my Writing

"To feel misunderstood is to be incorrectly interpreted, to be caught between visibility and disappearance. You live in a body where people can see, hear, and speak to you; yet something vital remains obscured, hidden behind a fog they never seem to notice. They may share your walls, your table, your history, and still overlook the deeper currents of your being. Failing to truly see you. They may hear your voice but not the truth resting beneath it. They register the body you inhabit but not the self that dwells inside. 

This lack of knowing and disconnection of understanding can be its own kind of ache. A very bothersome and persistent hum reminding you that something essential about you remains unnoticed. The side of you left abandoned by those who claim to know you best. I grew up inside that hum. It shaped me long before I had the words for it. I learned to explain away the heaviness, to interpret the silence as normal, and to accept dismissal as something I should endure. Normalizing being disregarded or dismissed by those who should have been the first to understand. For some, this is a fleeting experience; for others, it becomes embedded in the fabric of their existence, woven into their everyday life. 

Understanding—real understanding—does not automatically come with shared walls or shared DNA. The ability to hear someone fully, without interruption, and to see them without assumptions does not arise from biological connections. The people closest to us are not equipped with the innate ability to understand the inner worlds of those they claim to love. Empathy is not inherited nor instinct; it is practiced and cultivated. It is learned through choice, patience, and willingness. And when that willingness is absent, even the most familiar places feel foreign. The people closest to you become strangers in your interior world. You can sit among them, surrounded by laughter or conversation, and still feel profoundly alone (Phillips, 2026)."