Empathy and Self-Pity

Preface: I try to actually give a complete picture of my life here through my blog, even though it's tempting to skip over the hard parts and make it sound like I'm some superhero who's happy, patient, and understanding all the time. So, if that's what you'd like to believe, that's fine with me, but you should not read this post.

Today has been interesting. I've been feeling homesick since I got back to Hazaribag, and that was compounded by feeling vulnerable because I have no food in my room. My fridge stopped working when I was gone (I think it fell unplugged, oddly enough), so all of my food spoiled pretty grossly. I had to clean out the fridge, and it still smells bad, but it's cold again. I had to throw out my spinach, tomatoes, bell peppers, potatoes, bananas, mango, mandarins, and eggs.

That means that today, I really need to go shopping. Shradha (I've been spelling her name as "Sharda," but that's wrong, I found out) fed me dinner last night and breakfast this morning. She also offered to have me sleep in her room, which is more comfortable and air conditioned. I almost took her up on the offer, but since I had not been in my own bed in a few days, I really wanted to do that. I should have just taken her up on it, because I slept very poorly.

I woke up this morning hot, hungry, homesick, and sick to my stomach. Oh, and it was also 5 in the morning, and I couldn't get back to sleep. I'm used to being away from and missing my family, since I only see them a few times per year in general. As much as I feel like a middle-schooler complaining about missing my boyfriend, I realize we haven't spent more than two weeks apart since we first met. So I'm just not used to missing him.

Anyways, I waited until 7:45 for Jeff to be free, and it was challenging for me not to cry when I was talking to him. I realized something interesting, though. I just finished a book called Quiet, which is about introverts and the extrovert ideal. The author talks about high sensitivity and high levels of empathy that introverts tend to have, and I related strongly to that.

I realized after I talked to Jeff that my sense of empathy is stronger than my relationship with my own emotions. I get emotional often enough, but I can generally talk myself down from whatever I'm feeling. But if someone else is feeling strongly emotional about something, I feel that more. And even more, if I am upset and I see someone else respond with concern, that concern affects me much more than my own upset. So after I talked to Jeff, I was still homesick, but whenever I thought of how he looked when he was frustrated that he couldn't really comfort me over Skype, I was distraught.

I have the mixed blessing of having a face that shows pretty much everything I feel. When I'm tired or in pain or sick or skeptical, everyone knows it. Sometimes that's a really good thing: when I'm sick, no one needs convincing that I'm not faking it. But combine my empathy with my expressive face, and this morning was really challenging.

Everyone could tell something was wrong, so they were concerned and kept asking me what had happened. And I tried to smile and say I was okay, I just wasn't feeling very good (which was also true. My stomach has not been happy). Their concern kept making my eyes tear up, so obviously that was not convincing, but I didn't want to cry in front of anyone, because I don't know how that works culturally. (Is that a stupid reason? Maybe.) I know that in Senegal, you do NOT cry in public, and that would include in front of people you have not known for long.

Anyways, the end result was that I was given one of the guest rooms on the third floor at the office, which locks from the inside. I was able to just cry until I felt better without worrying about someone coming in and being concerned, and then I slept until lunch. Now I'm waiting to make sure that lunch sits well in my stomach. I'm still feeling pretty wiped out, so I may try to do any work I have in this room so I can do it in solitude. But hey, I'm feeling better!

On a completely different note, I'll be teaching a class in the fall for the first time! I'm teaching an aerial silk PE class. My focus is on grace and control, so I'm going to try to have participants work more on strength, flexibility, and balance than on learning tricks. Learning is easier when you have control, and the tricks aren't pretty if you aren't graceful, so hopefully that structure will work well.