The Element of Empathy

Someone who likes to help people when they need it, but never does anything for themselves.

I’m no hero. No protector. I’m merely a false symbol of the hope the world needs. Everyone who comes close to me dies. Everyone who I love winds up getting hurt. I want to carry the title of saviour, but I’m not the answer to their questions. I want to bear their burdens upon my shoulders, but I can’t help everyone at once.

 

I’m on a decayed ship, sinking. I’m trapped below deck as I’m drowned in the consequences of who I am. I can feel the air desperately try to flee from my lungs as I struggle to hold my breath but the water floods in anyway. I have become the emblem of death, the insignia of suffering. I live in the image of a trillion destroyed lives.

 

I can’t lose another. Not one more. Not again. Not the last one left. They’re weighed down by a world of torture I cannot carry, an anchor I cannot lift, a nail I cannot remove.

 

I am the ember of a raging fire, a hundred times bigger than me. I am no phoenix rising from the ashes of another life, I am a burn on the scorched Earth. The light I fasted was merely a candle about to burn out, the wick fading away. You can’t boil me to rid me of disease because I’m frozen beyond absolute zero.

 

How does one satisfy the billions that look up to you? It’s impossible, but they expect it from me. I keep failing them. I keep raising their hopes to have something or someone torn away somehow. A life of ultimatums and conundrums, spinning a web of confusion I’m constantly entangled in, unable to break free.

 

I can’t bury it. My life is stained with dirt and mud. I am no longer pure. Was I ever? My vision is becoming restricted as I fall further into this endless hole in which I cannot climb out of. My chances of happiness are soiled. I’m crushed by the world collapsing upon me. My heart is no rock, my body is not that of a God.

 

This is a world that deserves more than I, a world that needs better than me. But I’m all it has. The rest gave up, and they’re stuck with me. I’m unable to make a change of any significance, to impact their lives in a way that does them any good in a lasting form. I am no deity, yet they blindly worship me, some accept my imperfections, some ignore them. Why must I be the one to dwell on every defeat, every loss, every life not saved.

 

Each breath I take grows deeper, stronger. I’m creating storms to survive. I’m thrown in a tornado of guilt, hate and love that I helped create. I can’t unwind it. I let the dizziness of the guilt spinning in my head consume me.  I choke on every time I held my breath for something good. The gale force winds are facing me head on, until the day I am finally blown away.

 

I never chose this life, this mind that tortured me into helping others and ignoring what passes through it until they have been cured of their misery. I didn’t wish for my empathy, it was forced upon me by a random mix of genes and experiences throughout my life. I follow that life because going against this storm throws me back further than where I once was. I put all my effort in for swimming up this stream will wash me out. I fight to make everyone feel better because cutting through this rock will end with my life crumbling upon me. I accept the pain I face because walking on this fire will resort in my life burning to a crisp around me. I survive because I live off saving others.