It kind of feels redundant to say, but I hate death. It rips me apart. I haven't experienced the death of a loved one - yet - but having seen the impact of that loss on others around me, those I love and respect, I definitely do not relish the day.
Instead, I experience that loss vicariously. I see the emptiness in them, that sudden void that once was filled with someone important to them opening up and sucking in their happiness, their hopes, their safety. A black hole, yawning and destroying them from the inside.
And that breaks me. As a Rescuer I see their pain and I can't fix it. As an empath, the sudden darkness in someone's eyes flashes through me and overwhelms me. There is absolutely nothing I can do about it - no filling in the hole, no telling a joke to cheer someone up, no promises about the future that don't feel vacuous in the moment.
So that pain transfers to me - and because of my own relationship with sadness I reject it totally and bottle it up. Tears leak out, but ultimately I swallow up that sadness and it eats away inside me. It feels like there's a big dam inside, holding back a flood of sadness, and this just adds to it.
Having struggled at times over the past couple of years with considering my own mortality, the one thing that kept me going was thinking about the horror of such a loss being visited upon those who love and care for me - the fact that there are such people is something I've had to drill into me due to my low self esteem. And so I carry on.
And so wounds will heal. And so hope will return.
And so we all carry on.