Merry Christmas to you but merry what to me?

During the holiday season I always feel something odd. A feeling of exclusion almost.

Today is for many people a very important day, it's a day where you get with family and exchange gifts with friends, spread love, eat a lot and buy cheap electronics. But growing up in Syria, today was just another Tuesday where you went to sleep at 9pm to go to school the next day.

I've always the idea of a holiday but I couldn't really identify with any. When I was in Syria yes I of course celebrated the two Muslim holidays Eid al fitir and Eid al adha. But since I left Syria about 6 years ago I just couldn't connect with these holidays anymore. My family wasn't around me, and I became an Athiest and felt very removed from the nostalgia of a religious holiday.

Many people I know who are western Athiests still celebrate Christmas which I find wonderful because it proves that some tradition bring us closer together no matter what. But unfortunately it's hard to include yourself in a tradition when you didn't have it growing up.

I just want to say that being away from home is hard but what's harder is feeling like you have no home. I can't really call Syria my home unfortunately, yes I grew up there but I was mostly unaccepted by my peers because of they called my "Western ideology"

I remember one time I told my father that I believe in equality amongst religions and he yelled at me and told me that the only religion is Islam. How could I fell home in an environment like that?

And since then I've been on the move so much that I barely got a chance to breath. I have been in Istanbul for 4 years now and while I do feel very comfortable and safe in the city. I know the ins and outs of it, I have fantastic friends and an amazing job. But I just don't feel like it's home. That's why I can't enjoy the holidays here either (The Bayrams).

The silver lining is that my friends here accept me the way I am and never judge me. While most people need special days to have fun and get together with the people they love for me any Wednesday can turn into the best night ever because of the people around me. 

So for those of you enjoying the holidays, Merry Christmas! And for those of you away from home, just look at the people around you. If you have people who'll pick you up when you fall down, well that's your own Christmas!

The Quest For Death

Life came to me the only way she knows how, as a surprise. I didn't ask for her, no one does I guess.

When it came she brought with her friends,enemies, and complications. Complications that, simply, appeared before my eyes one day. I opened them and there she was. Fantastically huge and horrifyingly new. Everywhere I looked, life looked at back at me. Almost mockingly really. As if to say "I'm everywhere, and you can't run away."

 Even when I close my eyes and I try to go to sleep. She lives deep within my mind, relentless and unhinged. Every second of every day, there she exists.

I decided to go on a quest after years of holding Life's hands and feeling all that trouble that comes with this universal relationship that we all have. All the anxiety, pain, suffering and all the happiness, laughter and glee. It's a relationship just like any other with a lady as big is life itself because well.... she is. My quest was for death.

There's only one way to break up with Life, to get out of that relationship. You have got to meet Death. But lady Death is as illusive as she is inevitable. When i knocked on her door, she opened. Clad in black and scythe in hand.

"Help me!" I pleaded.
"It's not your time." she replied.
"Why? Why is it not my time? I'm ready!"
"It doesn't matter. It's not your time."

And suddenly I found myself back with Life.

What I did then,was try to find Time. Because I needed to convince Time to be mine. I needed it to be my Time. But how really can you find Time? How really can you knock at time's door? Knocking at Death's door is easy, knocking at Life's door is easier. But knocking at Time's door.......

I buried my self in metaphysics, philosophy, theology and every other science about time that I could think. I even turned to drugs to try to open my mind but it was all for naught. The knowledge of being enable to know drove me mad. So I knocked at Death's door again, she opened.

"It's not your time."
I begged her "Please take me, I'm done with this relationship."
"No, I can't take you before it's your time."
"Why are you such a stickler for time? What do you owe?"
"Because I and Life were created by Time and we live by it's law. We work simultaneously and side by side."
"Well, where is time then?"
"Our rivalry was frowned upon by Time and we were banished."
"Banished? Where to?"
"To the world! More accurately to the human mind. You see Life and you see Death. But Time decided to stay in the realm above. And it decided that nothing should ever touch it, understand it or control it"
"But Death, I have distorted time myself, I have taken drugs and that changed my perception of time."
"But you haven't changed it, you looked at it differently. Much like a child who thinks that their parent is large when in comparison they're small."
"What is time?"
"Time is everything, and it's the only thing. Life and Death are your window to witness Time. Because Time rules all and time ,by its well created, all. Before it there was nothing, and after it there will be nothing. Time gave you a gift. It gave you Life and it gave you itself. But time is tricky, time is the only thing that you have until it becomes yours. Because when it becomes yours, I become yours."

How my father's cancer affected me. And why his recovery didn't.

Cancer is one of those words that no one like to say, hear or think about. There's an underlying evil surrounding the word, whenever you hear someone has it you imagined death standing behind them. Scythe in hand, big ominous smile, red eyes piercing your soul and the world turns grey.

