I think one of my biggest fears is that I will spend the rest of my life feeling misunderstood.
And I don't mean misunderstood in the sense that someone doesn't agree with me.
I mean the kind of misunderstood that makes you feel completely alone, even when you're surrounded by people.
The kind where you try to explain how you're feeling, and somewhere between your heart and your mouth, the words never seem to come out right.
The kind where you walk away from a conversation wishing you hadn't said anything at all.
Because somehow, in trying to explain why you're hurting, you end up feeling even more difficult to love.
And I think that's what scares me the most.
That maybe no matter how hard I try, no one will ever really understand me.
I spent years in a marriage where I questioned my own emotions.
Where I was made to feel like I was too sensitive, too emotional, too difficult.
Where my reactions became the problem, even when I was trying to explain what had hurt me in the first place.
And after hearing those things enough times, something happens.
You start believing them.
Not necessarily all at once.
But slowly.
You start questioning whether your feelings are reasonable.
You wonder if you're overreacting.
You replay conversations in your head, trying to figure out where you went wrong.
You begin apologizing for the way you feel before you've even given yourself permission to feel it.
And eventually, the person who once told you that you were the problem doesn't even have to be there anymore.
Because their voice has become the way you speak to yourself.
I wish I could explain how terrifying that is.
To leave a relationship that hurt you and realize that some of the things you were made to believe about yourself followed you out.
To be physically removed from the situation but still feel emotionally trapped in the same questions.
Am I crazy?
Am I too emotional?
Do I make everything harder than it needs to be?
Am I impossible to understand?
What if he was right about me?
I hate admitting that last one.
Because there's a part of me that knows what I experienced.
I know the things that were said.
I know the ways I was hurt.
I know how much of myself I lost trying to make things work.
But there's another part of me that still wonders.
What if I really am the problem?
What if I really do feel things too deeply?
What if the reason I have such a hard time feeling understood is because there's something wrong with the way I communicate, the way I think, or the way I love?
And I wish those thoughts didn't have so much power over me.
But sometimes they do.
Sometimes I can spend an entire day feeling confident in the woman I'm becoming, and one conversation can unravel so much of that progress.
One dismissive response.
One sarcastic comment.
One person making me feel like my emotions are unreasonable.
And suddenly, I feel like I'm right back where I started.
Trying to explain myself.
Trying to make someone understand why something hurt.
Trying to prove that I'm not being dramatic.
Trying to convince someone that my feelings deserve to be taken seriously.
And the more I explain, the more frustrated I become.
The more frustrated I become, the more emotional I get.
And the more emotional I get, the more I worry that I'm proving every terrible thing I was ever told about myself.
It's a horrible feeling when your greatest fear is being too emotional, and the pain of feeling misunderstood makes you even more emotional.
It's like being trapped in a cycle you don't know how to escape.
And sometimes I just want to stop talking.
Stop explaining.
Stop trying to make people see things from my perspective.
Not because I don't care.
But because I'm exhausted.
I'm exhausted from feeling like I have to build a case for why something hurt me.
I'm exhausted from trying to find the perfect words so nobody can misunderstand my intentions.
I'm exhausted from wondering whether I'm asking for basic compassion or expecting too much from people.
I'm exhausted from feeling like every difficult conversation ends with me questioning myself.
And sometimes, the loneliness of that is overwhelming.
Because I don't need everyone to agree with me.
I don't need someone to tell me I'm right about everything.
I know I have flaws.
I know I make mistakes.
I know there are moments when I could communicate better, respond differently, or extend more grace.
I'm willing to acknowledge those things.
But I want someone to understand that being imperfect doesn't mean my pain is imaginary.
That having an emotional response doesn't automatically make my perspective invalid.
That sometimes I can be hurt without someone needing to explain why I shouldn't be.
And that sometimes, more than advice or correction, I just need someone to sit with me in what I'm feeling.
I think that's something I've craved for a very long time.
To feel understood without having to exhaust myself explaining.
To have someone hear the hurt underneath my words instead of focusing only on how I expressed it.
To be able to say, "That really hurt me," and not immediately feel like I'm preparing for an argument.
To be met with curiosity instead of defensiveness.
With gentleness instead of sarcasm.
With compassion instead of another reason I should have handled things differently.
And I know people can't read my mind.
I know relationships require communication.
I know nobody will understand me perfectly.
But I think there's a difference between someone not fully understanding you and someone making you feel foolish for wanting to be understood.
And after everything I've experienced, that difference matters so much to me.
Because I don't think people always realize what years of emotional abuse can do to the way someone sees themselves.
It doesn't always leave you feeling angry at the person who hurt you.
Sometimes it leaves you angry at yourself.
For not leaving sooner.
For not recognizing things earlier.
For the ways you responded.
For the things you tolerated.
For how deeply you were affected.
And sometimes, even after everything, you find yourself wondering whether you deserved some of it.
That's one of the hardest things for me to admit.
Because I would never look at someone else who had experienced abuse and tell them they were crazy for having emotions.
I would never tell them they were too difficult to love because they needed reassurance.
I would never tell them their pain was invalid because they didn't communicate it perfectly.
But somehow, when it's me, I struggle to offer that same understanding.
I hold myself to a standard I would never expect another person to meet.
And when someone else seems frustrated with me, I take it as confirmation that maybe I've been wrong about myself all along.
