Negative Positive

Years ago I discovered an interesting trait of mine.

I mimic the people around me.

If my brother from Texas was visiting, within a half hour I’d be “drawwwwlin’ raght long da boy…” When I spoke to the custodians at work my vocabulary dropped to largely four letter words and a manly grunt or two. When I spoke to my boss, a brilliant, capable woman, my words were well chosen, succinct, erudite and cultured.

One day in the middle of a conversation, I suddenly stepped outside myself and watched it happening. And it wasn’t just my words that where shifting. It was my posture, my facial expressions, my body language, my very thought processing. I was unintentionally mirroring the person exactly. It really freaked me out.

Words that had been spoken to me many times in my life came flooding to the forefront of my brain at that second… ‘you are such a great listener’, ‘you are so easy to talk too’, ‘I feel very comfortable with you… like I’ve known you a long time rather than just these last few minutes..’ And I thought, of course you do… because in those few minutes, I’ve become you. You are talking to yourself!

I quickly retreated from the person I was speaking with and thought on that. I would lose myself into other people. All that I was, knew and felt shifted with each person I encountered. No wonder I was always shy and not one to strike up a conversation with new people… It exhausted me and deep down inside, I was afraid of where that person would take me emotionally as I became them during the conversation.

So I withdrew for a while in life and worked on trying to center myself. I struggled to consciously remain ‘me’ when I had to speak with other people. And surprise of surprises, I had no clue who the ‘real’ me was! Each one of those mimicries felt true to me and part of me. I was a foul mouthed low-brow, a profound philosopher, a laid back, Texan oil rig worker. They were all facets of me.

Years later as I grew emotionally and read more and more, what seemed like such a negative – that I was so wishy, washy in my personality that I actually didn’t HAVE one of my own – did a 180. I realized I was a deeply empathetic human being. Empathic almost. I didn’t consciously mimic those around me to make them like me or to try and fit in… I FELT their existence within ME.

That none to little revelation came as I talked to a Vietnam vet friend of mine one evening and he related some stories of war, death, despair and destruction. I went black inside and I KNEW what it was to hold my dying companion in my arms, trying frantically to stop the blood from pouring out of the place his legs had been just a few moments ago and seeing him slip off into oblivion. I was there. I saw it. It had changed my life. And when I opened my mouth to tell him MY experience with death, I realized I didn’t have one! I’d never seen death at that point in my life. But I DID. I could relate the swirl of emotions I felt, the anger and rage, the tears and feeling like a helpless little kid all over again. The begging and praying, no,no,no… please GOD no! And the finality and utter black hole at the end when the world stood still for a minute and it was all gone… I had transferred his pain into me. My heart felt like it would stop and my chest caved from the pain. A new facet was chiseled into the jewel of my being and I was forever changed because if it. (Years later when death did touch my life, I recognized him. I had seen him and felt him before because of my friend.)

He brushed away a tear and looked into my eyes and I felt his thanks. I know he didn’t consciously realize what had happened, but he knew I took his pain and felt if for him as deeply and powerfully as he had and still did.

I won’t live a thousand lifetimes, I’ve only been given one just like you, but I realized I had been given an amazing gift – I have the ability to experience many lifetimes of utter joy, deep tragedy, brilliance and numbness through everyone I meet. And it seems to help them in some way… if only to feel someone really ‘got’ them. That for a moment at least, they weren’t alone in the world and had communicated something of themselves to another.

What I saw for years as a bad trait was a gift. An amazing, wonderful gift.