THE EMPATH

How did I get here?My world have been spinning out of control lately and I feel stuck.I have never felt the creep of losing since I was sixteen.I never thought I would become this thing that I am right now, i can't really explain how it happened and I also can't explain whether its good or bad.After all, I was born and raised a polite child.I have lived to help others and do things that feel right, and no I don't regret anything I have done in my life.I have reasons to justify why I do the things I do, even though its hard for anyone, especially anyone normal to comprehend, I am in this hot mess because of too much helping.I hoped that if i helped as much as possible I would finally find a relief for my pain, but people don't see it that way .To help you understand , allow me to take you through my crazy life, and you will be the judge of whatever punishment you feel suits me.To do that I will have to take you back to my childhood. My name is Victor, but people simply calls me Vicky but my most popular name is Wardo.I was born in a small village called Karlima.A peaceful corner of heaven with everything I could ever possibly desire and much more.At about five years I was diagnosed with what doctors thought was a brain tumor and that is how it all began.My father was a doctor and a really good one, my mother was a teacher.I was an only child since my mom was having a real hard time conceiving.Not that I could understand that back then. My father dedicated his whole life into helping people and when it was a turn to help his only son, he was willing to go to any length and pay any price to see his little boy grow up healthy.He buried himself into looking for a way to save me and sometimes he would even forget about his wife completely.She never complained though because she also wanted me to get better but that didn't stop her from looking for other ways to help me.Apparently I was too young and too sickly to undergo surgery.He had to come up with another way to stop the tumor from growing. I had these headaches that made me feel like my head would explode any moment.My life was in danger and my mother was not ready to watch me suffer and die.My father believed that the answer to all my problems were somewhere inside a medicine book or in a certain equation and all he had to do was identify which one and solve it.My mother on the other hand believed only God and his angels could heal me. She had a friend of hers back in the day who kept talking of the unseen worlds, you know, supernatural beings among other things.She believed that God had put healers and miracle workers here on earth and if my mom went looking for one maybe I could get better.Mom had nothing to loose and for that she started out on her quest.First she went to the believed to be village psychic, a lady by the name Mary who claimed to connect with the supernatural world.It was believed that she had the power to peek behind the vail and converse with the departed loved ones locate stuff that the dear ones had left hidden or help their living family members have closure .Mom never believed in that nonsense but she was desperate.She needed assistance, devine or not she didn't care. Mary helped her as much as she could but unfortunately she was no healer, she sent her to someone she knew would help her though.Robert was this old man with irresistible eyes, a great body and a voice of an angel.He loved to talk of the worlds unseen and beings that science with all its wonders could not explain.On seeing my mom, Roberts eyes lit up and for a moment there I thought I had seen something in them.I was too young to understand what was going on but it sure felt and seemed like he had been waiting for us.He was known for being surrounded by crowds that wanted nothing more than to hear him tell his tales.He had huge books written in many languages and he seemed to understand every one of them.The guy was never alone.He had opened his home to anyone and everyone who wished to go there.For a moment I was left outside and the two adults went to a private place to talk and in just a few minutes they came out and he took me with him. He gave me something to drink and said a few words under his breath before turning towards me.I vaguely remember him talking about me paying later after I fully understand what was going on but I was busy munching on the apple he had offered me to a point I didn't care to listen.In only a few minutes we were on our way home and I felt all better.A week later I was taken back to the hospital and after scans and test the doctors confirmed that I was as healthy a horse.Maybe it is true an apple a day keeps the doctor away. That day at the dinner table everyone was happy and the atmosphere was light and accommodating.I could almost swear I could smell tulips.Ever since that day my life went back to being normal and I even went back to school.I had missed my friends and the reunion was just what I needed to recover from the hard times. Throughout junior school and junior high I was almost invisible.I may have been relieved off my brain grape but my body never really recovered.I was still super thin and my skin was pale and I looked way old than I really was.Everybody hated me except for my two friends Ben and Alice.The two would occasionally take the blows for me and that only made things worse for all of us.From being locked into the washrooms for hours to seating on the floor during lunch.The two were actually better off they had their good grades for Alice and excellent football skills for Ben to cover up their indifferences, personally I was what you could simply call a loser. My mom referred to me as her little angel and my father was just happy I didn't die and he was not technically childless, in the deed downs though, he was disappointed.How hard was it for the universe to give him one healthy child, after all, he had dedicated his whole life to helping others, surely the universe could have done better.He had looked forward to teaching me to play golf and maybe perform simple medical procedures to imaginary patients and maybe even convince me to be a doctor some day.But all he got was a pale kid who was never good at anything.My social skills were almost zero and my stature didn't do much to help either.All I could ever be proud of was my loving mother and my two ride or die friends. In junior high I even had to wear specs to see properly since my eyes were getting weaker by the day.I had to wear hearing aids too and that only made my life more difficult.The doctors could not find anything wrong and the only thing the could do was to help me whenever they could.The believed the problems were the aftermath of the damage caused by the tumor.Every now or then someone would just take my specs off just to watch