly? A relationship that every time you spoke to or saw that person, you always ended up feeling badly. I am an empath, super sensitive. I feel everything that other people are feeling, I also take on other people’s feelings. Your mood directly affects mine. If you are happy, I’m happy. If you are sad, I’m sad. Every emotion you have directly affects mine. I often wonder if other people feel as deeply as I do? Am I normal, or an anomaly? Did you know until recently, like the past 5 years or so, mental health was taboo? No one spoke about it, if you had a mental health issue you were a piranha to society, you were crazy. Mental health issues are heredity I believe. I believe that you are predisposed to certain behaviors. Just like your eye color, your height, your hair color are based in genetics, I think mental health is, too. I believe that there is a 6th sense for some people who suffer. Empathy is a direct side effect of some mental health issues. My Grandaddy and multiple of his siblings suffered from mental health issues. No one talked about them really. I don’t know if it was because of the times or because of embarrassment, but I see a lot of myself in him at times. In the way he reacted to certain things. His patience or lack there of at times. He was hospitalized several times. I was told he was sick. I’m glad they had resources available for him, I just wish I knew about it. I think if I had, I would have realized that the pit in my stomach, the headache that I got, the way I felt sick anytime I was nervous about something was anxiety and it was normal. Instead, I thought something was wrong with me medically. I always felt like I was not normal. That something was wrong with me. I remember living in Texas. I was probably 6 and we lived in an apartment. I refused to sleep in my room on the second floor. I was terrified that someone or something was going to be able to crawl up that wall and sneak into my room and take me/hurt me. It was a palpable fear; a fear that made me physically ill. I could not be by myself. I was so scared. I’m not sure what caused that fear, but it followed me all the way into adulthood. I don’t’ think I slept by myself until I was probably in college. At some point in the night, I either ended up in my brother’s room, or he came to mine. I couldn’t be alone, and it wasn’t something that I felt until the night. The dark. Funny how what I feared so much back then, I feel most comfortable in today. I’m not sure what changed, or how became able to deal with that fear, but at some point, I realized that I could control the fear. I had recurring dreams in middle school/high school where everyone in my family would die and I would be the only one left behind. Hence, fear of abandonment that follows me to this day. I dreamed that dream every single night. Someone would break into our house, they would go to my brother’s room first, then my parent’s, I would hear them and sneak out the window. I always ran up to my grandparent’s house only to find them hanging from a tree in the back yard. Leaving just me. Then I would wake up. At first, I always woke up crying, but eventually, I would just wake up in a cold sweat. My other dream was always a car crash that killed everyone but me. I have spent my entire adult life trying to decipher those dreams. What was my self-conscious was trying to tell me? I still don’t know, and I have relegated those memories to the box in the corner of my brain that I try not to access. I don’t’ think there is an easy answer. I think it is a lot to unpack, but there is no actual “reason” And if there is a reason, would I want to know? I don’t think so. I think that would make it worse. I wonder if my granddaddy had nightmares. If he feared being alone or feared the dark. Did he feel like I did? A pit in his stomach? Did he feel like his nerves were on the outside of his body like I do sometimes. Was he uncomfortable in big crowds? Did he sometimes get anxious at the thought of large family gatherings? I really want to know if he felt like he was having to put on a maskto face the world. I wish I had known enough about myself to be able to ask him these questions before he passed. Oh, to go back in time, and ask those questions. To help me learn who I am and why I am the way that I am. I know that he would have been a wealth of knowledge in helping me understand my feelings. I wonder if he had a dark cave… A place that he went to that he felt he couldn’t climb out of, I also wonder how my Granny dealt with it. I don’t believe she had any mental health issues, but I’m not 100% on that. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have just one more conversation with a loved one, to be able to ask those questions that haunt us, that keep us up at night? Would it make things better or worse? I don’t know the answer, but I do wish I knew then what I know now so that I could ask those questions. I feel like it would help me understand myself better, and maybe even make me a better person.