I have just shot a confirmation after spending an evening and morning with some adorable kids. I jump on a bus, and after a few stops a group of young people enter. A smell of beer and old cigarettes accompany them, and one guy in particular catches my attention. He sits across from me. He is jittery and not a day past 25 years of age. An infinite sadness starts to build inside me mixed with the sense that I have seen this kid before. They are all in somewhat good spirits, but my eyes still get wet. I see him whip out a small bottle of ‘Hot n’ Sweet’ (sweet, cheap liquor), and he knocks it back one time. I want to scream. I want to cry - I want to take everything he is fighting and put it on me. I am 43 - so fuck me. This kid, and I just know this, will not see 40 - maybe not even 30. My mind screams at him in silence: ‘who abandoned you’? ‘What asshole father left you to drift by yourself’?
They reach their stop, which, of course, is Mølleparken. Lots of people in Aarhus go there, however, you can be sure the drunks and addicts are out as well in the park - every damn day during the summer. As they leave I see his bag is full of ‘Hus Forbi’ - a paper produced by the homeless in Denmark. That is how I know him - he camps out selling them at the place where I used to shop on Vesterbro Torv. I get another flash of his face, and it hits me. I saw him getting harassed by a ‘normal’ woman in the inner city one time. It was classic - she told him to get a job, and he was trying to tell her that it was not that easy, that there were no jobs, and certainly not any for him. He had been begging which pisses people of. And now I know why I remember him so vividly. That day, I walked right up to him, past the woman and pressed a 100kr bill in his hand - he looked at me in total disbelief, I turned, flipped off the woman, gave her a sarcastic smile, and went on my merry way.
But it stings that it has to be this way. It tears at my being and it violates what we are about. We have no dignity if we let our own suffer. How can we fight for a place in the cosmos, when we do not even have the heart to fight for our own - much less animals, nature or the planet.
I wish I did not care. I wish I could care less. I wish, I wish, I wish. I will often question if it is just pretentiousness and subsequently second guess my own apparatus and heart. I will accuse myself of being a manipulative asshole that only feels this way, because it makes me feel righteous, special or good about myself. But I know it is not true. I am an empath and I hate every second of it. It does not make me feel good. A recently acquired friend shoved it in my face ‘oh, you’re an empath, that’s no fun, I mean, it’s lovely, but it’s horrible’. She was spot on. She often is. Unfortunately for her, it is a case of taking one to know one.
Some of us have big hearts. But it may come as a surprise to many of you, that it is a horrible burden. A bird hit the windshield at my parents, and I could not rest before I knew it was ok (80% of small birds die either way). I was passing the corridor in the house, what turns out to be a small moth flies toward me, and in the dark I instinctively swat it softly. When I get the lights on, the small fella is running in circles on the floor. That absolutely destroys me. You see? It is a fucked up way to live.
