It's making me crazy ...

I know I haven't been around here much -- okay, at ALL -- lately, but I desperately need to vent.

It took years for me to figure out who and what I was, and because none of this came with an instruction manual, and because I've yet to find a mentor, I'm stumbling along on my own. The part I'm having the greatest difficulty with is being an empath.

You see, I can handle the feelings I get when I'm around upset people. I can handle stepping onto a bus and nearly bursting into tears because someone there has just lost a loved one, or finding myself wanting to skip down the school hallways because the place is just filled with "long weekend joy". What I can't handle is when I can feel that someone I still care about is upset, or lost, or alone, and I'm literally too many miles away to do anything about it. Long distance angst, and I can't even call to check on him.

It's hard to explain, but I'm going to try. It's like feeling colours. I don't see them with my eyes, but I feel them on the inside. Different people seem to have "different colours" when I feel them.

I know it's him as clearly as I know winter is coming. The question is, what the hell do I do about it? It's been happening, off and on, for a year now, but it's more frequent, more intense, in the last few weeks.

But he's made it crystal-clear he doesn't want to talk to me. He has a new life, in another city, and I can understand his need for the clean break he made years ago. But he has no way of knowing that it wasn't as clean a break as he thinks -- that I'm going crazy wondering what's wrong, what has him so upset, and I sometimes wake up swearing I hear him calling my name.

I have to do something or I am going to lose my mind. I've talked to a friend a bit about this, and it helps. But I'm starting to fear that the only way to stop this, to break the connection, is to barge back into his life (in turn, possibly turning it upside-down). How long before I'm that desperate? That selfish?

I know how to get a response from him, but one of the strongest principles of my faith is to not manipulate, to not interfere. Where do I draw the line? Where's the balance between concern and interference, desperation to break from a circle and manipulation?

I honestly don't know how much more I can take.