One of the hardest things about being someone who processes through writing is when the words simply don’t come. Last evening, as I sat beside the pond at the university I study at, I begin journaling, trying desperately to put into words what I was feeling. But it felt impossible.

This is what I wrote.

“There are moments these days when I find myself supremely happy, almost delirious with joy at the way the clouds pile up over the mountain at sunset and the way the light shafts over the ragged edges of the clouds and the way the birds soar high in the face of the sunset. Or when I find myself walking through the market in the evening when the cool of the day is beginning to set in and I listen to the traditional Thai songs playing over the loudspeakers and greet friends I happen to meet there.

“And then there are moments these days when I am sick to my stomach with a heaviness and sadness, loneliness carving at my soul, curling up deep inside my stomach somewhere. Unexplainable, yes, but still there, something deep and aching inside of me that simply won’t go away that brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. And after the tears, the heaviness remains, and a fragile exhaustion.

“And then there are times when those moments of happiness, loneliness and deep, deep sadness all collide together in one lump inside of me.

“It’s not that I am not happy. I sometimes feel like this is one of the happiest times of my life? How could I be unhappy with the God I love, the family I have, the rich diversity of friendships I can claim, and the joy I feel of being alive in this world?

“It’s just that I am so sad, too.

“For a while, pain and sadness and loneliness can be embraced, and almost welcomed. It’s going to leave you a better person, you know. But after a while the challenge leaves and you simply hurt. And it’s exhausting.

“What is it actually? Some kind of mixture of homesickness and missing all the people that make home home. It’s loneliness when I see a man and woman sitting at the picnic table, talking and laughing in an intimate conversation. Some of it is a longing for something deeper and more, something beyond this world that nothing here can satisfy. But mostly, I am starting to think that it is the burden of a feeler that “catches” the sorrow and sadness that coats this world like a fog.”

That’s what I journaled last night as I sat beside the pond and cried and wished I could somehow turn it all into a poem because if I can express myself, I can find relief. But no relief came. I wracked my brain, trying to think what I ate that could trigger that effect, and wondering what kind of chemicals were at work in my brain.

Does it sound weird? Catching other people’s feelings?

The cloud hung over me today as I journaled and prayed this morning, and as I listened to scripture recordings and baked pizza dough for tomorrow. It stayed over me while I baked some cupcakes and stirred together pizza sauce and swept and mopped the breezeway. Only tonight as I begin to talk with some of the others about their day, and left the house for the market, and talked with some friends I met on the way, did I begin to feel it lifting. Its going left a relief not unlike the relief you get after a nagging headache begins to lift once you take some painkillers. And only now am I able to begin putting it into words, even though this feeling still sits in my stomach, not as heavy as before, but still tugging at my tears every now and then.

I’ve felt this before, but lately, it’s been harder. It’s been harder to remember who I am really am, and sift through these feelings of what belongs to me and what I am experiencing from the environment around me. Sometimes I can keep on going on the outside as if nothing is going on on the inside. Other times I simply need to get away, yet I have realized that I need to be careful not to simply be alone too long, because sometimes it can also increase the depression, if I don’t have answers yet on how to deal with it.

I’m only now expressing it, but I’ve felt it often, sometimes in crowds of people like the night market, when I watch the hundreds of people walking and begin to feel an inexpressible sadness. I felt it as a teacher of a student with deep anger and pain issues. I found myself crying after school, deep in pain myself. Thinking back, I’ve experienced it more times than I can count.

Being a feeler, or an empathizer, means that you can easily see someone else’s viewpoint, enter into their pain with them, feel what they are feeling. This is a gift, this ability. It lets you walk beside others and have a window into their world.

It’s also dangerous.

I talk with someone who is cynical against my faith and the core values I embrace. I begin to feel cynical.

I read a book about someone who doubts everything he grew up thinking and believing. I begin to doubt.

I wash back and forth between two opinions, unable to decide on just one of them because I can too clearly understand and feel the pros and cons of both.

A friend is struggling and I am plunged into a gray mood, like a cloud is on top of me and some kind of giant tongue depressor is on top of the cloud.

For a long time, I didn’t write about it. Mostly because I didn’t understand it, or because it sounded weird and witchlike.

Sometimes I realize that it is a call to prayer for a certain person. But sometimes it takes a while for me to catch on who I am supposed to pray for.

I am still wrestling through it, trying to figure out what it is that I am feeling. But simply knowing that I have a tendency to do this has helped me tremendously in being able to stand in the presence of books and people with whom I don’t agree, instead of slinking away for fear that I will be swayed with cynicism or doubt. I can differentiate better what I am feeling and yet, what I still believe. I can also realize that sometimes I feel a certain way through no fault of my own.

Does any of this sound familiar? I have researched it some, and found some answers, however, not much.

I’m curious. What do you think? Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever felt like you overfeel everything?