all I need is some empathy, please.

Because I always have a coaching hat on (can't help it) and I know first hand that many people misunderstand what empathy is and how it differs from sympathy let me start there before I get all vulnerable on you. Sympathy is saying - oh yea, that's horrible and want to hear about me. Or merely stating you're sorry someone feels the way they feel but stoping short of really processing within yourself how they must be feeling and then communicating that. So empathy is the ability to connect with someone else's emotions by putting yourself in their shoes, withholding any judgement, and then connecting with your own emotions. Finally empathy is the ability the communicate those emotions to the other person in a consoling, understanding way.

Looking back on my life I realize I've always had this ability - before I even understood what I was doing. Throughout my career my creatives used to say to me - you always imagine what the feedback will feel like for us and you always ask us to speak to our work before you respond, you try to understand us and the work. I was like - wow, doesn't everyone as that felt so natural / normal for me. I always remember my mom saying to me put yourself in that person's shoes, treat others how you would want to be treated, etc. So I always tried to do that. And now as a coach a critical aspect of my job is to be empathetic so I'm thankful it's a skill I've honed.

I'm also realizing I have an incredible capacity to be empathetic and understanding, even when it's to the detriment of my own needs, especially when I really love someone. This past year I've fallen madly in love with a man who's life has unraveled through both career/job upheaval and divorce, and is only now starting to piece itself back together. We have a ton of emotions for one another. We connected like neither of us have experienced from the first moment we met....on an airplane. And for ten months I've worked and worked and worked at my own shit, my own blind spots, my own edges of impatience, my triggers with men and trust, my ability to be completely giving with zero expectation in return, and most of all in providing all the empathy I can possibly muster toward him on a daily basis because he deserves it and I believe he is worth it.

Now I'm at a crossroads. It is clear to me that the timing is still not quite right for us. Yet I believe from the bottom of my heart he is the man for me. He is who I want. For twenty years I've dated, fallen, picked myself back up, dusted off and gone back online, or back on that next blind/first date, to only come home time and time again and think to myself - will I ever feel the connection with a man that I seek? Will a man ever capture my heart in a way that allows me to envision him as my life long parter? Will I? Will I? Will I? Each date, each guy, each month, each birthday, each year, I pick myself back up and charge forward with hope. Then one day on a plane all my questions seemed to be answered in the matter of a two hour flight between Denver and Los Angeles. I walked off the plane texting my best friend knowing that was the man I wanted to be with.

Yet I couldn't be with him then.

And I still can't in the way I want despite him telling me he wants to be with me too. It's just not playing out given lots of circumstances. And it sucks - it really sucks so, so, so, bad. The only words I can come up with are tragic and heart breaking.

So today I'm having trouble providing empathy to the one person who's empathy tank has run out and who desperately needs it the most - ME. So I'm asking for anyone who's out there - send me some empathy, some love, some support. Join me in saying how much this sucks. Imagine how I must feel after all these years of waiting and wondering to find the very thing I want and then to not be able to have it. Imagine. Feel with me. And maybe if I get enough virtual love and empathy I can make it through this next wave of having to pick myself up yet again, dust off, and move on.