How It Feels to Be Misunderstood All Your Life
Yeah, I’m running out of topic to write. But this is important. Some people, whether they realise it or not, are being misunderstood all their life. They thought that people know them, turns out they don’t. They just don’t give a damn about telling them, until some huge problem comes up and the truth is revealed in a very bad way. Then everyone gets hurt. And they — people who are being misunderstood — are most likely to be seen as the wrong and guilty ones. Because they’re different.
I’m speaking from my very own personal life.
Back in my 20s, I used to think that there should be no difference in treating friends whether males or females, that I should be fair to all of them regardless of their gender and background. But no, I was proven to be wrong when a friend of mine, a girl, suddenly came to me between lectures in campus, looking upset while telling me that I had made her good friend cried. I did go a few times with her (her friend) or took her home from campus after some events. I did those because she asked me nicely. I thought, yeah why not. I had some time and she looked like a good person so, yeah. At that time, I genuinely did not know what I had done wrong, and I’ve had this kind of experience a couple of times in my life.
Much later in life, I realise I don’t have the ability to read social cues or people’s intention. My brain is wired so differently than the others around me that the way I think, most likely, wouldn’t be the same compared to them. If someone says something, I’m gonna interpret it literally. If he/she says something unclear or unspecific, I’m gonna have a hard time decoding it and that’d make me look stupid and slow.
One of the most significant part of me that I have now realised have caused me being misunderstood is my facial expression. I lack of them. Even when I’m speaking, my lips barely moved (this is true). I was shocked the first time I saw it in a mirror, but it was too late. I’ve spent years not knowing about it and its consequences. I did have a few experiences when some friends called me “expressionless face” at school but, to be honest, I didn’t think of it as a serious issue. I thought, I really thought, that people will focus on what others are saying instead of how they look like when communicating. You know that lesson from your primary school, or from your parents, “don’t judge a book by its cover”?yeah that phrase really sank in my mind, and I thought everybody else had the same thing. What an idiot. When your face is seen expressionless most of the time, people wouldn’t recognise whether you appreciate the story they’re telling you, wouldn’t know if you’re happy or sad, or whether you’re in deep shit trouble and need some help because to them, you look okay.
Being misunderstood all your life causes you low self esteem and confidence. You’re not gonna live up to your potentials. It’ll be worse when you don’t even realise that you’re being misunderstood. You’ll grow up noticing that there’s something about you that drives people away from you but you really couldn’t tell what that is. You may even have that “It’s not me, it’s them” mindset because you think there’s nothing wrong with you. Among the people who misunderstand you, sometimes (or probably most often) they include the people who are supposed to really know you, such as your parents or maybe even your spouse. And that hurts. All this years you think they know you but they truly don’t, and it works both ways. What you’re gonna do?
Take some time off.
I had a really hard time figuring the way out once I realised that even the people closest to me actually didn’t know me. My relationship with them may have changed. Nevertheless, I finally tried to remember that no matter how low I was in my life, how bad the trouble I was dealing with at that moment, there was always people who were having worse out there and it would be a shame for me to give up or to let myself feeling sorrow much deeper. Realising that the world doesn’t revolve around you is important.
That’s it.
