Feelings From Paper?

Recently, I've been coming to terms that I have empathic abilities such as feeling my friend's feelings like they were my own. Also, I've always been able to judge a person very quickly and accurately. For example, I can tell if someone is being fake or putting up a front, which upsets my best friend because she likes to think the best of everyone and I tend to stay away from those people who I get bad vibes from.

I've begun meditating to try and make the feelings stronger and I think it has been working. But it's kind of taking a turn for the worst. I've been really stressed and uptight lately even with the relaxing meditating. I think I'm picking up on my families stress, and whenever I'm around them I feel my chest tightening and I just want to scream.

And now I'm redoing my room so I moved into my sister's room, who is away at camp as a counselor, and I was rummaging through her desk looking for a floppy disk when I came upon this folded piece of paper. I went to move it out of my way but when I picked it up I had this wave of complete grief and sadness. I decided to read it, and found it was a letter from a solider writing to my sister, about her dead boyfriend, Bryan, who was also a solider in Iraq. He went MIA and was later found mutilated and dead in an abandon home. The soldier was explaining how much Bryan loved her and that he looked at her picture whenever he could and wouldn't stop talking about her. As I was reading this I felt like my heart was breaking and I began crying uncontrollably. As soon as I put the letter down I felt fine.

In the first letter the solider said that he was sending the last letter that Bryan wrote but never finished with. I searched the desk but couldn't find it. Day's later I opened her make-up drawer looking for eyeliner and came across the second letter. I opened it and felt unconditional love. He was talking about how much he loved her and recalled the first time they met, and how he had only two pictures of her and she owed him five years worth at least. He was in mid sentence when he broke off, never finishing his word. And that hurt me, and I don't know why.

So I was wondering, is it possible to be able to feel the feelings of those who wrote or picked up a paper? Also this is off topic but my dog was put to sleep. Me and my dog were the closest out of the whole family just because we grew up together and spent almost every day together. Now I was there when he was put to sleep, I held his head and stared into his eyes the whole time. When he passed I felt so much lighter and I feel really guilty to say that, but my legs felt a lot lighter and since my dog had back leg problems, I was also wondering can you pick up on animals feelings as well?

Please if you guys could explain these things I will feel a lot better!