So I was thinking, how does it feel to be you?

I don’t know how old you are but clearly, you are wise beyond your years.

I work at a high school, as many of you know, and yesterday morning we had a student commit suicide. Some time in the night, he went into the garage and hung himself. His sister, I think, was the first to leave in the morning and discovered him hanging there.

I think that would be the most traumatic thing that could happen to a family. The thought that your child was so unhappy that they would do such a thing. It would break my heart.

My step-son committed suicide when he was 17, in 1999. My husband never recovered from the heartache, and died in 2004. From 1999 to 2004, he started drinking pretty heavily, and that may have been a big factor in his death. For myself, I loved my step-son, and it hurt, but I can only imagine how it would feel if it was my own child.

Most excellent dude!

When I dive down the rabbit hole marked “inward” and keep following it, I find that it doesn’t lead to some private little inner sanctum where I can discover the feeling of being me. It opens out onto the world itself. “Inner” and “outer” turn out to be the same place. I turn out to be you.

‘It’s my soul up there…’

We can never truly know what it literally feels like to be someone else, but we can empathize. Emapthy can be overwhelming when dealing with people who are going through trauma. But it is so beneficial in really connecting to others, and offering them support and compassion. People can tell when another is simply going through the motions to placate them, or if they truly can relate on some level to what they are feeling.

I have found that being empathetic has helped me learn from other people’s experiences, and I use that to guide my choices in my own life, so I will hopefully have fewer regrets in the long term.

It feels pretty good except for the tendency to blame myself for everything. My sense of humor, of the absurd, of the universality of the human situation and the wonder of childhood and nature keep me on a fairly steady plane. And music, can’t leave out the music.

I like how it feels to be me. I live in my own reality am rather eccentric and humorous to a fault. I’m a strong and outspoken woman and thrive on creative expression.
Now, if only I could have a sinus transplant and be allergy free it would be perfect. lol

This question is like asking, “How much does a sponge weigh?” It all depends on where the sponge has been and on the situation or conditions at any particular moment in time.

It feels like something I can’t escape.
It feels like.. The only thing I can rely on is being me.
If I were to delve into my soul, I don’t think I’d be able to pinpoint exactly what it feels like to be me. I’m a sinister joke. Offensive, and I don’t quite know why.
I am the secrets of my parents little dry wall world.
I am the stick figure family.
I’m that dark laughter, of unhappy children. Portrayed in Erikah’s crayola sketch, on sun dried paper. Tacked to flaking paint, like Jesus.
It feels like something I can’t escape.
It feels like something I wouldn’t want to escape.
It feels like if I left it behind, my world would implode. I’d be nothing more than a slow moving, spinning glass ball. Shattering inward.

@LuckyGuy – 37. Hopefully I have plenty of years left to teach my kids to stop and think every once in a while ;0)
@gondwanalon – Indeed. We are all sponges.
@Skaggfacemutt – your life tragedy far outweighs my own, I have no words x.
@AshLeigh – I get some of it, I probably don’t get most of it, maybe I get a lot of it. I think trying to put our own inner thoughts and emotions into words so that others can understand how we feel is just as hard as trying to understand it ourselves. Maybe that’s why most would walk past the tramp, or the man crying sat on the park bench.

I definitely think it’s time that changed, I’m guilty of it myself, though the older I get the harder my own ignorance is to ignore. unfortunately society keeps most people too busy with the many things we have deluded ourselves are important until one day, all of a sudden, hopefully we take a little time to reflect.

Thanks everyone for sharing.

I have a mom who has cancer that recently went into remission, for that I am thankful.

I have a husband who has had two seizures this year for unknown reasons, he’s alive so I’m thankful but he can’t work right now.

My job is stressful and my dog is old. I’m broke but I’m losing a lot of weight due to stress.

So basically I’m stressed and need some wine and a night out with friends to ‘de-stress’, other than that I’m going to keep on keeping on. Life is interesting for sure.

