It's time to come closer,
Not to the world,
But to yourself.
Let everything else fall quiet,
Like a house after the guests have left,
Or like a stage after the lights go down.
You don't need to perform here.
Take a slow breath in,
Not to fix anything,
But to notice that you are still here.
And exhale,
Like you're unlacing something that was never meant to be tight.
Again,
Inhale,
And this time imagining the breath moving around you,
Not through you,
Like a soft fog wrapping the edges around your body.
No sharp corners,
No urgency to be understood,
Just presence.
Let your shoulders drop,
Like they've been waiting for permission to relax.
Let your jaw unclench,
Like it's done explaining,
And let your nervous system realize that just for a moment,
You are not being evaluated.
There is nothing here to interpret,
Only something to feel.
Now,
I want you to bring to mind that familiar feeling.
The one where someone looks at you like they've figured you out.
The one where they speak about you with confidence that feels misplaced,
Like they've read the first page of your book and they've decided that they know the entire story.
Notice where that feeling is in your body,
Not the thoughts,
Your body.
Is there tension,
A tightening,
A quiet urge to explain yourself just one more time?
Stay with that.
Gently,
Without force,
We are going to shift the lens.
What if?
What if they didn't misunderstand you?
What if they didn't have the range to read you?
Not as defense,
Not as ego,
But as truth.
Maybe you're not confusing,
You are layered.
You are not unclear,
You are unfolding.
And not everyone was built to follow something that doesn't flatten itself for their comfort.
Some people read for simplicity.
You were written in depth.
In the subtext,
In silence,
In the things that are felt and not announced.
And when someone without depth meets something that requires it,
They simply do not see it.
They reduce it.
They rename it.
They call it too much,
Or hard to read,
Or inconsistent.
But what they're really saying is,
I don't know how to meet you here.
And that,
That is not a flaw.
It's a filter.
So here,
My friend,
Is where we stop abandoning ourselves to be more digestible.
Here's where we stop editing the poetry into tiny bullet points.
Here's where we let misunderstanding be.
And allow misunderstanding to become incomplete access.
Not rejection,
Not failure,
Just a closed door.
To a room that was never built for everyone.
Take a breath in,
And feel the space that creates inside your chest.
There is nothing wrong with being unreadable to those who only skim.
There is nothing wrong with being misnamed by those who never stayed long enough to listen.
You are not here to be easily consumed.
You are here to be experienced.
And experience requires presence.
It requires depth and willingness.
And not everybody qualifies.
Let that be freeing.
Let your body soften around that truth,
Instead of bracing against it.
You don't need to clarify yourself into exhaustion.
You don't need to shrink into something to be easily labeled.
And you don't need to be understood to be valid.
You only need to be with yourself.
Fully,
Untranslated,
Unreduced,
And untouched.
Take one more slow breath in.
And imagine gathering every version of you that was ever misread,
Misnamed,
Or minimized.
Pulling them back,
One by one,
Into your body.
Not fixing them.
To keep them.
Whole.
Unedited.
Yours.
And if this thought follows you after this moment,
Let it sound like this.
Some people don't misunderstand me.
They just don't have the range to read me.
