I began my journey to open myself to others and to dedicate myself to Love when I was just 12 years old. I didn't have conscious feelings of sympathy, affection, or kindness at the time--all I had was a Vulcanesque intellectual concern for others and I wanted there to be more, but as far as I could tell at the time, there wasn't.
I was in the interesting position of being a sort of "therapist" for each of my parents individually. Not sure how old I was when I started listening to them--I know I was young, and emotionally and socially disabled. I learned the behavioral side of empathy from that experience in part and from my consistent exposure of myself to self-help psychology that was written *by* therapists--not just people with a good technique or inspirational stuff though I read that too. My exposure of myself to that material started when I was about 9--I was fascinated by people and wanted to understand even in just an intellectual sense *how* people came to feel the things they did, the process of it situationally, even if I couldn't understand it with my then unawakened heart. I asked my mom, a librarian, to check out stuff for me from the library on really messed up people or events from the past. People like Elizabeth Bathory and about stuff like the Salem witchcraft trials. My mom supported my desire to learn--I may have said it was for a personal research project and in a way it was. I wanted to understand and I began with the "darkest" individuals I could--perhaps part of me knew that if I could come to intellectually understand the situations that had led up to their crimes, then I could come to understand anyone.
It worked. I today--almost 20 years later--have exposed myself socially and through that literature to many kinds of people--homeless people, the severely mentally ill, and was myself severely depressed (though I knew it not) for many years and was bulimic for 5 or so of those years--and I have made it a sort of mission to care as much as I can and to show caring to as many different kinds of people as I can. I was very rigid when I began but now I can honestly say that I am capable of handling talking with *almost* anyone, and I'm always striving to broaden my horizons and learn as much as I can about everyone I can in terms of their situations so I can expand my heart-consciousness, my mind, and awaken my spirit as far as it will awaken.
If my readers here will forgive me, it's such a joy to me to know I genuinely care about others. That brings me more joy than others caring about me--I always wanted to have a sense of myself as a caring person when I was a kid and now I do--and it seems like my caring never stops. I get tired now and then and if I'm really physically tired or ill I have been unable to be there for others in a love-centered way but it is so amazing to me. My ex-bf told me when he first met me--in the months just before I began to emotionally awaken. I told him then that I didn't feel much--and at that point it was true--and that I couldn't tell if when I did something that was behaviorally kind to somebody if I really meant that kind deed. He looked me in the eyes and he said: "Milady, you do mean it. In fact you're the most compassionate person I've ever met." I was amazed at his words because the tumor had not yet been removed and although I didn't realize it I'd been depressed for about a decade by then and was pretty blank--but I honestly think today that that was the kindest and most sincere thing anyone has ever said to me. He told me: "You do mean it. I can feel it." I didn't know what he meant at first but he was empathic and he eventually recognized empathic gifts in me and taught me how to shield. He eventually got kind of childish and could be manipulative at times but he was so gentle--and he helped me overcome the bulimic purging I was doing--recognized bulimia in me even before I was diagnosed with it--and he would bang on the door to the bathroom when he thought I was taking too long and would say: "Brigit, you're not purging are you?" If I came back with a weak "Yeeeeah" which I usually did because I couldn't hide anything he'd say: "Get out here. NOW!" Once I did, he'd hold me in his arms until my urge to purge had passed and wouldn't let me go until it had. I would not be alive today if he hadn't been in my life then. There was one night after the tumor was removed when I was going nuts--my feelings were all going wild and my anxiety--which I'd struggled with for years but never quite like that--was at fever pitch and I was about to end my life because my parents, whom I lived with, had no patience at all for what I was going through and my mom was beginning to question the wisdom of having had the tumor removed in the first place. She was the worst--she was horribly impatient with me and could not understand why even carrying a full, and light, laundry-basket was too much for me and had no patience for all the new anxieties that were arising then willy-nilly. I thought it was wise to end my life and I called my then bf in the middle of the night--at 3 am saying: "Love, why do you love me?" He answered: "Because you're YOU, why do you ask?" I sobbed--one of the first times I'd really wept in years at that point--and confided to him how badly my parents were handling it and that I wanted to kill myself. He stayed on the phone with me for an hour or so consoling me and telling me he loved me because I was me--and that he would help me through this. And he did. Sometimes I would go into campus to see him in part because I was so tired of vegetating at home and I loved him more than I had anyone in years and he was the gentlest person (other than my cat) that I knew and he was worth it to me, in spite of many of our meetings being at a role-playing game parlor. Laughs
He would sometimes enlist the help of his some of his friends to help me keep my balance because I felt during those first months like there was a little bit of an elevator going up and down in my head and it was a bit foggy. It took the whole two years after the surgery for my brain to settle down and I finally began to see a therapist for the first time since I was 19 (whom I still see) but I survived it--and I began to awaken in my feelings to the kindness I'd been practicing since I was 12--and it was wonderful. It still is. So long in my mind I longed for experience of heart-felt compassion and sympathy in myself and to truly care and now...it's so beautiful. I'm still getting used to how warmly people react to me--and I've had some of the most intellectual men peg me within minutes of meeting me as a "gentle soul" etc. I am still in some ways the little cat-spirit who was teased a lot and really shy and I still find myself amazed at how much people often seem to like me, online and off. And how safe some of the shyest people feel around me and pour out their hearts to me. They can tell I care....it's awesome.
Okay, I've written a thesis and I'm sure I sound horribly self-centered so I'll stop now. Thank you to all of you. You're purred, just the way you are, because you are.
Love, Ngawang And Tenzin Wangmo https://tenzingwangmo.blogspot.com
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