INFJs have uncanny insight into people and situations. They get “feelings” about things and intuitively understand them. As an extreme example, some INFJs report experiences of a psychic nature, such as getting strong feelings about there being a problem with a loved one, and discovering later that they were in a car accident. This is the sort of thing that other types may scorn and scoff at, and the INFJ themself does not really understand their intuition at a level which can be verbalized. Consequently, most INFJs are protective of their inner selves, sharing only what they choose to share when they choose to share it. They are deep, complex individuals, who are quite private and typically difficult to understand. INFJs hold back part of themselves, and can be secretive.
/// I awoke, with a startle, palpation-heart at 3:34 am. Red number lights of our alarm clocks being the first thing I recognised. The sweat covered me whole. I dragged myself sideways from the sofa-bed in the shed, hands searching-blind in the dark for the misplaced glass of water.
Slowly recovering, one hand firmly against my chest, I used the free hand to grasp the bedclothes wrapped around my significant other; “I may be having a heart-attack, just so you know”, as flippant a comment that could be made given the circumstances.
Sliding his way with speed towards me from his far side of the mattress, my partner felt my heart beating heavily through my chest, checked my head: prognosis, perhaps: bad dream.
After a minute or two, all was back to normal. As normal as we could envision after a possible pseudo-heart attack at 21 years of age.
I lay cold, sans covers, for what felt like hours. I felt the blood pumping though every vein and limb, like the universe was granting my body a second chance.
I eventually unwitting fell back to sleep, and awoke to a knock on said-shed door.
The grey, forlorn face of my father greeted me.
“Amrick, it’s bad. Grandad died last night.”
The words were soft and psychedelic, almost a hazy-hue of platitudes falling from my father’s mouth. I wasn’t sad, because I knew he had already died, intrinsically, innately.
A week passed by. Outside the funeral, the priest apprehended my self-penned private eulogy, meant for my grandad’s coffin and corporeal form, on the way in to the church.
“May I read, please?” He begged. I did submit. His eyes widened and closed, like a human camera, taking candid shots of my utmost emotions.
Minutes later, his eyes once again met with mine “Would you like to read this to your Grandad at his funeral?” The mere thought of doing such, smashed my faux-composed nerves (purely on behalf of my already fragile mother) to teary-shimmering smithereens upon the cold, concrete council pavement beneath my red-shoe feet.
“No, I’m sorry, I just… can’t.” I nervously adjusted my emblematic Kelly green cardigan and matching pig-tail bows.
“Perhaps you would allow for me to read it, instead?”
“Yes, OK.”
We wept, laughed, wept and sighed. We drank Guinness, raised glasses, laughed, sighed, wept some more.
Then two weeks later, as the world stopped spinning so fast, and we all tried to find our feet upon the still-cold ground, more details were revealed about my Grandfather’s passing.
My mum sat with me around her long, down-lit wooden dining table, drinking icy Baileys in special Baileys glasses, gifted to us from my previous-to-my-Grandad departed Nanna, wife to aforementioned Grandad.
“Well. Uncle Peter says it’s been confirmed as a heart-attack. It’s how your Nanna (whom died a slow, disgusting death via cancer) always wished she would go. He felt little pain, he was gone within seconds.”
I hacked-back a teary sob, keeping such composure I’m so well known for.
“His estimated time of death was about 3:30ish in the morning. We think he got up to get a drink of water, but never made it. Uncle Peter (with whom Grandad was living with, after living with us for a number of months after Nanna had died) found him perched frontwards over the edge of the bed, close to the side table.”
A frank surge of understanding hit me head-long, as I knew, intrinsically, at 3:30am that my grandfather had died of a heart-attack, because, I too, lived it vicariously with him, more than 25 miles away.
