Personal Growth

I’ve always been deficient in a particular area. I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s not lack of empathy or sympathy. It’s not lack of compassion. It’s not lack of emotion. I think it’s that I don’t like showing the emotion of sadness to anyone. This is why I absolutely hate crying in movies. This is why I hate going to funerals. This is why it’s hard for me to reach out to people who are going through a difficult time—I feel the sadness too and get overwhelmed by the emotion and don’t feel comfortable exposing that to someone. I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with someone else displaying this kind of emotion. I don’t know why I am like this although my family isn’t really good at showing emotion.

As with all deficiencies in my life, there comes a time when I need to get over it. When Annette lost her baby, it was scary to go to her house to drop off dinner. What if I started crying in front of her? Would this make her feel better or worse? What if I said a really stupid thing? People tend to do that in these situations. I asked a friend of mine who also lost a late term baby what should I say? What should I not say? I guess what I learned from this experience is that first and foremost, you have to acknowledge what has happened. Pretending that it didn’t happen now or 5 years from now is the worst thing you can do. The second thing is that the fear of facing someone who had experienced a tragedy is much worse that actually facing that person. And finally, it's silly to worry too much about what you're going to say because really the most important thing you can do is to listen.