Some days the world feels too much for my heart
which I guess sounds touchy-feely, but it’s the truth
I think it always has
Especially on days like today

I experience these miniature heartbreaks. Not necessarily even from sadness, sometimes just from too much.
Too much fear.
Too much uncertainty.
Too much loneliness.
Too much happiness.
Too many faces with their emotions sprawled across them.

All this feeling. And not only my own.

The lone elderly gentleman I see crossing the street at a glacial pace, with pride in his appearance and perhaps the lingering bit of a spring in his step. I want to ask him if he needs a granddaughter. Or a hand. Or if he’s been asked how he is lately. Who does his grocery shopping? Did you have a lifelong love?

Accidentally catching the man on the doorstep leaving work and checking his pockets one too many times. His face looks worried but in a private way that I seem to have unintentionally caught in my glance. I want to tell him it’s ok. That he looks dapper and confident, even though he just looks unsure. But I don’t. Because I don’t know him. He might be really unpleasant. He doesn’t seem it though.

The woman I hear on the phone to her husband. She misses him and I hear a grab in her voice as she tries not to bother him with that information. I wonder how long they’ve been apart. When they’ll be together again.

This week a cat in my street died caught up in a fight between two dogs. On the front porch of this roaming cat’s home, there are now photos. Cards. People have left flowers. This black and white feline now has a shrine from a street that adored her. Everyone writes that they felt she was “their” cat too. Did that make me cry? You bet your ass it did. Her name was ‘Little One’.

Some days, simply walking the streets of the city feels like it might overwhelm me. Today feels like one of those days, when it seems like everything is on fire. People show their feelings in the funniest and sometimes smallest of ways, but it’s always there. Today, I am sure I am one of those faces on the streets.

And when I catch site of it on the countenance of passersby, their pain is shared. Their sadness sympathised.

I once saw a teenage couple part at an international airport gate, clearly an ending occurring, and I couldn’t help but cry. It was that young, raw kind of public display of love. Seeing someone’s heartbreak surely must be a transmittable momentary disease. The gift of empathy is not always a gift. Did you know they’ve found it’s a collection of genes? A bundle belonging to the highly-sensitive. Genes like having blue eyes. Or a longer pointer finger.

If the world is hard for you today, may you know that someone has seen you. The sensitive souls who walked by you as you ordered your morning coffee or waited for the bus.

It’s the catch between your breaths.
In the blink away of tears.
In the flustered fingers of worry.

I hope this means our feelings are shared on the days where it is too much.
That the emotions are halved.
Heard.
Held.