Hi, Claire de Lune, I love the prose. May I repost it in my blog?

And I say, aye, about the empathy. I have gotten away from talking about empathy here because of lack of interest, but you are quite correct. I had these sensitivities for as long as I can remember but had to keep them hidden away from others unless I was looking to get called some nasty, hurtful names or get bullied because, **boys weren't supposed to show emotions like that**. Ever feel someone else's hurting, fear or any other intense emotions?  I mean, like you were inside of them feeling their feelings, like they were your own?

QuoteEven before I started on estradiol, I would get emotional at movies.  Now, its so easy to get choked up!  I even cry with animated flicks!  Part of it is the chemistry.  Part of it is allowing myself to feel.
Chaunte

I agree once I made the decision to do my journey into transition, I allowed myself to feel and to express what I felt. That was the most liberating part of my transition, except for the final step after I became as complete a woman as I can ever be. Animal movies, Walt Disney cartoons, animations, and kids adventure movies, to name a few, do get to me.

I cry if I see a critter that is hurting or appears to be lost or has gone astray. I won't kill an insect in the house, and I won't let anyone else, either. I will pick them up and let them go outside. I can go to the park and have the little critters come to me. Whether it be a rabbit, raccoon, skunk, or Sally's poodle, or one of the little ones like a chipmunk or a squirrel, climb up on my shoulder, or a bird land on my shoulder or a whole flock of them in a tree above me. I attract bright- eyed, inquisitive little kids in a shoping mall or supermarket, like they already know me. I have even had grown up folks, young and old, stop momentarely to look at me like they were attracted by something, but the poor dears don't have a clue as to what it is they have just felt. Perhaps they felt the energy of a witch?

I used to think I had some type of curse upon me. I have had these sensitivities as far back as I can recollect. So yep, I certainly do know about feelings and emotions are, as well as the effect it has on others around me. I truly thought I was bewitched until I found out about what empathy and empaths were about. My love, Wing Walker, figured it out before I ever did, and she certainly got to see some of these phenomena I have mentioned, and a few strange occurances since we been together in the past four years. More than she had ever experienced before in her life! I only found out about about empaths a year after I discovered what the expression of transsexuality was about. "Huh??" oh yea, for sure, talk about a double whammy, or a double awakening, which ever it might be!    BELIEVE  IT OR NOT!!!


Cindy

A thread on crying intertwined with empathy?  Why not?  The two are often cause and effect.

When I was a young child in my prior life I avoided the company and doing of young boys.  I had nothing in common with them and there was no use in faking it.  I could not participate in the pain that they inflicted on animals and insects.

I grew up in town and when we kids went "hunting" our game was cats.  We never wondered what would happen if we caught one but we "hunted" them all the same.

One day I saw a cat and I had a clear shot at it, so I picked up a rock and pegged it at the animal that was frozen in its tracks.  The stone fell short of the cat and became a "one-hopper" that hit the cat in the ribs.  I heard the thump of the rock on the cat and immediately felt the desire to hunt drain away in the knowledge that the cat had nerve endings and must have been hurt.

It wasn't my way to do as the boys did so I paid the price of non-acceptance and going with my heart and feelings.  I cried over some cartoons, like the Bluebird of Happiness and others that had a story to them.  I never stopped to think that it was only a cartoon because I was too busy grieving over the hurt puppy or the rejected bluebird.  And so it still is today.

I felt a bond with those who were outcasts from my class in school.  I didn't taunt them or cause them pain along with the boys and most of the girls.  They trusted me and befriended me and it was a mutual friendship because I could feel their warming-up to me.

I had no idea that I had any of the empath in me until I was well past 30 years old.  It was then that I learned that an empath can feel what others feel within themselves.  I learned the difference between sympathy and empathy:  sympathy wears thin and empathy never wears out.   

I cry when I hear certain songs, see certain things in movies, when I read something that moves me within, and see human suffering. 

And so it is for me.

Wing Walker
Keep Smilin' Through the Rain

I always cried watching emotional movies long before I ever touched HRT..

QuoteAm I nuts?  Or is this one of the natural parts of womanhood I didn't prepare for?

Can an image on a screen really invoke such an emotional response?

Yep... I was always emotional prior to HRT... and after it's been a wild ride. I know it sounds odd
but before HRT there was some feeling that it was a good thing to cry, but now it feels SO good
to cry... it's like I can't tell the difference between laughter and crying any more... both are good.
Both let out emotions that don't need to be surpressed. And laughter can easily turn into tears...
not bad tears... LOL... yea I know... weird Amanda.

Amanda

Hi Amanda, I know exactly what you mean. Either crying until you find that for some reason or another why you were crying is funny. Or when someone says something while your crying tickles you funny bone which ends you up cracking up laughing. Fortunately some people are gifted that way. Or crying and laughing at the same time, I found was a combination of the first two reasons I mentioned above. Human behaviour is kind of weird but it can be a nice weird.

And lastly I had emotions and feelings in my other life but I didn't feel right expressing them to anyone else, especially the crying or even showing sensitivities except the type that was superficial. All the  HRT did was to allow me the freedom to express emotions I didn't feel were appropriate in the male gender. Laughter and crying can be the best medicine.

