This is a terrific essay. You deftly explain how it is to live with empathy.

I never fully achieved that level of protection – to close off that open conduit. I can be at a distance, far enough to not even see the person, and be overwhelmed by a rush of extreme emotion from someone.

For example, I was driving past an apartment complex many years ago and felt a rush of fear and desperation. On the news that night, I saw a report of a fire sweeping through one of the apartment 4-plex buildings and firefighters breaking through to save the infant of a destraught mother who'd apparently left the baby sleeping in the apartment while she had been in the basement laundry room when the fire broke out.

On 9/11, I experienced some very strange effects, as I wrote in my essay published on Wattpad.

Those are uncommon experiences. I'm more likely to have an experience like this: One morning, a customer came into our café and, as she always did, she ordered. When I held my hand out for her payment, her hand brushed my own and I felt a rush of sadness. I stepped around the counter and asked if I could hug her. She agreed and when I put my arms around her, she started weeping and told me her mother had died.

My inability to shut it all out is one of the many reasons I eventually had to step away from my own kin.