Empath or Emotional Roomba?

I don’t know when it started—maybe birth, maybe that one time I stood too close to a salt lamp during Mercury retrograde—but I seem to have been gifted (or cursed?) with the uncanny ability to feel other people’s emotions. And not just in a “Wow, Karen seems cranky” kind of way. No, I’m talking full-on emotional sponge mode. Human Roomba. Soul lint collector. The kind of empath where I walk into Target and, three aisles in, I’m suddenly mourning the divorce of someone I’ve never met in the seasonal décor section.

It’s beautiful, confusing, and borderline illegal if you ask my nervous system.

I’ll be having a perfectly fine day, walking through the world with my vibes mildly aligned, when BAM—suddenly I’m furious about a betrayal I never experienced, hungry for a snack I don’t even like, and grieving a loss I can’t explain but feel in my spleen. Then I look up and see a stranger with puffy eyes buying Ben & Jerry’s and it clicks: Ah. Not my sadness. Just borrowed it like an accidental emotional hoodie.

And don’t even get me started on crowds. You ever walk into a room and instantly feel like you’ve entered an emotional rugby match where joy, dread, awkward tension, and someone’s sexual frustration are all body-slamming each other in your chest cavity? Because I have. And I call that place “family gatherings.”

Now, you’d think the spiritual gift of empathy would come with a user manual, or at least an on/off switch, but no. It’s like the universe said, “Here’s the ability to absorb everyone’s unprocessed emotional baggage—good luck weeding through it like a hoarder’s yard sale!”

So now I do what I call “emotional gardening.”

Every morning, I wake up, drink my coffee, and pull out my imaginary weed whacker. Is this my anxiety, or did I just walk past someone with an unstable sacral chakra?

Am I suddenly mad at my wife or am I still carrying the rage of the guy who flipped me off in traffic five hours ago?

Do I want to cry because I’m sad, or did I just absorb the despair of the man behind me in line who looks like his soul was forged in a DMV waiting room?

It’s an emotional treasure hunt where most of the treasure is just other people’s unresolved issues stuck to me like spiritual dog hair. I’ll be brushing my teeth like, “Wait… did I collect this passive-aggressive energy from Cheryl in HR again? Damn it, Cheryl.”

But sometimes, it’s beautiful.

Sometimes I feel joy that isn’t mine, bubbling up out of nowhere. Sometimes I carry someone’s hope for a little while when they can’t. Sometimes I feel love so big and deep it makes me tear up in the frozen food aisle—only to realize it came from a grandma watching her granddaughter pick out popsicles.

It’s like being a walking emotional Wi-Fi hotspot. Some days it’s high speed connection, and other days it’s like trying to stream inner peace on 2007 dial-up with three angry tabs open in the background.

So if you see me staring into space, looking emotionally constipated while holding a jar of pickles—it’s fine. I’m just playing a little game called “Is This Mine or Did I Absorb Someone Else’s Existential Dread Again?”

Spiritual dog hair. It’s everywhere.

And I’m still learning not to roll around in it like the spiritually brain damaged golden retriever I am