Cindy

Posted on: October 13, 2008, 08:13:13 pm

---

Do I shed Tears over silly things? Well I shed a few tears just watching to this little Walt Disney video of Beauty and the Beast which I found on the.... *what are you listening to thread.*

But then I am an incurable romantic who loves to indulge in flights of fantasy



Cindy

I like the music, but....^^

I can't stomach the way Disney sanitizes and pretties up stories. In Hugo's great novel, Esmerelda has the same reaction as everyone else to Quasimodo--horror. This only makes his undying love for her the more touching.

Hugo's Great Novel? I don't beleive I know that one. But I did watch the original black and white movie of Beauty and the Beast, well yea, bauty and the beast was a good one too but I meant Huntch Back of Notre Dame, and even cried more during the movie then I did with the Disney World one. I still Like there cartoons and animations though, I love any cutsie type of movies. I got to liking Wing Walker calling me cutsie as well. Told ya I was silly. Always was, it's just I had to hide it for a while for my own good.

OK me has better get to that bed. Tell me more about the book please.  

Cindy  

"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" by French author Victor Hugo, the same man who wrote "Les Miserables".

Deformed bellringer Quasimodo falls in love with the gypsy girl Esmerelda, whom he sees dancing with her little goat for coins in the street. Unfortunately, Esmerelda is also obsessively admired by a corrupt clergyman. While the cleric's "love" is nothing but lust, self interest and ultimately deadly obsession, the hideous bellringer's love is true.

The book's 2nd and 3rd chapters digress, in typical Hugo style, into the layout and architecture of medieval Paris and gets quite tedious. But from that point on, the story is a great one, one of the most moving that I have ever read.

Stealth

The fact I can`t cry makes me want to cry. Ha, Nee slapper

Quote from: tgirljuliewilson on October 12, 2008, 03:01:35 AM
I've just watched the "Lord of the Rings" series again, and was wondering....

This time, the scenes of Arwen, and then of Eowyn, evoke such emotional responses....

When Eowyn slays the witch king, declaring "I am no man..!", it stirs such an emotional response in me!

And, as a brunette, Arwen's scenes stir an amazing amount of emotion...her joyous laugh at the end, in the arms of Aragorn, sends me to such tears of joy for her!

Am I nuts?  Or is this one of the natural parts of womanhood I didn't prepare for?

Can an image on a screen really invoke such an emotional response?

NO!! You're not nuts

Have you read the books? (They're my favoriates and I re-read them every year.) For me reading these passages in the original is even more emotional experience (yes, I cry when reading these passages, they're just so powerful.

I cry at a lot of movies, epically 'chick flicks' but most others too that have a powerful story. 

Hi well I use to imagine myself being the girl in the hero's arms from since I was in my early teens and actually had a boy friend back in 19and 61-63. In my teens I looked more like a girl then a boy with my long hair, I could very well have transitioned back then if I had known about it.

Stealth thank you so much for the information on the book by Victor Hugo. I am certainly going to look for it, would make for good reading when Wing Walker and go I to Montreal for her surgery.

Thanks.

Cindy

OMG! you all may laugh at me but When I was 14 I read the Original Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and I swear I never cried harder over a novel, The I got pissed 'cause it made me cry 'cause we all know 'Boys don't cry' which by the way was great movie that also made me cry. Most recently the movie "August Rush" had me digging in my bra for tissue...

I've always been more emotional then normal males but after HRT its defiantly worse.

Of course they are emotional, they are put together by people who are most excellent at manipulating emotions.  In this case, yours.

the key seems to be to let them

I have always cried over sad movies, cried saying goodbye to a friend, cried over a beautiful sunset, cried over a friend's misfortune, cried for any reason at all and sometimes for no reason. No wonder I could never pass for a guy!

Now I watch "teenie-bopper movies" and cry over them to. I don't care who see!

I'm a transman but movies are one of the things that can make me cry. Same thing with songs though. The part on the first Lord of the Rings when Gandalf dies I had a lump in my throat and I had to fight from crying in front of my brother. Recently I watched this movie called Mr. India and there was a scene in it I didn't think would be that sad but it made my eyes water. Video games make me cry if there's a sad scene in it, movies make me cry if there's a sad scene and sad music sometimes makes me cry (unless I played the song out). Usually the only kind of sad scene that makes me tear up is usually a death scene or a song about saying goodbye, having a break-up, or a death. I'm usually a rock hard person but hey, a guy can have his sensitive moments 

Sunsets and other works of the natural sublime are one thing, but movies/TV is quite another.  Tell you what, take that scene where Gandalf dies (sort of, not really) and take that dramatic music score out and put the soundtrack to "hamster dance" in.  Not nearly as moving.

Yah music does play a big part in movie scenes..

Its why, as a general rule, the music is written after the cutting, with the orchestra playing in a studio while the scene is played on a screen. 

And that hamster dance deal works, just play it over any sad scene, no more sadness.  It's the entire minor key deal with the build to the tonic that makes it dramatic.  Like a pal of mine says, "Give Jimmy Page a ukelele and LedZep ain't near as heavy as the Gibson through the Marshall stack."

http://entertainment.uk.msn.com/movies/galleries/gallery.aspx?cp-documentid=7379640&ocid=today&GT1=61502

'films men cry at' apparently.



Personally I like to give myself over to a good tear now and then. But I tend to laugh more (though not at films).