Yesterday I went to my old town for the first time in about 4 months. I try to make it every other month to visit friends there, but honestly the town is very hard for me to visit. Every time I go another old landmark has been destroyed and in it's place, something fancy and vapid.
For tourists it's a wonderland because they don't know the history and they don't realize how fake it is now. They don't realize what an amazing, one of a kind, magical and laid back place was ripped to shreds to create this kind of fun fashionable and expensive place.
I don't get upset anymore, but I always feel like I'm stepping into an occupied territory when I go there. It was the first place that felt like home to me and it is home no longer.
But there are a good 4 or 5 people I still like to visit, so when my partner said she'd join an event there, I said I'd come meet her for dinner afterwards at my friends shop. This friend is like an older sister to me. She was the first person to make me feel at home in Japan and really explain some of the more subtle things about Japanese culture that are hard to turn into a Youtube video or put in a guide book.
We used to talk for 2-3 hours at least once a week, sometimes every other day. It's the only place in Tokyo where I can sit for an hour and feel no pressure to order anything.
In a city like this, customer bases are made of more friends than strangers, so everyone is kind of expected to be a paying customer, but since we have known each other 15 years and never get to see each other outside (she has a kid and is in her shop 6 days a week with one day for family), she doesn't mind me stopping by just to say hello.
Usually we order though, and yesterday was no different. Delicious as always, and we were able to catch up a bit, but she was way busier than usual, so it was a little hard.
As we were talking I felt myself getting tired and a bit annoyed. I couldn't figure out why. It wasn't anything she said or anything that happened.
I realized that her energy and my partner's energy, and the energy of another acquaintance there were very different and I was having a hard time "vibing" with all of them at once.
None of them were saying or doing anything confrontational or impolite. Just imagine 3 people with completely different focuses and ways of communicating, not particularly interested in each other, but all talking to you intermittently.
Me, being me, tried to find a way to make everyone comfortable. I don't expect people to always want the same things or to do everything together, but I don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable or left out.
It wasn't exactly easy because everyone was preoccupied with different things, so eventually I gave up and just enjoyed the meal and settled on the fact that I wouldn't be able to catch up with my friend as much as I had wanted to.
The situation is a little hard to describe and I'd like to avoid sharing anything that would betray anyone's privacy...
But that annoyed feeling grew and grew on the train until I got home when I realized something else was going on.
These weren't just my feelings I was feeling.
I was feeling anxious the whole meal, and it wasn't my own anxiousness. I had been feeling someone else's anxiousness. And what I was annoyed at was that someone had "infected" me, and that I hadn't realized it and prevented it. I wasn't blaming anyone but I didn't like someone having that effect on me, even though I wasn't consciously aware of it happening.
I don't like the word "empath" because I am sure everyone can feel other people's feelings in ways that science still doesn't have much of an explanation for. Some people are more predisposed than others, due to their experiences, to act like what people may call "empaths" but we all have that innate ability, whether it's turned on or not.
Of course that person who was feeling anxious had done nothing wrong, but I realized that I had been careless, as I often am.
I realized a few months ago that many of my feelings are not my own, or rather, the intensity of my emotions is not my own. I must feel something myself in order to resonate with another person's feelings enough for it to effect me, but when two people sing the same note, it hits a lot harder, and it becomes harder to ignore.
If I had recognized my own slight anxiety about trying to create a comfortable environment for 3 different people who all knew me better than they knew each other, I could have curbed it, turned off my connection to their anxiety and eased myself into feeling more balanced.
"These are not your emotions alone" is a new mantra I will say whenever I'm annoyed, exhausted or uncomfortable in a public place.
I need to remember this every time I start feeling anger or anxiety. Sometimes those emotions are turned on through being exposed to someone else with their emotions on high. On the train, at a gathering, in a class.
I already ask myself where all my emotions come from (to get at the deeper reasons, and not just the surface), but I will try to stay more aware of how they may be from other sources entirely.
Since you are here, might as well check out my EP and a music video:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfbHdRxiw96PR4ZBvBoQvMutkmaph_Aq4&si=pzfMIF7_jnsVK9ne
