The Gift That Feels Like a Curse

Being an empath is both a blessing and a curse.

Over time, I’ve grown used to strangers confiding in me. Whether it’s in passing conversations or quiet, vulnerable moments, people tend to open up and share their deepest stories with me—sometimes even secrets they’ve never told anyone else. And I’ve always been grateful for that trust.

Slowly, I learned to tune into my intuition, to let it guide me. But what I didn’t realize was that this sensitivity, this "gift," could sometimes carry a heavy price.

I've had dreams—ones that felt so vivid they lingered like shadows during the day. Some of them eventually played out in real life, like déjà vu I couldn’t shake off. One of the most haunting was a dream of my dad lying in a casket, even though he was still alive at the time. That feeling stayed with me like a quiet whisper as we began to discover he was sick.

When he finally agreed to go to the hospital, a part of me already knew: he wouldn’t be coming back home.

Watching him in pain every night was unbearable. The medications—morphine, fentanyl—gave him moments of confusion. He’d hallucinate, thinking he was still able to cook or make jokes like he always did. It was bittersweet seeing flashes of who he used to be in those moments.

The scene in the ICU still plays in my head like a movie. I remember standing there, watching as they tried to revive him, feeling strangely detached and deeply broken all at once. Nothing prepared me for those 10 days in the hospital—or for the life I’d have to live without him afterward.

Even though we did everything we could to give him peace and comfort, there's still this quiet guilt I carry. A voice inside me that wonders, Did I really do enough?

Grief, for me, didn’t come all at once. It came in waves, in flashes, in the silence I sometimes tried to escape. I’ve come to realize that avoidance is something I picked up from my mom—a coping mechanism that runs deeper than I thought.

But I’m learning to sit with the pain now. To hold space for both the love and the loss. Being an empath means feeling everything so deeply—but maybe, just maybe, that’s also where the healing begins.