I’m the kind of person who can tell when something’s wrong just by the way someone talks, or even by the tone of their message. Maybe that came from years of overthinking and living with anxiety. I learnt to observe people closely, trying to make sure they weren’t mad at me. Overtime I started noticing the smallest shift in people’s behaviour. It’s become second nature now.
Now I expect the same from others. Don’t get me wrong I don’t expect people to magically know what’s wrong with me, sometimes even I don’t know what’s wrong with me. but I do wish people would notice that something’s off, that they would bring it up with a simple “what wrong?” Not for attention, but because I just want to feel seen without having to say it first.
There’s something so scary about bringing it up myself, especially when I don’t even understand why I feel the way I do. So it’s easier when someone else meets me halfway. Sometimes it’s not even about the problem at all. It’s about the comfort of knowing that someone is paying attention, even when I try to hide behind a smile. It’s about feeling like I don’t have to perform being okay all the time.
But it doesn’t really happen. Never really has. I think that’s how I became so good at pretending nothings wrong, because no one really ever asked me. So I learnt to hide it. Carry it quietly. I didn’t want to feel like a burden. I didn’t want to feel like I was sharing stories no one cared about. Maybe I just learnt to think that no one really cared, not to ask, to notice.
A part of me knows that it’s not fair to ask of it, because it’s nobody’s responsibility to notice every shift in me. People have their own life, their own worries, their own things going on. Not everyone pays that much attention and I think that should be okay. But knowing that doesn’t take the feeling way.
Because a part of me still hopes for it.
I just wish for once someone would look at me, really look and say, “you don’t seem like yourself today.”
Not to fix it. Not to push for explanation.
Just to let me know that they noticed.
To let me know that I’m not alone.