Maybe I am too much.
Maybe I am too sensitive.
Maybe I am the common denominator in every situation where I've felt misunderstood.
And maybe that's why the fear runs so deep.
Because I'm not just afraid that other people won't understand me.
I'm afraid that if enough people misunderstand me, eventually I'll stop believing myself, too.
I'll stop trusting my own feelings.
I'll stop speaking up when something hurts.
I'll start convincing myself that things don't matter when they actually do.
I'll become smaller and quieter because being understood feels impossible, and being silent feels safer.
And I don't want that.
I don't want to spend the rest of my life afraid of my own emotions.
I don't want to believe that the only way to be loved is to become someone who never gets upset, never needs reassurance, never has difficult feelings, and never asks someone to understand her.
I don't want to spend another season of my life apologizing for having a heart that feels things deeply.
But I also don't want to pretend that I'm completely healed from believing those things.
Because I'm not.
There are still days when I question myself.
There are still conversations that leave me in tears.
There are still moments when I hear the things my ex used to say about me and wonder whether other people are thinking the same thing.
And there are still times when I wish I could crawl out of my own mind for just a moment and experience what it's like to not analyze every word, every reaction, every shift in someone's tone.
To just exist.
To be myself.
To feel something without immediately putting it on trial.
I think about Psalm 139, and how Scripture reminds us that God knows us completely.
He knows our thoughts before we can even find the words to express them.
He knows the things we carry that nobody else sees.
He knows the intentions of our hearts, even when our words come out wrong.
And lately, I've been holding on to that.
Because there is something incredibly comforting about knowing that even when I feel misunderstood by everyone around me, I am not misunderstood by God.
I don't have to find the perfect way to explain myself to Him.
I don't have to convince Him that my pain is real.
I don't have to worry that my tears will make Him think less of me.
He already knows.
He knows the things I've experienced.
He knows the ways they've changed me.
He knows the parts of myself I'm still trying to understand.
And He knows the difference between who I am and who I was made to believe I was.
Maybe being fully understood by another person isn't something I can guarantee. But being fully known by God is something I can rest in.
And I think that's where my healing has to begin.
Not in convincing everyone else that I'm worthy of understanding.
But in learning that I am worthy of it, even when someone doesn't give it to me.
In learning that another person's inability to understand my experience doesn't make my experience less real.
That someone's frustration with my emotions doesn't automatically mean my emotions are wrong.
That I can take responsibility for the way I communicate without accepting the belief that I am inherently difficult to love.
And that I can be a deeply emotional person without being a broken one.
I'm still learning the difference between being sensitive and being ashamed of my sensitivity.
Between wanting to be understood and needing everyone to validate me.
Between recognizing my flaws and allowing those flaws to become my entire identity.
And I know I won't always get it right.
I know there will be times when I react from a place of hurt.
Times when I misunderstand someone else's intentions.
Times when I need to apologize, reflect, and grow.
But those moments don't mean my ex was right about me.
They don't mean I'm crazy.
They don't mean I'm impossible to love.
They mean I'm human.
A human being who has experienced things that changed the way she feels safe in the world.
A human being who is still learning how to trust herself again.
A human being who wants so badly to be understood because she spent so many years feeling like she wasn't.
And maybe that's the part of myself I need to start treating with more compassion.
The part that gets emotional.
The part that overexplains.
The part that becomes afraid when someone seems disappointed.
The part that still worries she's too much.
Maybe instead of hating those parts of myself, I need to recognize how hard they've been trying to protect me.
And slowly teach myself that I don't have to live in that fear forever.
I don't know if I'll ever find someone who understands every part of me.
I don't know if I'll ever completely stop questioning myself when someone dismisses my feelings.
I don't know how long it will take for the things I was told about myself to stop echoing in my mind.
But I hope one day I can look at myself and no longer see the woman who was always too emotional, too sensitive, or too difficult.
I hope I see someone who loved deeply.
Someone who tried desperately to make things work.
Someone who was hurt and didn't always know how to express that hurt.
Someone who made mistakes, but was never defined by them.
Someone who deserved kindness even in the moments she struggled to communicate.
And someone who is still worthy of being understood.
Because maybe the most heartbreaking thing about being misunderstood for years isn't that other people don't know who you are.
It's that eventually, you begin to wonder if you know who you are, either.
And I think that's the part I'm trying to find again.
My voice.
My confidence.
My ability to trust what I feel without immediately questioning whether I'm allowed to feel it.
My belief that I can be loved without having to become an easier, quieter, less emotional version of myself.
I want to believe that there are people who will care enough to understand me.
Not perfectly.
Not without difficult conversations.
But genuinely.
People who won't make me feel ashamed for being vulnerable.
People who will want to know why something hurts instead of immediately telling me why it shouldn't.
People who will remind me through their actions that being emotional doesn't make me unworthy of patience.
And until those relationships come, or as I learn to recognize the ones already in my life, I want to keep becoming someone who understands herself.
Someone who doesn't abandon her own heart just because another person doesn't know what to do with it.
Because I've spent enough years believing that I was the problem.
And I don't want to spend the rest of my life trying to prove that I'm not.
I just want to be me.
To be known.
To be loved.
To be understood.
And to finally believe that who I am is not something I need to apologize for.
Still we grow.