The Loneliness of Being Unknown

I have spent most of my life feeling like I was born just slightly out of step with everyone around me.

Not dramatically.

Just enough to notice.

It's a strange thing to try to explain because from the outside my life probably looked ordinary. I had family. I had friends. I got married. I went to holiday dinners. I laughed. I smiled for pictures. I did all the things people do.

And yet, underneath it all, there was always this quiet feeling that I didn't quite belong where I was.

Not because I thought I was better than anyone else.

Not because I wanted attention.

Because I couldn't seem to find anyone who was interested in knowing me.

Not the version of me they imagined.

Not the version they wished I would become.

Me.

I've often wondered what it feels like to meet someone who asks questions because they genuinely want to understand you, not because they're waiting for their turn to talk. Someone who listens without immediately deciding what you should change. Someone who becomes fascinated by what makes you...you.

I've rarely experienced that.

Most of my life has felt like standing in rooms where everyone already had an idea of who I should be.

Be more outgoing.

Be less serious.

You should like this.

You should stop liking that.

Why don't you...

Have you tried...

You'd be happier if...

It's amazing how exhausting it is to spend a lifetime feeling as though you're being gently reshaped into someone who would make more sense to everyone else.

Very few people ever stopped long enough to ask who I already was.

The older I've become, the more I've realized that fitting in and belonging are not the same thing.

I've fit in.

I've played the part.

I've been polite.

I've laughed when everyone else laughed.

I've nodded through conversations about things that meant nothing to me while quietly keeping the things that lit me up to myself because no one seemed interested anyway.

There's a particular kind of loneliness that comes from realizing you spend more time editing yourself than expressing yourself.

Not because you're hiding.

Because experience has taught you that most people aren't really looking.

They're comparing.

Projecting.

Correcting.

Waiting for you to become more familiar.

More comfortable.

More like them.

I used to think there was something wrong with me because I never seemed to find "my people."

Now I wonder if I was searching for something much simpler.

Someone who was curious.

Someone who wanted to know what I thought before telling me what to think.

Someone who asked what mattered to me instead of assuming they already knew.

Someone who wasn't trying to improve me before they understood me.

I had one person like that.

My mom.

She wasn't perfect.

Neither was our relationship.

But she wanted to know me.

She cared what I was thinking.

She cared what happened during my day.

She noticed when something wasn't right.

She never made me feel like I had to become someone else before I was worthy of her love.

When she died, I didn't just lose my mom.

I lost the one person who was genuinely interested in knowing me.

The one person who knew my history because she had lived it with me.

The one person I never had to explain myself to.

After she died, family and friends told me, "You're not alone."

I know they meant well.

But words are easy.

Showing up is harder.

There was no funeral.

I couldn't afford one.

No one came to see me.

No one called to ask how I was really doing.

No one stopped by weeks later.

No one checked to see if I had eaten, if I was sleeping, or if I was simply trying to survive another day.

People assumed I was okay.

I wasn't.

I learned that there is a difference between saying, "You're not alone," and making sure someone isn't.

Those are two very different things.

The ground disappeared beneath me that day.

Not because there were no people left in the world.

There were.

But because the one person who wanted to know me, who cared about my thoughts, who had walked beside me my entire life, was gone.

And after that, I discovered how quiet the world can become.

Since then, I've found myself looking at the world differently.

I notice conversations.

I notice who asks questions and who only gives answers.

I notice who makes room for another person's story and who spends the entire time rewriting it.

I notice how rare genuine curiosity really is.

Maybe that's why so many people feel alone.

Not because they have no one around them.

Because no one ever really sees them.

No one ever asks, "Who are you when no one is telling you who to be?"

I don't think belonging begins when people accept us.

I think it begins when someone becomes genuinely curious about us.

When they stop trying to edit our lives long enough to read them.

Maybe that's all most of us have ever wanted.

Not agreement.

Not admiration.

Not even understanding every part of us.

Just someone who looks at us and says,

"Tell me who you are."

And then stays long enough to listen.

Until next time,
Eimi Mishel