It's rare to catch a death in a hesitant state like that. I've dealt with death before, but it had always been with his magnificently executed, and already done, handy work. Never saw her actually in action. It's almost attractive watching it. My father was diagnosed with cancer a few month ago and the second I heard that I saw her. Death looked at me

It was so odd, I've always viewed death as a pertinacious force. Comes, reaps, smiles, nods and leaves. When she nods, you nod back in respect. But this time it just lurked.. almost precariously.

When I heard about his cancer a sense of restlessness befell me. I never even liked the guy really, nor he me. But thanks to good old evolution I'm apparently supposed to be threaten when my genetic predecessor is ill because that means I'm susceptible. Or at least that's how I rationalised being part carefree part depressed. I know, how can you not care and be depressed at the same time you ask. Well I honestly don't know, and not knowing made me feel angry. Not really being as sad as I should be lead to guilt. The amount of sadness I had ended up in depression that didn't really help the guilt. So I end up feeling depressed, guilty and angry.

Not angry at the world or at a fictional creature that gave my dad cancer, there's a perfectly rational reason why he got cancer. Not he the individual, he a human. But angry at my self for not knowing why I'm angry and that's a dangerous slope.

I alienated people, lost some friendships, destroyed relationships.Eventually I stopped writing, stopped recording my podcast, barely made it out of the door most days. Made his illness about myself and felt even more guilty about that.

But here's the great news, he's better. He did his surgery tomorrow and the doctor said in a few months he should be back to his old self, the old self I didn't like and still don't.

When they rolled my dad back from surgery, I was there in the room, I looked at my mother's face and it was easily a 9 on the happiness scale. I swear she looked younger when she saw him. I didn't even need to look at my face to know that it didn't even twitch, my heart told me that.

I watched as the colours seep back into my mother's world... I actually saw her pupils widen and let those colours splash back into her mind. And I looked at death dragging behind him, looking disappointed. She nodded respectfully at the doctor, he nodded back. She recognised that he won a battle, he recognised that she'll win the war. And she looked at me and winked mischievously.

I don't know why she did that, I feel like she wanted to tell me that we have an unspoken connection, like I know that she's there, she's not going anywhere. She just went to grab a cup of coffee and she'll be right back, she'll be everywhere always and forever.

His illness made me stare in her eyes, it showed me the grey. His recovery didn't bring back the colours it merely put them in perspective. I'm glad he's ok, I might even dare say I'm happy for him and my mom. But I've already peaked in her eyes, we made that unbreakable bond, the bond we all try to avoid.

Yeah I'll be back to my old self soon, I'm already writing, planning to do the podcast again, maybe try to fix some of the relationships I messed up. But that bond, that wink she threw me... that'll live with me until it's time for our date.           

The Male Empath (Athiesm)

And here we are, the conclusion to the Empath series.

 Since this specific topic is quite controversial, I thought I'd start with some disclaimers. First and foremost everything I've written in this series is purely personal and not to be taken as scientific or factual. I've simply written how I personally interact with the world. Secondly, this post is not meant to offend anyone's faith or religion, it's merely a telling of how I felt about faith.

 Faith has always been tricky to me. I grew up in a very VERY religious family. Like "Music comes from the devil" religious. I went to the mosque every day since I was four years until I was about 16, I learned the entirety of the Quran and actually memorised all of it. But faith in itself has always baffled me. You see as an Empath there are all these feelings floating around all the time and I like deconstructing them, but with faith I could never get a finger on it. I don't think that faith is a feeling per say, it's more of a state of being.

 When I was at the mosque listening to our various teachers teach us about Islam I could tell how they're feeling. They all had conviction I have to admit that but I never really felt their "Faith". Neither with my family, whose emotions I learned to read much better than others. It was always hard to pick faith from amongst other feelings. I felt a lot of conviction but also a lot of doubt and worry. Not doubt in God per say, just general doubt about the meaning of life. And it baffled me because I thought following a religion should remove that sense of aimlessness that we all feel.

 Every time my family talked about or practised religion I really wanted to pick up on their faith but there was always that existential crisis in all of them. When I was lucky enough to go to Europe and meet Christians and Jews and people from other religion, their energy was pretty much the same. I've felt like to most of them faith and or religion was more of a safety net, whether they know this consciously or not I could not say but I've always felt it being used as a safety net.

  I've had various conversations with people who are still in their religion just because their family is even though they never practised it. I even know Christians who have never been to church or ever read one word in the bible to begin with. You see I've been told all the time the faith is supposed to bring you calm and a direction, but I've never felt that from other people. Especially my father, who I think is the most religious person I know, I've never felt like religion brought him peace of mind in anyway, it certainly never brought me any peace either.

 All of the factors above, really made me questions whether religion is something that's real or if it is just an emotional safety net. Religious people always have a sense of belonging I have to admit that but they also feel alone a lot. So I came to the conclusion that if religion can't give a sense of belonging the way it should, or a sense of peace the way it should then what's the point?

