#empathy issues

It's like one moment I'm like, "I feel your pain, I FEEL it, I cry when you cry, you and I are AGGRESSIVELY sharing emotions!!"

[TW: mentions of Blood, ER, word “douche”]

So I am up late this time because I was talking with our fiance since I have actually decided to give it a chance on being a little less uptight and business about shit with him - and he was having really bad digestive issues for the past week and not listening to Riku telling him to go to the doctor - and it turns out hey, there is blood in his stool now and continues three more times and wow, now it is an ER trip.

I sound like a sarcastic asshole, but I was genuinely worried and got him to properly set up a plan to see someone and then his mom got up because the dog was keeping her up and sorted it out with a doctor who told him to go to the ER from the symptom list.

Anyways, so as an alter, I struggle really hard with empathy and externally being compassionate. In the system I only have a mild issue, but to people out of the system, I have a particularly hard time empathizing and giving off a sense of care, concern, or just general friendly approach-ability. It is something I have been trying a decent amount to try to reconfigure, but I am - even at my best - considerably apathetic and anhedonic 

My general struggle with this has gotten me a number of joke nicknames in the system like “Douche Canoe”, being the local Asshole TM, the old Grandpa TM, etc and as of today, I also get to be “Detective Douche” being a reference to Lucifer and honestly, I’m not even upset cause I recognize I can be very bad about it.

Anyways, while our fiance and his mom were talking about the symptoms and how they are planning to go about getting in contact with a doctor and all that, I figured that sense everything as going smoothly, I was going to see if there was something to eat since I was honestly having 1 AM “munchies” and a bit bored and saw a banana and thought it would be a nice nighttime snack.

According to our fiance, that move let him know it was still me when he was starting to wonder if Riku switched back or if I was doing a good impression (it was neither, I just really liked their cat). This is because 1) apparently the majority of the system either dislikes or hates bananas as their least favorite fruit and 2) apparently disappearing out of view and returning eating a fruit is apparently “such a stereotypical asshole move” used in TV shows. I looked it up and it is “The Snack is More Interesting” so I guess it really is.

So I guess even when I am trying not to be an asshole and to put my full genuine attention and effort into helping a serious situation, my innate empathy levels makes me do stereotypical “asshole” moves.

And my fiance wasn’t bothered because we had a plan and everything was going well and to be honest, struggling with empathy is something Riku struggles with and he is good at understanding the “concern / care shown through actions and effort” rather than a lot of more... traditional compassionate and care manners.