"What i Mean When i Say Empath" by Jordan E. McNeil

Jordan E. McNeil [she/her] writes fairytales, rages at videogames, and takes selfies with goats. Her work can be found (or is forthcoming) at Curating Alexandria, The Arcanist, Arsenika, and Liminality. She can be found on Twitter, @Je_McNeil.

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Grief is a palpable thing i can clutch from the air and hold, pulsing, in my hand, when i walked down the halls after a student took his life, when a kid from my sister’s grade did as well, when a family in the community lost a husband, a father, a child in an automobile accident, when another from a different community lost their mother to one as well, when a roommate lost her dad, when Robin Williams, Alan Rickman, Bowie, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Chester Bennington and people took to the internet to grieve, because where else can they share this emotion over people they never really “knew” but loved deeply anyway. i cut the grief into slices and placed them one by one into my mouth to chew for eternity, for grief is not a fast emotion, but slow like molasses, sticky like saltwater taffy but rarely sweet.

i have experienced far too much grief for someone my age, and societal normalized jokes about loss about death about suicide are not funny to me anymore. If you tell me you want to jump off a bridge, i’ll believe you, and you bet your ass i will comment on that post saying “don’t” saying “i may not be much help, but wanna talk? want some cute animal videos?” saying “i may not know you, but i will notice your absence, i will grieve you, you are not alone, how can i make you believe that, please believe it.” while anxiety burns in my chest, while my heartbeat races because my mental illness also manifests as worry, as what-if worst case scenario pessimistic as hell and what-if that tweet is not a joke, what-if i’m not able to help because heaven knows i’m not qualified. i’m just a girl, barely out of teens it seems, with atypical neurology herself, what am i supposed to do but reach out and pray i won’t have to see others grieve again and again and again, pray that you’ll believe, pray that for once beautiful starlight can stay on this earth, for we are all made of star dust.