The Beginning of Empathy

Now, when I cry for others, why do they feel like the tears that I should have had, but never did, never did shed for myself? Is empathy a rear view mirror? A way to not cry out alone? A backlog, a log jam of tears.

Why am I now bleeding where once I should have scarred? Why are the tremors I am now feeling the sober echoes of my unfelt, drunken, painful past?

Fucking emotions in the bottleneck, years and years and years later.

Addiction feeds itself on me and I have been consumed.

I am bleeding now where I didn't bleed then. What goes around comes around again within my brain, the grooves in my brain gone 'round in a loop. Empathy teaches now what was always around me then.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 7)