(Un)bearable

the author

Of all the unbearable things we each have to deal with I would put feeling misunderstood right at the top of the list. I can be disrespected, taken for granted, even disapproved of, and though each carry their own unique sting, none packs the same hysterical wallop as being misunderstood.

Sometimes, I'll get a long email or text from someone (often a response to something I’ve written) and feel so misunderstood by the second sentence, I'll start frantically writing back before I read another word. NO! THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT. THAT'S NOT HOW IT IS. THAT'S NOT WHO I AM!!! I get so overwrought I am unable to hear them out, much less honor their point of view or own vulnerability. They are reduced to a cracked mirror, a disturbing reflection of me. And it's not just agony, it's time travel. Suddenly, it's 1970. I'm no longer a sixty-one year-old man who has survived all kinds of life threatening calamities, I'm little eight-year-old Tommy, reeling from the grief of being misperceived.

It isn't only the written word, it's the spoken one as well. It's especially bad with people I care for and whose care I depend on. I don't just feel separated from them, but from some original love source. I start to spin and plummet, my voice and gestures doing strange things, their volume and intensity steadily increasing until I’m shrieking with my head in my hands. I do a better job of keeping a lid on it than I used to, but the kid inside me still feels like he's fighting for his life.

Why? Why is it so appalling to have what I think of as “me” misinterpreted by what I think of as “you?”

It goes back to childhood. My mother and I did not have misunderstandings, we had warfare. Every disagreement was Gettysburg! She had no use for modulation, employing a scorched-earth policy when it came to arguing. Inconsistent and lethal, she would adore me one minute then take up arms against me the next. I didn’t understand how my inner life could be so different from the boy she was descrbibing. It was a misunderstanding writ large.

But I don’t want to talk about the past, I want to talk about the future. A gleaming and glorious future where I am no longer so undone by being misunderstood. What would that be like? To be able to sit calmly with another's misperception of me and not feel like I’ve been dropped into a loveless pit. And if I hate being misunderstood so much, that means I love being understood way too much. It’s a heavy burden, needing everyone to understand you, and it must be a big relief to lay that burden down. To let you misconstrue or twist my words and not have to set the record straight. To not need you to see me how I see myself, which is what feeling misunderstood is really all about.

Wow. I'm getting giddy just thinking about it. About a world where I am able to tolerate the temporary pain of disconnect. A world where my emotional safety isn’t up for grabs every time I engage with passion or intent. Maybe you're already there, but I'm still working on it, still in process, still trudging the long road home. In fact, I'll probably be sickened if some of you misconstrue what I'm trying to say here (and way too happy if you get it), but at least I know I'd rather not be. That I aspire to just put myself out there and have that be enough.