Understanding the Karmic Cycle as an Empath After Loss of a loved One | Journaling

In the last week of October 2024, my childhood best friend expired. She was struggling with Muscular Dystrophy which is a progressive condition causing muscles to get weaker over time to the point of paralysis. It’s genetic and doesn’t have a cure yet.

I was in grade 2, when she newly joined the school. She was instructed to sit between me and another girl. There were total of three girls at the time all sat together and became friends. We would talk, eat together, wash hands, play at the time of recess, and so on. The other girl eventually parted ways, and it was just the two of us as best friends for years along with few other friends in the list. We knew each other roughly about for 30 years until her death.

I wasn’t thinking about my childhood before her passing. It suddenly triggered like a ripple effect as if it had been already planned all along.

Sometimes I feel that people who we happen to meet by coincidence isn’t really a coincidence but a divine plan. As if we are bound to have certain kinds of experiences so that we learn something from it and grow with time as we age. We are pre-scheduled to be born and die. Individuals we meet are part of the Karmic cycle stems from unfinished business dating back to the previous lives. Every relationship, whether biological or not, is orchestrated in the right moment causing The Butterfly Effect perfectly in sync. The chain of events that are beyond the scope of human comprehension should rather be surrendered instead of fixating on the Why’s and How’s. We may not have all the answers at this point. But we might in the future.

What exactly that learning could be depends on the individual who we are meeting and spending life with. Few will directly involve with us, rest others will be spectators. Learning could well be achieved through observation if we are open to it.

Spiritual Learning

What a person with physical challenges teaches us? Strength? Resilience? That everyone is an individual who has their own unique identity, perspective, creativity devoid of their condition?

What possibly people with disability learn from those without any physical limitations? I believe since they begin to differentiate between people who matter and those who don’t, they no longer people-please or waste time for superficial relationships. Since they want to be viewed as someone who is an individual and that their condition shouldn’t define for who they are, they begin to understand early on that such non-judgmental people exist and are worth keeping.

They would learn to not judge others as well if someone else has other kind of physical or mental ailment whether by birth or later. That asking for assistance is not a sign of weakness but shared human experience. Sure, they need legitimate help due to physical challenges, but others also depend on them in terms of emotional assistance. The latter isn’t logically seen which is why it appears as if the disabled are the ones who are one hundred percent dependents.

Processing Grievance

Grievance is itself an isolating experience. Individually, and for the entire group of people who are collectively affected by a traumatic event. This is deprived of the fact whether you are an introvert, or an extrovert, surrounded by people or not.

A good social circle could be a good distraction for a while, but once you are alone, your solitude will begin to eat you. On repeat. The affected people won’t talk to each other. Their actual emotions are rather be shunned. They are expected to move on within weeks.

The Rock Bottom

I love deeply. I care deeply. I overthink. Sometimes it’s obsessive and my routine is disrupted, but I cannot help. I have an extremely sharp memory dates to when I wasn’t even a year old. Having this kind of brain functioning is more of a curse than a boon. So, when there is an event that I witness and personally get affected, my neural pathways go bonkers.

It is as if you’d sink to the depth of ocean and would never be able to make it on top, off to the shore. When you are stuck in daily dose of mind-consuming madness, repeatedly on the loop, it seems as if you are drowning, and nobody is coming forward to put you on life jacket. So, getting at the bottom is inevitable.

When your sorrows are so profound you will either be so consumed or too detached. There is no middle ground. But you’d sink anyway whether you feel it or not.

You are unable to say it out loud. There is absolutely no means that you could find an emotional outlet to repeatedly just feel and say things. The routine and responsibilities make it even harder to navigate the loss of a loved one. No matter how frustrated you are and how much you need to have a personal space, the duties won’t let you just be. I want to spend some days alone. I want to sleep in the night and day for substantial number of hours. But here I am. Trying to settle without reaching The Rock Bottom another time.

Struggles as an Empath

An empath has to learn turning it off over time since they are the ones most affected by their surroundings. If there are people, as well as them, who are suffering they get overwhelmed by the energies of everyone involved, including themselves.

Detachment and distractions don’t offer long-term solution. Hence, to bring back my emotions on the surface I try to reconnect by visiting my old conversation with her, or by viewing the loss through her family members’ lens. I am lost. Possibly misunderstood as being ‘just a friend’ won’t convince someone that it can be equally just as harsh.

There are occasions at the time of night’s sleep when there is an emotional overload. At this point, I feel mentally suffocated as if I would never be able to recover or function normally. It shouldn’t be permanent, but it seems so.

I have dreamt of ‘second chances’, wolves, her lying down in a weak state, filth, tsunami, and apocalypse till date. I feel physical symptoms such as headaches, giddiness, etc. during the episodes of detachment.

Each night when I think that I will motivate myself and channel personal expressions through writing, few seconds later everything goes in vain. I would always share my frustration with her. She was my safe outlet and we both completed each other. Her passing seems to me as if I had lost some parts of myself that I will never be able to recover with fully.

It's peaceful in the night. Everyone sleeps and there are no people and vehicles whose sound annoy. At this point, there are chances to be creative but here I am barely existing.

I don’t feel like eating anymore. I don’t socialise anymore. There are pretty much no food cravings. I just eat out of routine. If I happen to go outside, it is to stimulate some degree of excitement because there is none. I am sure I will be misunderstood if I share this to others. People in my surroundings have no idea what’s in my mind.

It hurts if one of your favourite persons leaves you and you have one less person on earth. This is not how I imagined things would unfold. And I absolutely didn’t expect that my mental state would be that complicated to fathom even by myself. The first two months were completely numb. I thought journaling the recent events would help. But I was unable to put it into words. My mind was reeling everything, and despite that, I couldn’t find the right words and motivation to write.

Almost everything I had planned to do, whether it was something productive or a task from my routine to-do list, have taken a backseat. I have been longing for physical activity but there is no time and enthusiasm to look forward to.

My regrets so far

I wish I could just hug her tight multiple times in all those years when she used to be there in front of me. I wish I could hug her one last time when I met her few days before her demise. I suck at expressing myself, really.

It seems to me that the death of people with whom we closely interacted want to say - “It’s time for me to leave. We have been in this together for a while. You are truly ready now. Aren’t you?” – and so, we bid farewell to continue marching in this unexpected journey called life.

It’s time for me to leave. We have been in this together for a while. You are truly ready now. Aren’t you?

They say that people in the spirit world know exactly what is going on with us in detail. They are aware of our sorrows. They want to connect but cannot. If this is true, then I will anticipate reuniting with everyone I had lost till date when my time arrives. This phase shall pass.

To those whose belief system contradicts with mine due to other faiths or higher inclination to logic, let’s not debate and keep it to ourselves.

This is not a typical blog I usually write. These are parts I wrote while journaling my thoughts in the night being peacefully with myself.