As an empathetic person, I allow myself to develop strong emotional connections with people. I make no excuses or apologies for it. If anything, it’s allowed me to experience closeness with a spectrum of different men and women and afforded me deep relationships with many.

There are seldom situations where I won’t just say what I’m thinking – this often leads to me saying things that are out of context, a bit weird, misinterpreted or illogical.

It’s lead to me jeopardising employment, friendships – you name it, I’ve said something stupid that was ultimately limiting in some way. But it’s how I wish people would interact with me. I often feel like when I’m down in the weeds with people talking about big and meaningful things, we’re on the precipice of great discoveries about one another, but we’ll remain teetering there because the truth – well the truth is so much more complicated.

I spew out words that have little thought or construction applied, meaning often they don’t make a lot of sense as they’re charged little ions that sting on impact. So, I’ve been working on that.

I’ve been working on channelling my thoughts, speaking less about things that I don’t really comprehend – admittedly there’s so much in the world that I don’t – I’m not sure whether that has improved the way I interact with people, or stilted my ability to be fundamentally honest and myself. I’m not even sure if there has been a discernable difference noticed by the people that grace my life day-to-day.

Is it really a flaw to be empathetic? The dictionary defines empathy as the ‘ability to understand and share the feelings of another’ – on face value, I would have assumed that this is a good thing. But the adverse side effect of being intensely and stupidly sensitive is the on-going and ever-present internal dialogue that goes on and on in quiet spaces. Just strings of interwoven, not-really-connected streams of consciousness that echo through my bones, constantly leaving me shivering against their reverberation.

Like when recently, someone I met asked me if I did stand up.

‘Comedy?’ I asked curiously, as he nodded excitedly – I’ve definitely never done stand up, but have prided myself in finding humour in every tragedy. I responded that I thought the reasons that I used self-deprecating comedy was as a defense mechanism. If I make fun of myself for my very, glaringly obvious flaws – I’ll beat you to the punchline. It always hurts way less when you make fun of yourself about things you know are your shortcomings, than if someone else does it for you.

Being a ‘funny’ girl definitely stems from my experience as a strange, extroverted tomboy, growing up surrounded by beautiful, statuesque girls. My sister was a child model and one of my closest friends a jazz dancer, ethereal and athletic. When I was little, my mum enrolled my older sister and I in modelling classes as she was too shy to attend these classes alone, a precocious 11 year old.

If you’ve ever felt like a square peg in a round hole, you’ll have some semblance of an idea of how I felt, knobbly knees and chubby thighs rolling up to strut down a catwalk with other little girls, whose hearts were set on being the face on the next ‘Dolly’ magazine. I use this memory often to remind myself that I am a dork and will continue to be a dork because all I remember thinking about was how cool it was that I’d inherited my grandfather’s record player, and how excited I was to go home and crate-dig in amongst my mum’s own collection. Oh, and rollerblading.

I really don’t know whether there is a point to me even telling anyone about this, but I constantly feel this need to explain myself and justify my existence. It’s as if I’m arguing all the fucking time with no one – just listen – I deserve to be here, my presence means something. I really want to contribute. It’s all I want.

Do you ever wonder if people will show up for your funeral? Several years ago, I got a message request from an acquaintance of an old boyfriend on Facebook to tell me she was so happy I was still alive. Cool – thanks, I guess?

I was super confused, but came to learn that there were a tonne of people who thought I’d died in a horrific car accident that happened in their neighbourhood. The associated media only divulged that the passenger in the car, whose name was Charli, died on impact. Go figure.

But here’s the thing – I didn’t die. But not a single one of the scores of people who thought I was dead reached out to my family to send their condolences. They mourned me, in their own ways I suppose, but never actually made any efforts to attend the funeral I didn’t have. You cannot make this stuff up.

In summary;

• If I say something to you that makes no sense, ask me to elaborate;
• Don’t dance around subjects – if you want to tell me I’m an asshole, go right ahead. Will it impact me? 100%, I’ll probably recall the conversation for years and it will haunt me forever. Will I be able to cope with it better than your inauthenticity? Absolutely.
• If I die prematurely and you and I shared anything – please come to my funeral.