The empathy I never asked for

Growing up with a mother in active addiction taught me to read rooms before I could read books. I knew the weather of a house by the sound of a door closing. I could calibrate the mood of an adult by the way they reached for a glass.

Therapists call this hypervigilance. They're right — it's a trauma response. But it also made me the most emotionally attuned person in every room I've ever walked into. Not by choice, but by necessity.