@Pazza I guess happiness is a frame of mind. I don’t feel like I have had to deal with all that much. My parents are still alive, and my sisters. My kids are alive and doing well. I have a good job, I am not starving on the streets. I am okay.

Your empathetic reflections on others is admirable, Pazza!

As to how it feels to be me . . . . it varies a bit from day to day. Generally, it’s a really comfortable feeling. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with thoughts of my own mortality, but this will pass in time.

I love to look forward to things, and those “things” can be very simple pleasures. For instance, I look forward to looking at the beautiful sky tonight; I look forward to cooler weather this weekend; I look forward to seeing a friend for lunch tomorrow. Those simple pleasures carry me a long way.

Drink a twelve pack of beer, smoke a couple of bowls and then relentlessly expound on whatever happens to come to mind. Regret nothing openly and always weep privately. During all of this be sure to set your inner soundtrack it’s what i like to call the music that constantly plays in my head, contextually, during any given situation to 11.

i never said it was pretty folks . . .

I feel empathy for everyone, but people have their own free will and can do or say anything. I can’t change how another person feels just because I don’t like it. Like how the teachers at school don’t give out referrals to the kids who curse. They won’t think anything of it when they walk away and will probably just go back to being how they normally are. I can’t change the world, you can’t change the world, not alone.
Someone in an anime (great reference, right? But it’s a good quote…) “No matter how gifted, you alone cannot change the world.”

How does it feel to be me? It feels great, personally. I am friends with my own mind from lack of personal relationships. I like to talk to myself in my mind. I’m like my own buddy. I understand myself and it’s like two people. If I were anyone else, I would most likely freak out.

I went to the darkest, most horrible place I’d ever been, and when I found out I could survive it, I wanted to do everything I could to help others either get back from there or never go there in the first place. Somehow, going there taught me that I could show people they weren’t alone by showing them I understood.

Every thank you I’ve received since then has paid forward ten times over—giving me the strength to keep on reaching out.

@AshLeigh Very poetic! Write more.

@Sunny2 I’ll see what I can do. Thanks.

Sleepy. Generally hopeful. Particularly despondent. And I need to oil my boots tonight, which elicits net indifference – I like freshly oiled boots but don’t like dropping everything and oiling them, so they cancel out.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, because I still don’t know how to put it into words.
Being me feels like being tired. It feels like jealousy, when I look around and realize that for some people the day isn’t something to fight through.
It feels like when you’re outside, standing with your arms spread out, while the rain falls on you. It feels like you’re all alone, and you wouldn’t change that.
It feels like I was made to write, even when I don’t do it anymore.
It’s not that black and white.

Today I stopped to think about one of the mothers at my kids school. Although I don’t know her myself, my wife speaks to her often. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer, has two young children in the school and one teenage daughter whom I believe recently told her mother she hated her and has gone to live with her auntie for a few days.

No doubt she is finding it very difficult to cope with thought that most probably (I’m actually filling up writing this…) in the very near future, she will not have a mother.

Their farther is a bit of a nob and doesn’t bother with them.

My thoughts were:

How does the mother cope with the thought she hasn’t got long left?
How does she cope with the knowlodge that her home is going to be reposessed because shes fallen behind with the payments because she can no longer work?
How does she get things in order so that her children are looked after?
How will the teenage daughter come to terms with the situation?

There are many more thoughts battering the inside of my head, I have no doubt the day the light goes out in my wifes school aquaintance, that the shining, spinning glass ball will suddenly come to a halt and start to crack leaving the on-lookers with the immense empty feeling I had when I was told the story of my daughter, and the day I watched my late brothers heart monitor line flatten out.

I think the many tragedies of life teach us how precious our time hear really is.

My wife is currently rallying round trying to organise a ‘money spinner’ charity event to hopefully get enough money together to send them on a holiday.

These are some of the songs I’ve been listening to recently that make me reflect on life, I have them on my ipod that I listen to in work.

The Temper Trap Sweet Disposition
Keane The Is The End
Just Jack The Day I Died
Jake Bugg Two Fingers