 Why should I submit myself to an entity that has never really done anything for me? and slowly I realised that there's nothing that'll stop a human from feeling alone or from questioning life. Because we are born without asking for it, given a conscious without asking for it. And live with that state of self-awareness without asking for it. Religion or not, when you give something self-awareness they're gonna be scared and lonely and confuse. Plus I know it's not a very valid argument but there are 4200 religions in the world... so the chances of any one of them being right is 1 in 4200.

 In conclusion, I've never felt that faith really helped people around me too much, it gives a lot of people a sense of safety but so does having good friends or a family.

 Thank you so much for everyone who has read this series, it was very hard for me to share all I've shared.

 Today I'm feeling: Relieved because I'm bouncing back from an illness. Unsure about my career choices. Glad that I stuck with this series and finished it. Nervous about money like always. Anxious about a few job applications.

Thanks again.  

The Male Empath (Dating)

It's time to get personal again, thank you everyone who has discussed this blog series with me, it's been oddly satisfying to write my feelings and share how I see the world with.

What a nightmare... dating an Empath! I guess for many people the hardest part about dating is to get your partner to open up with you about how they feel, cross your fingers and hope to god it's good. Or telling them how you feel and hoping they feel the same. So much hope, they hope you feel the same way as them you hope they feel the same you as you.... hope is good, it's fun for a relationship it adds anticipation and excitement.

Now imagine a scenario where you go on a date and the moment they show up you immediately know how they feel about. Here's a story of a first date I went on that went so horrifyingly badly:

I met a woman doing stand-up, she seemed pretty cool and she was a lawyer so I took her number and I asked her on a date. We were gonna meet in kadikoy for a drink but she shows up an hour late and high as fuck! Here's how she was feeling "I only said yes because I had nothing better to do, he's probably boring so I'll get high to have fun either way."

 I can't explain to you how I knew she felt that way it's impossible, my "ability" if that's the right word to know how people are feeling changes and evolves. When I was a kid it used to be a single emotion (He's Upset, She's Happy) it was simple like that. But the older I got it kinda got more complicated and started to unfold more complicated thoughts (She's upset because she feels like she's underappreciated) and these thoughts don't even happen in my head, I just have them as raw feelings. If I'm with you and you asked me (How am I feeling right now?) It'll probably take me a good few minutes to gather my feelings. Yes I used the word "feelings" again on purpose, because it's not a thought process it's really just feelings that I have to translate into thoughts. But I digress, back to dating.

Through out my most successful relationships, they usually go well for a while. You know beginning of the relationship blah blah blah, but they usually end horribly for me because I see it coming. Let me explain to you how. My Empath power doesn't always work on everyone, some people are harder to read, maybe because they have less feelings or they're better at guarding themselves or maybe it's the tinfoil hats they wear... not sure yet. However when I'm dating someone and I spend so much time with them, their feelings become so clear to me they basically become my own. So the moment they decide that they're going to break up with me I immediately know... just immediately! It has never failed. And that's why dating is insane for me, imagine knowing how your partner feels about you or about others all the time, all the doubt they have feeding your insecurities, all the tiresomeness and anxiety befalling you like boulders. It's truly horrifying.

Every time I'm with someone, even if their excitement wanes a little bit I know immediately, even if they try to put effort to hide it, effort which I should appreciate, I just can't shake off the fact that their eyes don't look at me the way they used to. My heart chooses a beat that it shouldn't and it goes down a dark path fast.... really fast.

And now we come to dating the Sociopath. I can honestly write a book about dating her. She was the first woman that I dated that I honestly imagined spending the rest of my life with.... yeah I know it's insane, let me tell you why though.

Our relationship was extremely dysfunctional, we spent a lot of our time talking about death, existentialism, how life is meaningless and how the world is a cold horrifying place. I enjoyed those talks more than I enjoyed talking to anyone in my life, her Sociopathy gave her an intellect I'm yet to see paralleled. Our sex life was a disaster, let's just say we weren't compatible sexually which is a huge deal for me, yet despite all of that I still wanted to be with her and I'll tell you why. When I'm around her, I felt very little. Not towards her, I was intensely in love with her, it's just when I'm with her (And it took me so long to figure that out) I felt my emotions go down immensely. Even though she showed a little bit less amount of emotions than others, it wasn't anything too blatant, however when I'm around her I almost felt like there's no emotions to be felt. What I learned when I read the book about Sociopathy (confessions of a sociopath) I learned that a lot of the emotions they show are actually simulated because they want to fit in with society. So when I was around her, I tried to feel what she's feeling and got little to nothing which made my own emotions go down, she was like an emotional dampener and I LOVED IT.

