EMPATHY MAY

It was one of those lazy Saturdays at home. I woke up to my mother’s singing and the smell of detergents. In an African home that is the official insignia for a ‘thorough cleaning’ day, what would be referred to by some as spring cleaning. I groaned and tried to think up a good excuse not to participate. Finding none, I groaned and reluctantly got up. Shortly after, my sister and I were already in the small library cleaning up and checking with the Queen Bee for clearance to throw away old books.

What I always liked about this, though is that it was like a virtual stroll along memory lane. I’d find books from kindergarten, my grade books, the big paper clock my mom had made for me for a primary school display in fourth grade. I’d even find the paper dolls I used to draw and laugh at the terrible fashion sense. Not that it’s any better now, anyway. One time I even found my mom’s bride price list that my dad had jotted down in those tiny little notebooks that people had before there was a Notes application. Amidst our usual item classification process, I came across a dusty but very modern looking book, ‘The secret life of bees’. I immediately assumed it was just another boring book about beekeeping, but I opened it anyway. I ended up reading it throughout the next day. There was a character in the book named May who got my attention. She had lost her twin sister some time back. May was what they probably call ‘special’ in hush, confidential tones that suggest otherwise. She felt everything a little or perhaps a lot more deeply than most people did. Where most people would watch news about a plane crush and feel sympathetic, she would watch it with extra empathy, so much so it felt like her own pain. She was already suffering from depression, which is usually characterized by being void of emotion or motivation, yet the injustice and pain of the world would awaken all these feelings depression had strategically hid from her. May had the purest of hearts and also the ficklest. Her sisters did their best to keep her away from any kind of media in a bid to shield her from the pain of the world, but bad things were happening around them too and it was hard to hide it all. May had a workaround though, a wailing wall and whenever she heard of a tragedy, she would write a little note on paper and push it into the wall. May eventually and inevitably committed suicide. The world didn’t stop being ugly or racist and it was impossible to hide it all from her. I can’t bring myself to explain why her character meant so much to me. I read that book one too many times and at the time it was hard for me to imagine what it was like to feel someone else’s pain as my own, to mourn the injustices done to strangers as if they were done to me. I think perhaps at the time, a lot of things were still hidden from me too.

Most days I feel like May, pain feels more intense for me than it probably should and I don’t know how to shoo it away. I feel it throughout the day, I dream about it, I carry it around all day, it weighs on me and won’t let me let go. Tonight, was one of those days and I wished with all my heart that I could call my mom from miles away. I texted her instead and admitted for the first time that I was depressed, I was sad and stuck in perpetual grief. I told her I couldn’t sleep, that I stopped caring about my future a long time back and wherever I look, I see pain and I have all my shields down. I told her I’m a hopeless empath and that means I am never on my side because I’m too busy feeling what others feel, too busy understanding their side. I said the world was wearing me down, but not more than I was. I told her I have no iota of love left for myself, I gave it all away and made overdrafts and my ‘I’ for self is as complex and imaginary as any number with ‘i’ at its end. I said that I stopped loving myself a couple of lockdowns ago that even if I wanted to save myself, I hadn’t the slightest idea what’s left of me worth saving. The only thing keeping me here is second hand love – the way others sometimes look at me like they see great things in me. I hold onto those crumbs of love like my life depends on it, and oh it does. I explained that it feels as if I carry around that rock May tied to her chest to drown. I cried my eyes out as I texted everything I knew about my declining mental health. I told her it was too heavy, the pain. That people keep asking me where I’ve been, what I have been doing, as if surviving wasn’t much of an effort.

My mom listened, and prayed as all devout mothers do. I know she didn’t understand all of my turmoil, but she was very troubled by it and worried about me. I didn’t want her to worry, but a part of me was immensely relieved that she believed me. That’s all I needed, not for her understand, but to believe that what I was going through was a human experience, that it was real.

At one point she said,” Maybe you feel too much because you remember too much. Why hold onto all that?”

And barely holding myself together I said,” Where….where do I put it all down?”