Empathy Crier

I’ve never really considered myself a sympathy crier. Or, really, an empathy crier. Feeling sympathy means you feel bad for someone; feeling empathy means that you feel what that person is feeling. As an interning counselor-in-training in my fifteenth month of grad school, I often feel bad for those I counsel. However, I do not often feel what they’re feeling.

S changed that.

“S” was a student that really struggled with being at the same university as myself. She was an undergrad student, a junior, and a closeted lesbian at a very conservative Christian college. She knew that she could potentially be kicked out, especially since she was in a serious relationship, but committed to staying for the sake of her education and her fiancee. She started seeing me the second semester of her junior year, shortly after becoming medicated for her depression and anxiety.

It became quickly evident to me that S’s medication hadn’t balanced her out yet. She was on a steady antidepressant and a sedative for panic attacks, but the sedative didn’t help and the antidepressant hadn’t fully integrated itself into her system. There were days that she would sit in front of me, shivering and blank-faced, as her body tried to make sense of the foreign chemicals now present.

This day, however, she wasn’t blank-faced. Her face was taut with anger, jaw set and mouth a hard line.

“We got harassed the other day.”

I encouraged S to tell me about it.

“We were at Barnes & Noble with some friends, and we were holding hands. We were a couple towns over, almost forty minutes away, so we thought we’d be fine. But a group of students that we kind of know said that if we don’t stop holding hands, they’d ‘say something.’ They wanted to report us to the administration.”

S rubbed her temple, and I imagined that a tension migraine was probably on its way.

“Did you respond to them?"

She shook her head, folding her arms across her stomach. "No, I didn't. I was so mad I couldn't even think."

“How else did you feel?”

S chewed on her bottom lip. “Upset. Scared. Unsafe.”

“How did your friends react? Your fiancee?”

She sniffed, pushing hair out of her eyes. “They were furious.”

I smiled a little. “At least they were there to back you up.”

S nodded, smiling a little as well. “Yeah, that’s true.”

She was silent for a moment, and her face returned to the blank stare that her medication frequently bestowed upon her.

Then, so quietly I could barely hear her:

"Can't I just...live?"

Before me, S dissolved. Her face fell into her hands, her elbows jabbed at her thighs, and sobs wracked her already-shaking body. She was melting before my eyes, a young woman who had tried so hard to be strong that she no longer had the stamina to do so.

Then I felt it. Fury. Terror. Frustration. Grief. All flooded my body in a matter of moments, and I found myself resisting the urge to also melt. I took in a shaky breath, rubbing my lips together to stave off the tears in my eyes. My heart wanted to burst in my chest.

S still had her hands in her hands when she spoke, and these were the words that finally made my tears slip free.

"Just being seems like too much to ask for."

#counseling #therapy #mentalhealth #lgbtq+ #nonfiction #creativenonfiction #challengeoftheweek #prose