You see having so many feelings all the time is just inhumanely tiring, many people can cry for a few hours and then feel emotionally numb afterwards, most Empaths can't because our existence is fuelled by how we feel about things. That's why a lot of us are obsessive about certain things, because if our bed isn't made or if there's dirt we actually fell negatively. And our obsessions always manifest differently, you get the over-cleaner, the over-dresser etc... My obsession is I'm an over-thinker which leads to me being and over-talker, I just need to get the emotions out there because otherwise I'll just obsess about it and think it over and over and over until it consumes me like some sort of parasite.

And that's why I was in love with her. Imagine the relief I felt around her, the relief of emotional numbness. That is a feeling that no other human or thing has ever induced in me. You know how most people want to be happy? I really prefer to just feel nothing.

wow that was a depressing note to end with, well you know I'm just sharing how I feel so sue me. Anyways, if you ever do find yourself dating an Empath don't lie to them about your feelings, if you feel less excited about being with them tell them that, because if you lie they'll start obsessing about why you're lying to them. Just tell them exactly how you feel, because they already know and they'll appreciate your honesty.

Thanks a lot for reading and next week I'll be talking about how my Empathy lead me to Atheism and how most people I know who are Empaths happen to be Atheists or Agnostics.

How I'm feeling today : Relieved because the production I was working with was amazing and it's over. Excited about the upcoming rap battle. Hopeful for the opportunity of an upcoming job. Confused about a relationship that is developing in a very odd way.

Thanks again for reading and see you next week.               

The Male Empath (Altruism)

Let's pick up right where we left off. 

First of all I got a lot of positive reactions about my last post in this series so thank you a lot for that, I hope as I continue exploring personal Empathy you'll find the stories interesting and informative.

Here's how Altruism is defined in the dictionary: disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.

The reason I bring up altruism because since a very young age a lot of people have said that I'm "Too nice." or that I let people walk over me. I'll give a quick example of this before I try to disentangle the thought process that lead me to my decision

I was having a party at my house and there was this girl there that I had a major crush on. The girl showed up to the party with a date. A few hours into the party they wanted a place to be "Alone" so I told them they can use my bedroom (Which is uncommon for me, my bed has seen more action from other people than myself). Of course my roommate was watching all of this and his jaw dropped, he said "Dude don't you have a crush on that girl? You literally just gave her and this strange dude a bed."  "Yeah, I also gave them a condom, what's your point?"

Now from his point of view, I just let a random dude into my house and then offered him the bed where I lay my head to have sex with a girl I liked. He really thought that I was just the biggest coward in the world. To some others it seemed like I just wanted the girl to be happy even with someone else... awwwwww. Well they were both wrong! Here's why I did it

I'm an Empath( I know I said it like a billion times but that doesn't make it less true). The way I analyse,interpret or experience social situations is completely different than most people. Let me explain that night from my perspective:

A - I had known the girl for years by that point, which means if something were to happen between us something would've happened. She's my friend and I shouldn't be crushing on her to begin with so that's on me.

B - I knew how she felt about me,she didn't like me that way. And on that specific night she already had a date. Which means even if she did like me and I told her that I did, what is she gonna just ditch her date and throw herself in my arms? that's just unrealistic and I know she won't do that.

C - I could feel that they were both.... let's say "Excited" , and its not like I was going to use that room anyways. 

So unlike what people think about Empaths, that we put people ahead of ourselves even though it harms us, we actually just analyse the situation and see what is the best reaction at that time. The reaction that'll create the least amount of negative feelings. So in that situation if I had said "No you can't use my room, go get your own." I would've Disappointed my friend, Hurt her, Confused the guy and had two very sexually frustrated guests. So the social maths in my head of me being a bit Hurt Vs. Hurting two people made sense to me, letting them have the room caused me the least amount of pain and so I did it. 

The reason I'm telling you this, is because I want to dispel the rumour that Empaths just let people walk over them just because we don't want to hurt anyone. That's profoundly wrong, we do it because in a lot of situations when you're hurt there's no need to hurt the one that hurt you, you're only putting more hurt in the world. Because I do strongly believe that we create our own world. Our world is a collection of actions, observations, feelings and memories. Everything you do is an action observed by others, an action which creates a feeling and leaves a memory. Everything everyone does creates the world even if just in an infinitesimally microscopic way. So why create more negative emotions? On which I'll pick up anyways.

In conclusion, I prefer to take the highway not because I'm selfless If you know me you'll know that I'm a stubborn condescending narcissistic bastard. But I do it because If someone hurt me and I yell at them and make them feel worse, I'll feel that bad feeling that I just made them feel, plus the hurt they have caused me. So in a way my (What seems) Selfless actions to people are actually just me doing what I like to call (Emotional Maths). Just calculating how to navigate the situation with minimum people feeling bad so I don't pick up on those bad feelings.

Please don't take advantage of this info and ask me to help you move or something, not because I won't help you, I will! But remember I'm tiny and frail, carrying things is not my forte. I'd prefer to help you with a translation job or something.

