Just read this:

https://albertgator.tumblr.com/post/176720628219/yamino-this-was-originally-going-to-be-a-lot

Uncontrolled weeping, what else is new. But I think I understood something!

The emotional trigger for a lot of my crying is empathy. I have an empathy mode (and I remember as a child being effectively told to tone it down as I cried to easily and they were afraid I’d be bullied even worse – yay benevolent toxic masculinity training!) and I feel these very strong, very visceral things when going into empathy, what it is like being some person, what that feels like, my body feels those things and responds.

When I’ve opened and wept for myself recently, made more frequent and more strong under HRT, it is the _same faculty_ that I use. I’m sometimes applying empathetic processing to myself, to my own situations and memories. And then I care and I can cry for myself.

Is that how one feels things in one’s own life? By being empatethic to one’s own person and self? Can I learn to do that at will? Can I do it all the time?

No answers yet. But really important questions.