Laying in bed stuck in my head

There are days where I don’t want to die. I just want everything to stop for a minute. I want a break from being a person who feels and notices and holds so much. I don’t want to disappear. I just want to set it all down without the world falling apart because I did.

I don’t think people really understand what I mean when I say I feel alone. It’s not about not having people. It’s not about being physically isolated. It’s that there are these entire worlds inside of me, and I don’t know where to put them. I don’t know who to hand them to. I don’t know who could hold them without flinching.

There’s a loneliness that doesn’t come from the absence of others. It comes from the absence of being understood. Being met. Being known in the places where I actually live.

I’ve felt that since I was a kid. When I used to stare out the window in class and drift into places no one around me knew existed. Teachers thought I wasn’t paying attention, but I was. Just not to the shallow end of life. I was paying attention to tone. Mood. Silence. The heaviness in a room that didn’t match the conversation. I could tell when the teacher was having a bad morning before she spoke. I could tell when a friend’s parents had fought the night before by how they tied their shoes. My brain was always somewhere deeper than the surface everyone else seemed content to stay on.

They didn’t know what to do with me. Too imaginative. Too emotional. Too intense. Too much and somehow not enough at the same time. So I learned early on how to make myself smaller. I learned to tuck the loud, curious, cosmic parts of myself away. I learned to talk softly. Smile politely. Make sure I never took up more emotional space than I was given permission to take.

And now here I am. A grown woman who still overthinks every text message. Not because I don’t know what I want to say. But because I don’t know if I’m allowed to say it. I rewrite everything. Reread everything. I soften myself in conversation because I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. I don’t want to seem needy, or intense, or too available, or too eager. I don’t want to be a burden, or annoying, or embarrassing. I don’t want to love louder than someone else loves me.

I think the loneliest part is that I know my worth. I genuinely do. I know I am smart and intuitive and perceptive and loving and rare. I know I bring meaning and depth and presence. Not in an ego way. Just in that quiet, honest way where you know yourself well enough to understand what you carry.

And somehow I still feel like I exist in the world with no real place to set myself down.

It’s not that I believe no one can meet me. It’s that historically, no one has. Not friends. Not the people I’ve held through their darkest seasons. Not the people who confided in me, leaned on me, let me hold them emotionally, spiritually, energetically. I’m the warm room they step into when they’re cold. I’m not the place they stay when they’re warm again.

And that does something to you. It builds this quiet ache that lives beneath everything else. This constant awareness that you are full of love with nowhere to put it safely.

I want to be seen. Not admired. Not used for insight. Not praised for strength. Truly seen. Met. Sat with. Witnessed. Felt back.

But every time I get close to letting someone see the full version of me, I freeze up. I go quiet. I retreat into myself. I fold in. Not because I don’t want closeness. But because being met halfway feels like a miracle I’ve never experienced. And the disappointment of hoping for that is exhausting.

So I stay in this space where I feel everything loudly and express almost none of it.

And somehow, I still believe in myself. I still know I am worthy of connection that feels real. I still know I am capable of love that is deep and honest and reciprocal. I still know that there is nothing wrong with how I am built.

But I don’t hold onto hope that someone will meet me there.

Hope has teeth.

Hope has cost.

Hope has left me bruised more than anything else.

So instead, I’m trying to meet myself.

To sit with myself.

To love myself in the ways I’ve always wanted someone else to.

To not disappear into the silence between texts.

To not collapse under the weight of feeling too deeply in a world that prefers numb.

I don’t know if anyone will ever fully meet me where I am.

But I am learning to meet myself there.

And for now…

that has to be enough.