Thank you again for reading this entry. Next entry will be a much longer one since I'll be talking what it's like to date as an Empath, especially that one time I dated a Sociopath. That was insane! But you have to wait till next week to hear all about it.

Today I feel: Overwhelmed about an upcoming show. Excited about a friend coming back to visit. Angry by some turmoil I'm having with a close friend. Anxious about monetary issues. Happy to be helping out a friend. Curious about the lucrativeness of a new project. Disturbed by some social behaviour I witnessed recently.

See you next time when I tell how it is a nightmare to date me....         

The Male Empath (A very real mythical creature)

If one more girl says to me "I feel like the guy in the relationship." I might murder someone! Actually I won't because hurting them will hurt me and unfortunately I'm not a masochist I'm an Empath.

A few weeks ago I was reading a wonderful book called "Confessions of a Sociopath." by E.M Thomas. A fantastic insight into the brain of a Sociopath who thought that Sociopaths are very misunderstood. And just like she thought that, I felt that Empaths are very misunderstood as well. And yes I did use the word "Thought" for her and "Felt" for my elf purposely.

It's really hard to explain what occurs inside the brain of an Empath, I tried to find research on the topic to present it in this blog series but there is so shamefully little out there. Hell, Google spell check doesn't even recognise the word Empath as a word... you have no idea how annoying it is to see that little squiggly red line under a word that perfectly describes who you are.

I guess I'll take you back to as far back as I can remember so I can give you a bit of an insight. Now pardon my English as it is not my first language so if there's a grammar mistake here or there, kindly smile and move on. Also pardon my pop-culture references as I am a nerd and I can't better express myself.

I was watching X-men First Class the other day and there was this one scene where young Charles Xavier says "I thought the voices were in my head first, then I realised that they're in everybody else's head.... I thought I was the only one out there." When I watched that scene I had a flashback to when I was 5 and my Mother came back home with my little brother wrapped in a tiny little baby blanket. He looked so ugly. I remember feeling Proud, Angry, Happy, Overwhelmed, Scared, Guilty, Bored, Uninterested, Anxious, Tired, Relieved and Unfaltering. Yes I actually felt all of that altogether.

I didn't even know the word for most of those feelings, they were so raw! I'll never forget that day, somehow I felt them altogether and individual. My heartbeat was moving up and down from emotion to emotion, I honestly felt that my heart decided that each emotion has a specific rate.If I have to visualise it. My heart was the drummer from Avenged Sevenfold and each emotion was a specific drum and my heart went "I fell like playing the drum solo from 'Beast and the Harlot'". After my heart settled down a bit and it was bed time, I asked my older brother (Who is a Sociopath by the way, but we'll get back to that in later entries) "How are you feeling?" and he said "Uninterested" when he said that word I felt like "Wait a moment, I had that feeling."

Then I asked my mother how she felt; she did find it odd that a 5 year old is asking that, but I really was curious. She said "Happy" but that's not what I felt around her, I felt a feeling I later learned to be called "Overwhelmed". When she said "Happy" and I didn't feel it around her I knew that something was off there. But I was five I couldn't quite put my hands on it. So I started probing further. I asked my father how he's feeling and he said "Proud" when he said proud I started trying to find the right frequency in my heart for that feeling.

I remember that experience like a scene from the show Sherlock. The BBC one with Benedict Cumberbatch. His thoughts floating in front of his head and he's trying to match them. When it's a wrong thought he just shakes his head and it goes away. That's how I felt. I tried to look for frequencies in my heart that matched the word "Proud" and then I got it! I assigned the word "Proud" to a specific feeling. I don't even know how I got that this feeling is pride, it just 'felt' right. Then I started going around asking every member in the family how they felt, luckily and unfortunately at the same time I had a HUGE family. 5 boys, 2 girls.

What really fascinated me is the way they answered, the boys would say "Happy" or "Sad" or "Tired" But the girls would say "I'm happy, but it's going to be a little tiring with the new baby." or "I feel good about the new baby, but I feel a bit overwhelmed because I have exams and the baby would be loud." I couldn't relate to the how the boys' were feeling at all, I remember wondering "How can you feel just one thing?" the girls' feelings ,however, I could understand a bit more. It was always two-three feelings at a time. But still I had about 9-10 feelings minimum... all the time I had that. And I still do.
 
Many people think I'm gay, and I'm completely okay with that. What I find absolutely reprehensible is a society where only women or gay people are allowed to have complex feelings. What most people think Empaths do is just pick up on other people's emotions and act based on emotions or be irrationally overemotional. The way it really is goes like this: here's a stream of consciousness from yesterday in a room full of friends that I wrote down, I'm gonna use letters for people's names to protect the privacy of people involved.