me go crazy feeling everything and everywhere looking for them.Sometimes I could feel a wave of emotions or pains that I could not explain or describe.Being around people made me feel all sorts of bad things. I loved quiet places but most especially water.It made me feel free and in control.Out in nature I never felt the judgment or the pain or even the mixed up emotions.It was simply quiet and soothing.Around Ben and Alice I felt weary but at home.Ben smelled like pears and Alice, well she smelled like nothing I had ever come across at least not until years latter when I first saw and smelled the water lilies.Back then i identified people and things with their distinctive smells.I thought everybody else deed too. The good smells were how I knew someone or something meant no harm.I relied on it for a really long time and I still do, so whenever I say something smells fishy, I mean that both figuratively and literally.My maths teacher for example smelled like paraffin or something like that.He was always bitter about something and most were the times we argued.He never forgot to remind me that even though my parents acted like they loved me, deep down they felt I was a loser and a weirdo.That was how I got my nickname Wardo by the way.Nobody else's apart from my friends and family ever called me Vicky and after trying and failing badly to stop people from insulting me I finally accepted the weirdo name.I even grew to love the name and today I even insist people to call me that.mum can't bring herself to, though. My life was especially hard during middle school.While everybody was transitioning to adulthood, i was still the tiny weird kid with low grades and squeaky voice and odd fear of human contact.Even through that, Ben and Alice still remained my friends and my mum still refered to me as her little Angel. By the time I was fifteen I had not hit puberty yet and I was starting to feel the pressure.The way people looked at me made my insides coil in fear. However, few months after joining highschool , everything started to change, first it was the big crazy giant, puberty, but there was more.I started having this dream that was both scary and confusing.It always started with a happy me standing on a stone trying to pick a pink juicy apple from a tree that was never even an apple tree in the first place.I would then hear something rolling and a scream loud enough to wake the dead, all over a sudden there was a hill and a little girls head would come rolling down and stop at my feet.The apple was suddenly on my arm and would melt to become blood and then I would wake up with blue and puffy with a crazy headache. At first I thought it was just a nightmare and since puberty had finally come through I thought it was just a part of it.However, the dream kept coming and after a full month of having that same damn dream it finally got to my nerves.For every time I dreamt, a slight detail would change but it always has the little girls head rolling down, by then I had seen her face soo many times it almost felt like I knew her.With time I started to avoid falling asleep due to the dread the dream caused me. My dreaming was however not the only thing that had become strange, my body deed too.In what felt like the blink of an eye, I had gained enough weight to be called normal.My muscles were growing in a rate not even my dad would make sense of and my skin was all better, the pale days finally set and a new me was emerging.In only half an year my voice had deepened and I was the most masculine dude in my class.Suddenly maths wasn't all that hard and gymnastics had become my favorite class.Everybody was surprised except for mom.She did not seem even a tiny bit moved by the sudden change.Infact she was soo comfortable that even dad thought she was in some sort of a denial phase and even tried to force her to go for therapy.I could not get the reason why he was concerned, he finally had the perfect son.Why would he think mum would go blue, her little angel was getting all better. My grades and my performance at school changed.But my fear for human contact still remained and if something it actually worsened.My eyes got all better and I no longer needed hearing aids.I became more sensitive to smells and sounds and at some point I was finding it hard to stay around some people because I couldn't stand the way they smelled.My relationships with animals and plants also changed.Whenever I would get completely angry, my house plants would grow weak and sometimes they even died, Pricky my pet dog would stay away from me and whenever I would try to go close to him while still angry he would grunt and run off. The dream also became soo intense that I could even feel the pain on my neck as if I was the one whose head had been chopped off.I didn't tell anyone about it because I was still convinced it was just but a bad dream.But then one day while walking home from school I saw the girl from my dream.She was walking arm in arm with her mother and for a moment I thought I was still asleep and dreaming.I pinched myself and sure enough I was awake.There could not have been any identity mistake since I had seen that face for a whole month and two weeks and I was pretty sure.I had to ask Alice and Ben whether they were seeing what I was seeing too and of course they were. If she was real and I had never met her before that day , did that mean she was in danger? Was it just a coincidence or was something bad going to happen to her.Did I dream about it because I could change it? I had soo many questions but no answers.I knew I had to tell someone and back then I only trusted Ben and Alice to keep my secrets but I was not sure telling them was a good idea.Of course I would always tell mum but how could I even begin.I concluded by assuming it was just a dream .I soo much hoped it was only a coincidence. I needed to be alone since the pressure was growing bigger.Soon as I got home, I took Pricky for an evening walk.We went round the farm checking on the chops.The corn was about knee high.The hay was still green but it was tall enough.There was nothing much to see, the farm was only ten acres and since my parents weren't full time farmers most of it was grass.We had cows, sheep and four horses.But in all those animals Pricky was my favorite.The evening was quiet and the weather was welcoming.The smell of rain was mostly satisfying and I loved it.By the time I went back to the house I was all relaxed.Amazingly enough, I never dreamt that night, at least not a crazy dream and most certainly not one I could remember.For the first time in what felt like forever I actually had a good night.It was all going fine until i woke up to a sharp scream that almost burst my eardrums open.It was six and it would have been a nice Saturday morning.