empathy burnout
My feet struggle to remain grounded these days. Sometimes the lives of the people I left behind feel strangely small. Not small in value — but small in horizon. It is the familiar insularity of an island: a world bound by sea, where hills slowly become mountains simply because nothing larger intrudes to put them into perspective. For many of my friends, this is the only bubble they have ever known. There are those who regard me with a quiet unease. I suspect I make them uncomfortable; I suspect they resent me for living the life they might have wanted. I will always be the one who left and returned — the expatriate who came back carrying three years of elsewhere on her shoulders. The one whose stories taste faintly unfamiliar. They sit, listen, and sip their wine made from sour grapes. I hear people complain often about the country. About how suffocating it feels. About how they dream of leaving.And sometimes, perhaps too bluntly, I ask them why they never did. Someone recently an...