The Loneliness of Not Being Understood

Have you noticed that some of the loneliest hours of a survivor's life are not spent alone? They are spent in rooms full of people who do not understand. People who mean well, who like you, who want you to be okay — but who do not have the framework to hear what you have actually lived through. You walk away from those rooms feeling more alone than you did before.

You have probably heard, more times than you can count, well-meant sentences that landed wrong. Why did you not leave sooner. They probably did not mean it that way. I am sure both of you had your part. You need to forgive and move on. Each of these phrases is a small door closed, even when the person closing it did not mean to close anything. They simply did not have the language for the room you were in.

This is its own kind of grief. The grief of having survived something that most of the people around you do not have a way to recognize. You start to hold your story more carefully. You learn whose company you can be tired in and whose company you have to perform in. You stop telling certain people what is really happening, because the cost of being unheard is higher than the cost of staying quiet.

You are allowed to stop explaining to people who will not hear. You are allowed to keep your story small with them, and full with others. You are allowed to grieve the friendships that did not survive the gap between what you went through and what they were able to hold.

Somewhere, there are people who will hear you without needing you to convince them. They will not say much. They will simply nod, and stay, and know. Those people are real, and you are allowed to keep looking until you find them. The looking itself is a sign of hope.