Performative Empathy

If you ask me, performative empathy is worse than being unempathetic. At least you know, when someone is incapable of feeling empathy, the logic or reasoning behind attitude and behavior. It feels humane. Sure you can be discerning about the value of philosophical morality, character judgment, greater effect on society, what have you. But in any case you can clinically rationalize how someone is going to make a decision. More so than not, a person that is incapable of being empathetic will feel “cold” or ingenuine. Almost immediately you can pick up the tone and sincerity of concern, which tends to be rooted in a lack of sharedness when it comes to how the situation or decision will directly impact their lives. It is not my purpose to try and illuminate this type of person in one way or another. Honestly I have no greater sense of what is right and wrong than you. It fucking sucks when people don’t care about you. You become what feels like a mirage. Lost in time. Slipping into the past as quickly as you become a part of the future. The present being both and neither. But at least you know there was never any real concern about you and your dignity to begin with. Yet there is another form of empathy I have come across from inhaling lived experiences. A venom unlike any other: performative empathy. To explain this diagnosis I challenge everyone to imagine what would be worse. Lying awake on the operation table, feeling every bit of metal, and blade, hand, and instrument inside your cavity due to the OR team’s ignorance? Or knowing that they are aware of the cruel and excruciating pain you are enduring and simply … not caring. Telling you, “I would never ask you to suck it up” and then proceeding to cut out the tumor inside you in a hyper paralyzed state of consciousness. This is performative empathy. When someone is able to completely understand and share your burden or load. Then to study it. Learn from it. And weaponize it against you. It goes without saying this is why I would rather freeze my heart and soul then allow anyone the chance to know it. And I don’t just mean the casual, “I can see where you’re coming from.” My hurt comes from knowing I have shared my story, or at least a chapter of it, with someone and seeing the pages burned then thrown in my face. Ash. When someone is guilty of performative empathy, I don’t feel myself slipping into time’s grasp. I feel erased. Utterly exposed for everyone to “learn” from. In these instances I am isolated. Paralyzed. Ohh so lonesome.