Poltergeist

I'm not sure when I became too much.

No...I'm not sure when I, when they, everything around me, became so immeasurably overwhelming; but I did it, I got out.

I fought back, albeit weak at first, and over time I gained the strength to chip away the cracks within, to shed the carapace of the person I had created, and she crumbled beneath me. I stomped and spat at the carcass, that THING, that husk that kept me subsumed within. I burst out, all sticky and new and raw flesh, oozing with hope and the feelings of a fresh start; breathing, barely, but alive.

I drew my first full breath of air and with fire in my heart and ice in my tears, I shouted, it was over...the hardest part, it was over, I took the final step.

I never thought I would, and then I did.

The fresh joy I had found was quickly repressed as I soon discovered that it wasn't over, that I hadn't taken the final step, and that what I believed to be the hardest part of my journey was in fact the first and easiest step of the hardest climb I would ever take in my life. The climb to my own serenity.

Dispersed along the passage are the ghosts left behind, the energies still felt, the remnants of their emotional baggage etched into my very soul. Feeling, for me, is a constant state of being. I am unable to stop, I am unable to see people, to see things, at face value.

They are drawn to me. The pained, the struggling, the ones silently screaming for help behind their eyes and painted mask. Whether we acknowlede it or not, we all have some extent of empathy. Those who have not yet harnessed the power of it, they are what I call "seekers". They are led to those with a strong sense of empahy, those that can help them harness their own power and better thsemselves.

Like a parasite, these seekers, when their journey ends at my feet, they invite their energy into mine without consent. Feeling is something I am good at; shutting those energies out is not.

So I relent, allured by their pain, I let them in. For a moment, I feel what they feel, not only what they'd like me to feel, but the things they aren't ready to feel themselves. I see it so clearly, though a lot of them do not see far enough within themselves to gaze upon their own sadness, their fear, their pain. I draw that out of them...and when I'm done, when I disconnect from their energies, I take a piece of them with me, forever.

Inevitably, when they've taken from me what they need, when I've bandaged their pains enough for them to keep going, they leave me behind, leaving the ghosts of their pain with me forever.

I'm looking at them now. I gaze unto the path ahead of me, knowing that I will have to face these ghosts along the way. For not only am I wading through the dark waters of my own struggles, but the struggles of the ghosts of the seekers who left them, and me, behind.

I am tired and weary, beaten down and damaged...but I took the leap, and I'm forging my path. I'll be damned if I even consider turning back. I will face these poltergeists and I will triumph.

When it's all over, I hope I've gained the strength, the knowledge to stop feeling so much, so much of everything and everyone. To take a step back and no longer share energy with those seekers who unburden themselves within me.

Never again do I want to walk the path of ghosts, of those who left me behind.