This story is a former winner of the Amazing but Incredibly True Story Contest. Enter your story today! :)
Copyright Jennifer Martin, 1996
When I was a child, I was considered extremely sensitive...too sensitive for my parents. My mother said I cried constantly until I entered kindergarten. It didn't help that my little brother, who was born when I was one, picked on me constantly. The sensitivity had its good side, however, as I was unusually empathetic. Once when I was three or four, I stepped on a flower and frantically smoothed back the crushed petals, thinking it was in pain. I apologized to it over and over, sniffling and trying not to cry. I felt this empathy and compassion for almost every person, animal or plant I encoutnered, and people naturally opened up to me. Animals trusted me and plants grew for me, silly as that may sound.
Over the years, my parents tried to make me more "thick skinned," especially to the teasing of other children. Their efforts succeeded to some degree, but couldn't prevent what happened one day when I was in junior high school.
I was in the eighth grade and had just turned 14. I was walking down the hallway between classes, when suddenly I felt dizzy. My heart began to race for no apparent reason. Knowing how to take my pulse because I was into aerobics at the time, I placed my fingers on my neck. My pulse was 200 beats a minute! I started to sweat. I leaned against the wall, getting dizzier and dizzier. Finally I found a chair nearby and sat down. I breathed deeply, concentrated on relaxing, and finally got my heartbeat under control. I just made it to class before the buzzer rang.
Episodes like this continued to happen over the next month. My heart would turbo-charge at a million miles an hour, for no particular reason, and I would get dizzy and sweat. Sometimes, my heart would beat irregularly; it would simply stop beating for several seconds, and then resume with a THUD! It was always painful and frightening. I didn't say anything to my parents, however. I thought I was just tired, or overdoing it at aerobics class.
Then one day my mother came to school around noon. I had had another episode that morning and had thought nothing of it. But when she took my brother and me into a private room in the main office, she told us that our father had died that morning of a heart attack. It occurred around 9:30 in the morning, the time of my last "heart episode." Dad was 34 and had never had heart problems in his life, so I doubt the power of suggestion was at work in my countless heart episodes. Rather, I believe my empathy had actually reached beyond the boundaries of my body and I had connected with my father on a spiritual level.
The heart episodes disappeared after my father's death, but my sense of empathy did not. I learned to value it, for it had given me a chance to understand what happened to my father and more importantly, it had allowed me to feel my father's trauma. It was a painful experience as feeling for others always involves pain as well as joy, but it was also a privilege. I connected with my father in his last moments of life, and was able to understand what he was going through. When I see him again someday at the end of my life, I will be able to put my arms around him and say, "I know. I know how awful it was." And I will let him tell me all about it.
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