Dealing With Empathy, Love, And Discovering Myself

I know very little about life; I am a college student, a daughter and a sister, yet I have not even begun to live. Yet the one thing I learned how to do was love. Not as society defines love, but rather I see the good and bad in people and I accept it and see it as beautiful.

I am an empath who has recently (past year) developed a talent for telepathy, manipulation of emotions, and healing. I can also find people and things as long as I there is an emotional attachment between a person nearby and the object of my search. I can sense and usually identify gifts in other people, as well as seeing some sort of aura that is actually the range of influence for gifted people, though people without gifts, whether active or latent, possess the same auras, though it's harder for me to see theirs. I also sort of sync with my loved ones, being able to use their gifts to some extent. I can use basic... I suppose it would be mind control, though it manifests itself as me being very very persuasive. That is from a very dear friend of mine with whom I have what I have heard described as a "life relationship"--a relationship that doesn't fit in the neat boxes that we are given, nor does it seem to ever show any signs of ending. I can see the past of a building or person by touching it, though that may be one of mine. But my issue started before I discovered most of this.

When I began college, I knew I was an empath. I have always been able to access other people's subconscious minds as well as feeling all their emotions. But soon after arriving, I found an unusual number of people with gifts. I had been able to find other people like me, but they were few and far between--now I was seeing a gift in nearly half my professors and a good third of the students. I soon made friends, as is normal, and found myself with lots of friends who had various gifts and very different pasts, lifestyles, beliefs, and coping mechanisms for dealing with their abilities. And they taught me bits and pieces of knowledge here and there, but not much. Then they realized just how ignorant I was. Apparently, my gift is very strong (I can sense mundane emotions and thoughts from my closest friends over hundreds of miles as well as those of people I have not seen for months or even years) and, considering I had never even thought of trying to hone it, unusually disciplined. So they told me more and I drank it in. And then weird things began happening. I became stronger, I picked up on their gifts, I could control people's emotions without a second thought.

Meanwhile, in normal-land, I was dancing. I began ballroom dance about a month and a half after school began and I slowly came to have a passion for it. One of the prominent reasons was that I began to love the people. They were all flawed, as everyone is, but I saw their flaws and I began to love... I had never loved people this deeply, but I did. And then I began to feel their emotions. In this group, there is a latent shielder--he can shield himself and extend it at least 2.5 km or so--, a skeptic precog who has learned to trust his "bad feelings", and the person who I earlier referred to as a "life friend"--perhaps the most powerfully gifted individual I have ever met. And he doesn't know what his gift is--he uses it in minor ways, but he doesn't recognize the existence of psychic abilities, though he is not a skeptic as the definition goes. And one day, all four of our gifts coincided--the mind controller tried to calm the shielder who was angry at him and the precog was freaking out because he knew something was going to happen. And little me in the corner ran out of the room crying and fainted. Woo.

Everything turned out alright, with everyone apologizing and me coming back as though I had gone to the bathroom with no one for the wiser. But that night changed something--I was completely unshielded unless someone was covering me and I was inundated with everyone else's stress and pain. I hurt and was drowning in the waves of my own gift now set free from my own restraints. And my friends tried to help me the best they could, but they were not much more skilled at using their gifts than I was. And now I'm looking for answers. My university is located in TIffin, OH. Why is it such a centre of energy? Why am I getting bits of others' gifts? Are deep relationships common between similarly gifted people? Why can't I shield? Is it a mental block or something? Please, I know my story can't be unique.

Yours in Faith, Hope, and Love,

Rae