"Oh I'm late I hope B doesn't mind, oh look most people are late too that's cool. oh here's M I like being around her, she's always chill.... yup she's chill today too oh and she's excited about the upcoming vacation, oh but she's also a bit disappointed in the weather. oh B is here, daym that dude is stressed, not as stressed as last time though, I better set up and do my part to make him feel more relaxed. hahahaha look at J he's having the time of his life right there, that is so fun. Oh hi N, always nice to have another Empath around. Ok C easy easy... you're way too excited buddy, I like that but let me set up I'll be right with you. Oh C2 if only you try to have fun, common man you're here.... might as well."

I could go on and on but I think the thought process of "He is nervous so I'll do something to calm him down." Is the most rational process imaginable. so Empaths are not irrational at all. We just feel so many things all the time.

 Remember that scene in "HP and The Order Of The Phoenix"  where Hermoine goes "Don't you understand how she must be feeling? Well obviously she's feeling "Sad" about Cedric and therefor "Confused" about liking Harry and "Guilty" about kissing him. "Conflicted" because Umbridge is rushing to sack her mom from her job at the ministry and "Frightened" of failing her O.W.Ls because she's so busy "Worrying" about everything else." And then Ron says "One person couldn't feel all that, they'd explode!" Well basically I feel like that all the time... All the god forsaken time!

 I'll end by saying that you'll never know true misery until you look at someone's eyes, feel their sadness and know in your heart that you can't do anything about it, it's truly soul crushing. But we wake up, we put on a smile and we try to make people feel better, because when they do we do.   

I don't want to make the post too long so I'll add one more thing and stop, before I do that, I'll be posting one every week about how it's like to face the world as a male Empath and all the perils it brings.

 As a fun extra I'll add how I'm feeling at the end of every post just to give you an insight about how we feel everyday, again I'll try to keep personal details out of the words to protect people involved

I feel "Overwhelmed" with my family and "Depressed" because my father has been severely ill, "Stressed" about an upcoming show and about monetary issues,"Shocked" about a very odd encounter I had last Friday, "Confused" about an ill defined relationship, "Hurt" because of something about a friend said, "Happy" that the summer is here, "Proud" to work with a production for charity, "Excited" about upcoming boat parties and "Conflicted" about feelings I have for someone.

So there you go, if you can relate or have something to add please say so in the comments section, I'll try to write every Wednesday. Next week I'll write about how empathy relates Altruism and the week after that (yes I'm giving a teaser) I'll write about how my empathy related to me becoming an Atheist.     

The Fall of Faith

Everyone is unique! That's what we're fed since we're born. And it's not necessarily wrong. Yes every person has their own way in the world, but there are some of us who are divided from others by understanding. There is a certain sadness that engulfs those who comprehend how the world works, or how the universe work.


I don't mean understanding law or economics or politics.I’m talking about those who look at flower and understand why it blooms, they look at the human eye and know how it sees. They know why the stars sparkle and why a muscle twitches. Those who have seen the building blocks beyond the Ding an sich.

The ones who have chosen to unveil the mystery of the universe and look at it nude almost erotically. There's a beautiful sadness among them.

Those who know that there is no magic, there are no miracles, there is no order to the universe. For us the beauty of things fades into grey. But there's beauty in that greyness itself. The mechanics of life start to click in your ears as you walk down the street and you feel the cogs hitting one another in perfect harmony. When you smile or you lend a hand to a friend, you don't lend that hand in hope of a reward from a higher power. You lend that hand because there's something innately inside of you that pushes you to be good, to be beautiful, and then beauty befalls you. Grey beauty. Melancholically poetic and poetically melancholic. Sadly to the outside observer only the greyness is seen and the beauty fades to black.

" Your father has cancer in his lungs and bladder, " Said the doctor inapporpriately laconically "He'll need a miracle to survive."

" A miracle, Doc there is no such thing."

My old man had always been a fairly simple dad. Nothing really special about him, he had a job, he put food on the table, he watched news in the evening and reprimanded us when we had bad grades. He did use to, when he had time which was not often, tell me a lot of stories.

He told me epic tales of brave men like Robin Hood and Ali Baba and his thieves. He told me stories about Muhammed and his super powers, about Aladdin and his magic lamp and about Cinderella and that bitch of a stepmother she had.

Admittedly I did enjoy the stories. What can I say? I was three years old and I let my imagination run wild. I used to imagine that I was flying next to Aladdin on his magic carpet. Or that I was in the middle of the desert and then Muhammad came and made a cloud float over me and then made water appear out of his hand. And then we would go and find infidels together... Wasn't really sure what those were in the first place but they were his archenemies.

I loved all these stories equally, they all were magical and yet I believed that they were all true. I truly believed that we lived in a magical world. Maybe some part of me wanted to believe because the alternative is just too dull.

