The Underestimated Feeling
For a long time, I experienced myself as aimless. Everyone else seemed to be living their lives—apparently perfectly, in a straight line. Everyone except me.
For my depression, this state was a feast. It settled into that aimlessness as though it had entered a room already prepared for it. And I did not even dispute the furnishings—I treated my aimlessness itself as yet another flaw. As if being aimless were not enough, I had to blame myself for it as well.
Because I felt as though I did not belong. As though I was not like everyone else.
But there was always this impulse to examine things very carefully: Which people do I trust? Who do I become friends with? And beyond that, in the smaller questions that nevertheless reveal something: Which actor do you like? Which comedian? Which political satirist? Which artist? I could never approach these things freely, playfully, or casually. Based on experience, I carefully considered whom I chose to follow.
When I lost interest in someone after feeling disappointed, I never made a great drama out of it—I simply withdrew. No arguments, no scenes, just distance. And once again I blamed myself for it, calling it black-and-white thinking, something I ought to unlearn.
But I now think it was a kind of intuition. One that was remarkably quick to recognise whether someone’s perspective resonated with mine or not.
And of course, uncertainty and fear are part of this as well. Feelings that hide behind many words, changing their shape and therefore being easily misunderstood.
I am now learning to soften that stance a little. To become gentler, to reduce its sense of absoluteness. But I do not think it would be wise to abandon it altogether—and in any case, it would hardly be easy. It has become too deeply established as a pattern. At its core, it is really about empathy and antipathy; the difference is that I now try to understand my own reactions more carefully before accepting them as valid.
This reminds me of door-to-door salespeople. The doorbell rings, and I could simply close the door again immediately. But I do not. I listen to what they have to say first, and then I wish them a pleasant day before closing the door.
That was something I had to learn: to remain polite while ending the conversation without delay. If necessary, even in the middle of a sentence.
Only in retrospect do I wonder whether I trusted that feeling too little. Not because it was always right. It certainly was not. But perhaps it recognised patterns before I had words for them. Perhaps it was less a judgement about people than a sense of whether I could gain access to their way of seeing the world. Only much later was I able to explain why I felt drawn to some people and repelled by others.
The feeling came before the explanation.
—
The text could actually have ended here.
But this is precisely where one thought remains.
As I write this, I find myself wondering whether this text might feel like an affront to some readers. We often hold our self-image together with remarkable amounts of pain, effort, and countless justifications. Against that background, any form of simplicity can almost feel provocative. Not because it denies the pain, but because it silently asks: How dare you live so simply?
I do not want to dismiss that possible objection outright. There are life stories shaped by conditions that are difficult, unjust, or inhumane. Whether those conditions were justified or not changes nothing, at first, about their effects. They shape people, often over many years.
Perhaps that is where the real tension lies. What looks like simplification to one person may feel like a devaluation of lived reality to another. Not because simplicity is wrong, but because it sometimes appears precisely where life has so far only been held together through immense effort.
Written on July 20, 2026 at 16:20. © 2026 Whisper7. All rights reserved.