warrior

Shielding and empaths

Pelgris2 Comments

People who feel empathy or are perceptive  and receptive of the emotions around them often talk about building shields. Building walls. Building cacoons. Building shells. They sequester themselves behind these walls and only venture out when they perceive things to be safe.

But things are never safe, not really. And when they get hurt they retreat behind their walls. And those shields, those walls get thicker. And thicker. Until even stepping outside them is painful. Until, like someone in a completely clean environment, the world itself becomes dangerous.

I say they. But I mean, we. Because I have done this. I built shields. I built a fortress.
Then I internalized the shields and instead of holding things at bay I turned off the thing that made the shields neccesary.

I turned off feeling. I turned off love. Turned off hope. Turned off joy. Turned off despair. Turned off pain. Turned off everything. Until only the highest high and the lowest low could get through. And both were the barest of sensation. So both became the same thing. And if I wanted to feel, either would do.

But this doesn’t really work. What I had done was create a retention basin. It was deep and large and I on the other side saw it as a done deal. But none of the emotions and pain dissipated. They all just seethed in my subconscious. Slowly building. Until the day that I decided, I’d try to turn my emotions back on.

At first, it was as if I couldn’t get to them. I had started the sluice but it took it awhile to get going. I felt despair. And it felt amazing. Pain like you cannot imagine. Sensation when there was none for the longest time, years.

Then the dam broke and I was drowning in it all. And I wanted to build the shields but I couldn’t. There was nothing that would hold back this onslaught. And slowly, I learned to deal with the pain.

Because there was no other choice. Hiding behind walls was not possible. So I had to find another way. Instead of walls.

I became like air, like water. Things could float to me, surround me, but I chose what to take in, what to expel. I bent with the current. Let it take me to joy or despair or love. And I took in what I needed. Sometimes I found myself drowning. No system is perfect.

But feelings can be learned from and dealt with, only when they are confronted, seen and allowed to effect you. It’s easy to want to be safe. But all safety based on walls is illusion. Only in the willingness and ability to protect oneself can one find any semblance of safety.

Sunday night dream

PelgrisLeave a comment

I dreamed I was a warrior. A spec ops type. Retired and taking care of security for a vast mansion filled with antiquities. The mansion was inherited. It was mine. I was cataloging it’s contents and came across a piece that a old friend, a lover, would like to see.

It gave credence to a piece of her family’s history. It was about a man who once led a group of villages, a fighting force of ten thousand, unprecedented in the time during the rise of Carthage. He was returning from a battle to the east when he learned that Carthage had sent the majority of its forces to his home village. If they raced they may reach home and save it. But there are other cities/villages he is responsible for.

If they move now, they could occupy Carthage, then turn their sights home and remove a threat forever while expanding their might and becoming a full fledged nation state. This man chose to save the village gaining him the eternal love of his people and losing the war. In the aftermath, they save the village but between them and their aggressors is a series of ambushes and pickets.

Had they chosen to hit Carthage, they would have done so from a area not well defended because they were already out of pocket. It was designed to remove him and the force he could muster. And once Carthage had fallen they would have been able to roll up the ambushes from a direction they weren’t expecting. A defeat in detail.

Instead of that he lost three quarters of his men after saving his town. And by the time he stood outside Carthage, years later he no longer had enough men to take the city. Because Carthage won, they tell the tale of a petty king and tyrant who forced this conflict. But these artifacts and papers prove that he was a good man and simultaneously remembered as the worst general of his age and the best. He held that force together for years, and though they were ill from dysentery and flux they still followed him.

A single choice and the history of the world would have been very different. This man is supposed to be her ancestor. Her family has done well down the years and she inherited the title of Duchess. She is French. In this world the French Revolution was peaceful guided by her family.

I want to rekindle the affair, I still love her. We sit in an atrium filled with light from skylights and the sound of birds outside. We are drinking a light wine and lounging on soft leather couches across from each other. We are making small talk and it comes up that she is married. I ask was she married two years ago when we were having the affair. She says no, the marriage was recent and already she grows bored with it. The person doesn’t share her passion for history, for music, opera, and life. But it was a appropriate suitor as defined by her family.

I sense that she will divorce him. What she just described are my passions. I won’t interfere in the marriage, but I will be here for her when she chooses to make the same choice of her ancestor. Love over logic. I will research her husband and render any move he can make against her a shiny tempting poisoned apple.

I bid her farewell with the scans of the pieces and copies and translation. Kiss her on the cheek and tell her, she still has my heart, and she should come to me when she has cleaned out her house. Dream ends watching her drive away.