I am a somewhat empathetic person.

I was raised in a family of people that had no empathy.

My grandmother met all of the criteria to be labeled as a sociopath, psychopath, something, and she raised her kids accordingly.

So when I was a kid, like my little sister would grab my arm and rake her nails down my arm to just grate as much skin off as she could because she was upset over something.

And I would complain, and I would be told that maybe I shouldn't have upset her.

And also being a kid, sometimes I would cry.

And my grandmother came to me and was like, you're bigger than her, why don't you just do something about this?, implying that I should physically beat my younger sister up.

And I said, I do do something about it. I cry.

She thought that was hilarious. She told that story as a joke any time I was brought up for the rest of her life.

To me, when I see someone else crying because of something I did, that causes me emotional pain because I'm normal.

So I was attempting to cause emotional pain, not on purpose, but because I was actually hurt, as punishment for the action that my psychopath sister, who was raised by my psychopath mother, who was raised by my psychopath grandmother, had taken.

But the concept of feeling emotional pain as the consequence of your action choosing to hurt another person is and was so alien to the people in my family that it being explained to them comes across as humor.

Needless to say, I don't associate with my family anymore. I have not talked to any person that I am blood related to in four months, and even that was just a quick text.

People say I'm weird. Okay, I was raised by a very weird family in very weird circumstances, doing my best to be sane and normal in a weird situation.

It's very much the same for being woke when opening your eyes to be woke today is like eating lunch in a room full of dead bodies.