The Gift of Being Misunderstood
To remain strange, whole, and uncompromised in a world that begs you to simplify
Have you ever wondered if the ripples you created ever reached someone who could feel them? You want to be close, but they drift toward safer shores. And sometimes, a strange grief settles in my stomach when I realize: I may never be fully understood. Maybe the place I stand is simply too far away, too distant, too strange to recognize.
It can feel very personal, that shock when someone you adore does or says something that’s the opposite of what you expected, or hoped for. That pain of being misunderstood, it feels almost as if it was an effort on their part to misinterpret, as if it wasn’t worth their time, as if you weren’t worth their time to understand. Feeling like you can’t translate your own mind creates a divide in our psyche, making us feel as though we are doing something incorrectly, forcing us to feel safer in small boxes.
You try to translate, to explain, to simplify, but there’s always a slice that darkness consumes; instead of the light leaking in, in pours something else. Something heavy, something you tried to cast away, or fill with words to explain. It’s like a slow, aching quicksand.
Being understood has a cost. It requires you to round off the edges of your thoughts, to repack your inner world into phrases small enough to carry across someone else’s limited bridge of comprehension. You rehearse your thoughts before speaking them out loud. You scan every audience for approval. You compress. You contort.
Understand: The freedom you are searching for lives within you, not outside of you. It does not arrive when someone else finally ‘gets’ you. It arrives when you no longer feel the need to translate. When you stop trying, it doesn’t hurt anymore. It liberates.
You are a rarity. A delicacy. Not made for everyone. Not meant for everyone. You are the ocean itself—vast, gorgeous, unknowable—but with this power comes the knowledge that those who fear the deep will always cling to the shore.
The gift of being misunderstood by others is that to yourself, you will have remained true.
The highest form of self-respect isn’t confidence. It’s devotion. Devotion to the strange, staggering truth of who you are—in all ways, parts, and designs. It’s knowing, despite the weight of the world, that you know who you are. You, above all others, can speak your own language fluently.
You, my friend, are not alone in your quest. Take my hand; let’s go back in time.
Echo was a mountain nymph, cursed by Hera to never be able to speak her own thoughts. One day, she saw Narcissus in the forest and was enraptured. She followed him, longing to be near him, someone who seemed to move through the world so freely, while she felt so trapped. When she finally stepped out to greet him, her curse made her powerless to speak first. She could only echo his words back to him, his questions reverberating in the air around them. He turned away and she fell backwards into the forest, her loneliness all-consuming.
After this encounter, Narcissus found a still pool of water. He looked into it, saw a reflection he didn’t recognize, and fell in love. Not realizing it was himself, he waited endlessly for the image to speak, to move, to love him back. He died by the water’s edge, consumed by longing. Echo, too, withered away—until there was nothing left of her but a whisper through the woods.
The tragedy isn’t unrequited love or vanity. It’s that both of them disappeared trying to be seen. Neither could survive without being understood by someone else.
We do this all the time. We mirror what others expect. We contort our identities into shapes that feel familiar to them, digestible, harmless. But that kind of belonging is hollow. If you make yourself into a reflection, you will spend your whole life starving for recognition, and you will die waiting, longing, for someone to be able to see the truth of who you are.
The only escape is to shatter. You must refuse.
They will do their very best to label you, to make you feel strange, unwanted or odd. They will demand that you reflect something familiar, and mock you when you don’t. They will try to name you too quickly or make you into something familiar. They do this because they want to be comforted, consoled that their own reflection looks like yours— the holy status quo is the softest bed they know. They’ll love the version of you that fits their language, and they’ll flinch at the version that doesn’t.
You are not here to reflect someone else’s image back to them. You are not here to echo someone else’s sense of self, or make them comfortable in their knowledge of the world. You are not a common thing, playing party tricks for others.
You are here to reveal what exists within you—whatever form that masterpiece takes.
When you stop mirroring and start becoming, you may find yourself alone.
Be thankful, be grateful, to have found yourself in this world of chaos and distortion. Be calm in the knowledge that you do not need to repeat yourself to be heard; you do not need to shimmer to be seen.
You are NOT the mirror.
You’re the light that fills the room.
With great personal aesthetic,
Alexandra Diana, The A List
This was worth every word! I’ve been feeling this immensely, the joy and freedom of being hard to digest and misunderstood. I loved how you described that feeling so well. My favorite part was “We mirror what others expect. We contort our identities into shapes that feel familiar to them, digestible, harmless. But that kind of belonging is hollow. If you make yourself into a reflection, you will spend your whole life starving for recognition, and you will die waiting, longing, for someone to be able to see the truth of who you are.”—those words are just so powerful and packed with a deep truth. ✨
Thank you. I needed to read this now