One day when I was 4 my dad wanted me to go with him to this place called a 'Mosque' "A lot of my friends are gonna be there, you should come I'm sure they'll love you". That's odd, I thought to myself, I didn't really think of dad as having friends. To me he wasn’t a person like me, he was this mysterious figure that appeared in my life every now and again and gave me food. When we walked in the mosque it was packed! I quickly noticed that it was all men and that the place smelled like cigarettes and old socks. I sat down next to my father and then this random man started to tell the same stories my dad told me. Except he was only talking about Muhammad and this character called 'Allah'.

Allah immediately became my favorite fictional character. He was like the genie but he gives unlimited wishes. “ If you ask Allah for something sincerely, there's nothing he can't do.” The man said. When I heard that I honestly thought  "Even the genie had rules... This is awesome."

I tried to ask questions but my dad shushed me. Then when the man was finished talking everybody stood up and my dad told me to mimic him. When I asked why, he shushed me again. I don't remember my father shushing me before, it was very strange. After I finished mimicking my dad, which looked to me a lot like the exercises my family members do everyday, I was walking out of the mosque and I asked my dad if I can ask him questions. He said of course the more merrier.

When I asked him why were we doing this 'Sala' exercise, he said that it’s what Allah told Muhammad to tell us to do and that if we do it and ask Allah for things he will give them to us. "Wait wait.... We know where Allah's lamp is? And we can ask him for wishes? Why didn't we do it when mommy broke her knee last month? She was really sad."

" No son, no one knows where Allah is, he lives in heaven and he's the ruler of the universe."

" So like the genie but hiding?"

" NO! Allah is real. Those other stories are just...... " My heart fell to stomach for a minute. Somehow I knew what my father was about to say next and it send chills down my spine "Fairy tales." He said. I was so relieved, I thought he was going to say the were lies.

" What are ‘Fairy tales’?"

" They are stories we come up with to challenge our imagination son. But Allah is real, and he's all powerful and all good."

" So how many stories are real and how many are fairy tales?"

" They're all fairytales, except the ones about Muhammad."

I didn't ask any further questions that day, not because I didn't have any, but because I was just so sad and confused. How come only that specific story is real and not the others? If people can ask wishes from Allah how come so many people were so sad and not like Aladdin who won the princess and danced with elephants?

As I grew older and started learning more and more what a fairy tale is and what religion is, I just couldn't shake the feeling that those religious stories seemed like the ultimate fairy tales. The magic, the characters, the plot..... It seemed perfectly fantastical. But everyone around me seemed to believe it. I started wondering if everybody thinks the story was real. Then  I remembered that Muhammed used to battle infidels. The problem was everytime I asked questions I got the same answer 'Because Allah willed so.' I got in trouble in school when I answered all the test questions with 'Because Allah willed so.' Which was unfair because everyone taught me that was why things happened.

I remember my dad was drinking coffee and splashes of it were on his thick black and white mustache. "Did Muhammed kill all the infidels?" My dad almost did a spit take when I asked that. "No," he answered "There are still a lot of them alive today."

" Wow! How many? Where are they? Are they the 'America' with the the bad TV shows that as you said ‘tries to poison the youth of Islam?’ "

" They're everywhere son, and they're always trying to steal our land and attack Muslims."

" So are they bad? Should I hate them? Are they all gonna burn in hell?"

" We can't say who's going to hell and who's not. But Allah did teach us that those who do not believe in him will be severely punished and burned."

" So how many of them are there?"

" About 6 billion."

The second he said 6 billion I started crying immediately. I cried and cried over all these people that will burn forever. But I was also crying for myself, what if I had died before my dad told me that this one about Muhammed was the only fairy tale that wasn't a fairy tale. And that if you thought it was you will burn forever. I didn't understand forever but it seemed like it's a long time to be in fire.

And then there was the moment I knew that even those who really believed in fairy tales still felt somewhere deep within that it was just a tale. My grandmother was on her deathbed and I was ecstatic for her. Finally she gets to go to heaven and live with unlimited wishes. But then I looked at my mom and I saw her tears. Which made no sense to me, why do you want her to stay here in pain rather than going to heaven and living her real and eternal life?

She was acting as if she's never seeing her mother again. He's not going to a better place, he’s just going. Her life, her real life, her only life, was about to end.

And today I stood in front of my father as he took his last breath. My mom crying on his side, my sisters crying on the other one. And I heard him say the last thing he ever said. "I'll see you all in heaven." My mom wailed when he took his last breath, her wail just assured me that there's something deep within her, inside her very being that knew.. She knew in her heart of hearts that fairy tales are just what they are... Fairy tales.

I laid a hand on his shoulder and I whispered to myself " No you won't man. But thanks for the stories."

