I understand that empathy requires an element of personal experience in order to work. When nothing bad ever happens to you, or when your bubble of bliss is so thick that it would take a power drill to put a hole in it, it makes it difficult to empathize with people who seem, in your mind, overly pessimistic. There is not a whole lot people can say to make me feel better, but there is a whole lot they can say to make me feel worse. There is a time and a place for comedy, heck, I use it all the time myself, even under dire circumstances. I know you didn’t mean to blow me off. But that’s how it came across. Huge things have gone awry, all at once — it’s like driving your car cross country only to have a rock cause a huge crack in the windshield, then the car overheats, then as you pull over the tire goes flat and you accidentally drive into a ditch and the car gets stuck. To make matters worse, you’ve lost your map but you know you’ve gone at least a thousand miles in the wrong direction at this point. You went this way because you thought it would be shorter but it turns out the shortcut never actually connects to the original road. You try to call for help but your cell phone has no reception, and then it starts to rain. You attempt to roll your driver side window up but it’s stuck.
I wouldn’t know if I was crying or if it was raining on me these days. Does it make a difference? In the end I’m still cold. You’re the only one who knows about my darkest clouds. I held on to the hope that you’d help me out of the rain, but you just stood at the window and looked out at me, and cracked a joke. I wanted to run from your window in the gloom, to run until I was too cold to move.
