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Friday, May 27, 2011

Wash it Off

Irked. Irritated. Angry. Sometimes hurt. These are all emotions that tend to rub off on me. I’m not an empath. I don’t pick up and embody every emotion that I come in contact with. But I think it’s literally impossible for any human being not to pick up on these little snippets of emotion that constantly float around the surface of a person like shedding skin cells.

If you’re a barber, you will inevitable find yourself covered with teeny tiny little lengths of hair all over and nothing but a good, thorough shower is going to wash that off. If you’re a nurse and you spend all day cleaning up all manner of bodily fluids you will inevitably be in need of a good scrub when you get home. And when you do what I do it is literally impossible not to find little pieces of someone else’s emotions lurking on the surface of you.

On good days, when you’re focused and grounded you notice the build up. You can actually feel yourself slipping into a state of dudgeon as the little bits and pieces of strong emotion build up. But on bad days, when you’re distracted or tired or just physically feel icky, you tend not to notice until you succumb to a full blown hissy fit.

And then, after the heart has slowed and the breaths deepen and you re-gain your bearings you start to wonder “what was that all about?”. And then you remember- “Oh yeah, these aren’t my emotions.”

1 comment:

  1. I tend to contract unwanted emotions from obnoxious people. I work on other people's terms too often for my own good. An unavoidable side effect of being too gregarious - my cheer invites other people's rage and whining. With good luck I'll rub off on them eventually.

    minor typo: "inevitable" for "inevitably"

    ReplyDelete

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