The Deathly Knowledge

I’m not a writer, but what happened to my brother needs to be heard and it needs to be stopped. So I’ll jot down the incident with as much accuracy as possible. My name is Kim Melbourne, you probably read about my brother Marvin in the news. But you haven’t heard the real story, and here it is.
I’ve always admired my brother’s obsession over knowledge. “Knowledge is the only power you need sis, there’s no such thing as unnecessary knowledge” He told me that more times than I could count. I still remember to this day when we were kids, I would want to watch cartoons and he fight me over the remote to watch documentaries about the animal kingdom, or space, or chemistry or whatever was it that he didn’t know. I must admit growing up with him was not the easiest thing but I loved him... I was always his “lil Sis” and he always took care of me to the furthest extent of the meaning of the word.

I’ll never forget the look on his face when he got it, he came home and said “Guess who has two thumbs and didn’t drive has car home?” He always had a weird sense of humor like that. I had my doubts about “The Guide”, I’ve always found that technology that is embedded into the human body will never end well. “We don’t take you where you want to go, we know where you want to go before you do” what a logo they had! A chip implanted in the base of your skull that reads your thought patterns knowing where you want to go and then drives your car automatically there... that must not have been easy to sell. But Marvin, he couldn’t resist technology farther than he can resist a good book. He was a Beta tester for the chip and for a while it worked fantastically.

He was amazed by how much he can do on the commute, not even having to touch the driving wheel, he basically would step in the car and boom it went. Took him literally wherever he wanted to do. I think they called the technology “Thought Pattern Recognition”. Please forgive my lack of knowledge on the mechanics of the chip or the jargon that goes into explaining it, for I’m not as tech-savvy as he was. The way he trained to explain it to me was this

“This chip understands where you want to go but understanding how your thoughts works and by isolating the pattern of “desire” in your brain and making it machine understandable so the car would know where to go.”

I was still dubious of a machine inside your head, but he always assured me. “Don’t worry lil sis, I can turn it off anytime I want, you know sometimes it knows where I want to go more than I do. The other day I was feeling bad so I got in the car to clear my head and it just took me to favorite spot in the city.”
And as you all know, that’s where it all went to hell. The chip started over time to get more and more familiar with the thought pattern and eventually to realise what you want even before you thought of it consciously. It integrated with the brain and it would take over thoughts... it was not noticeable at first. You would reach for a shirt and suddenly find yourself reaching for a different one, and you would be content thinking “That is actually the shirt that I wanted.” But then it started getting bigger, the first recorded issue was that of that Steve Blake. Here’s he’s account of what happened as I found it on his social media

“I was watching tv when I suddenly reached for my phone. It was a very odd feeling because it wasn’t unhabitual of me to check my phone regularly but this felt odd, like I almost had to do it but somehow was happy to do it at the same time. I dialed my ex-wife’s number which scared me because I know I shouldn’t have done that.. I can’t even explain what was going through my head even if wanted to but it felt like I have no inhibition, like i’m incapable of not doing what I wanted even against my own better judgment. When she picked up the phone and I told her that the thing I regret the most in my life is that she’s the mother of my children, I suddenly started crying and she was yelling at me, I tried to stop myself from saying more but It felt like there’s a door in my brain that was unleashed and my chip started to burn and I passed out. Luckily she called the police because she suspected that something bad has happened. The company said that it was a small malfunction and they removed the chip to inspect it.”

The story made the news briefly but it wasn’t that big of a problem, the company said that he was inebriated and the alcohol affected the circuits and the issue is fixed.
I shall never for as long as I live forget the look on my brother’s face that day, I’ve looked at his face everyday since I knew life, but that day he seemed like he just discovered something that meant everything was about to change. I was doing my homework and he stood up, and he looked at me.. He looked at me for almost a minute and I couldn’t get over it, something deep within my humanity told me that he’s not his normal self. He left the house without his phone, wallet or anything else. I grabbed his phone and followed him, got in my car and drove right behind him. He must’ve seen me following him but that didn’t stop him a little bit. When we reached the bridge, he parked got out and started walking towards the edge. And I know what was happening, that godforsaken chip was about to kill him. His foot was literally over the edge when I, by a split second, got his phone out of my pocket and found the app that’ll disable the chip. The chip was off, and it seemed like he came back to reality.

He turned around with tears streaming down his face. “You’re ok!” I yelled “That thing is out of your head now!”. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen someone smile while crying, it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. But I very much misinterpreted that smile. His last words was “I didn’t know that this is what I wanted, I thought I was happy. I guess some things are better left unknown.” and then he, of his own volition, threw himself off of the bridge.

What happened with my brother taught me that we’re not ready for what we want, it taught me that what we want is much darker and contrived than we are equipped to handle. I watched my brother’s desire for knowledge drive him to suicide. The worst part about this, he was actually happy, when they found the chip they analyzed what happened. He didn’t want to die, he wanted to know what happens on the other side of death. His desire to know what happens after death is what drove him close to suicide. And when I disabled his chip he had the option to live. But if I know my brother, his desire for knowledge was more important to him, he couldn’t live knowing he’ll never be able to obtain that knowledge.