What’s so different about me? Tell me. A lot of people say I’m easygoing, laid-back, nice, social, whatever, and for reasons beyond my knowledge I don’t understand why they trust me with their burdens. It’s funny because since I was younger I’ve always been the bearer of problems, secrets, and confessions, imparting great “wisdom” onto whoever I listen to. I don’t know, who said whatever comes out of my mouth is wise?

I ask this because even now people I don’t even know myself. Sure, I know what I do: I studying chemistry, I like reading, videogames, and playing guitar from time to time, but I don’t even know what makes me so unique in the advice I give to other people…

It’s difficult because many choose me to bear their burdens with them. I never asked for it, but I know they are seeking out a cathartic cleansed feeling that I somehow know how to provide.. 

And a lot of people don’t realize is that, the bearer of burdens also has burdens himself. And to carry the weight of themselves and the weight of another can slowly take its toll…There’s always the half-outstretched hand saying “tell me about all your problems and I’ll listen” but never is truly there for you… I’m lost in a sense where I don’t have anyone to share my ordeals with, offering their perspectives, their own thoughts, their own cathartic wisdom onto me.

They say that every building needs a strong foundation, and I can easily provide that for others. But what can provide support to a foundation that cracks?

A man builds and relies on his inner strength, to stand on his own against the faults and weakness of others. He creates a place for himself; small enough and solid enough to maintain on his own, to shelter him against the chaos of others. That is his place, and that is where a man is hard. That is where he draws the line, it is what he defends at all cost, it is where he chooses to listen or to ignore, and one day, it is what he might choose to share with someone else.

This is not always a physical place, though it can be- it is a place you create inside you, for you and only you. Children live in the spaces of others, men make that space for themselves.

http://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/18om8d/my14m_mom30fis_remarrying_and_there_isnt_room_for/c8gnwhq

A Theory of Deja Vu and Jamais Vu - Excerpt

Imagine a very specific situation.  A young man lies down to take a nap. A breeze is stirring through a half-opened window, billowing the lace curtains. The sound of someone practicing an instrument can be heard through the window along with the noises of kids playing a ball game. There is a smell of muffins cooking in the next room. Imagine, also, that the young man knows his mother will wake him after a half hour or so. He is expecting then to greet his father who is coming home from a trip. How can we describe the feeling that young man has? It is tinged with melancholy, sleepiness, hunger, perhaps, anticipation, and other even vaguer emotions—feelings that have no name. But that exact overall feeling, indescribable though it may be, is memorable.

Now imagine that same man, no longer young, as he sits in a park in a strange city. There is a soft breeze blowing and the sounds of a musical instrument being played in the park along with the noises of kids playing ball a few blocks away. There is a stand nearby selling pastries. He is waiting to meet his fiancé. Suddenly, he is overcome by a sense of déjà vu. The place seems strangely, impossibly, familiar, but it is really the feeling that is familiar. He experiences the sense of familiarity and explains it to himself as emanating from the place itself.  I think that the sudden return of a very exact memory—usually, an unconscious memory— accounts for the feeling of déjà vu. Such a feeling occurs rarely in our lives because the exact sensation people have moment by moment is hardly ever exactly the same in the next moment. Our lives are myriad complex sensations made up of different smells, and sights, and thoughts, and memories, and very particular physical feelings.  They are so very many of these very distinctive feelings, they must recur exactly very rarely. At least, that is my guess.

Imagine this same not-so young man coming home suddenly. It is evening. There is no one to greet him. His mother has died. His father has not been home for a year, and so the house is unheated. There is a distant sound of neighbors arguing. Suddenly he has a feeling of jamais vu. He has a complicated, jumbled feeling, perhaps part disappointment, perhaps a kind of emptiness and loneliness, perhaps much more than that. He never felt just this way before in his home. His home seems suddenly to be a different place than the one he grew up in. But the place is the same. The furniture is the same. They are in the same place. Yet, everything feels unfamiliar. It is because his accustomed feelings are not there.

by Fredric Neuman, M.D.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fighting-fear/201301/theory-deja-vu-and-jamais-vu