The Quiet Onez

Sometimes, we unconsciously put standards on people and expect them to somehow emotionally satiate us.

Usually when I’m down and not feeling the greatest in my life, I feel like I need to lean on people for my emotional setbacks. Yet time and time again, people disappoint me, and it’s not their fault whatsoever

They are not responsible for my emotions, neither I for theirs. As a man, I feel like I shouldn’t care, but as a human, it’s painful.

I think all my life I’ve had expectations of people, and I think I was searching for a sense of love that my parents never gave me.

My mom, though she tried her best to love me, only knew of punishment, but I never felt a sense of love from her.

My biological dad passed away in second grade, and my stepdad stepped in about two years later after his passing. He too tried his best to love us, but the way he looked at life and the struggles he had with trying to deal with my mom, I don’t think he had the time, the mental capacity, or the emotional capacity to be there for his stepchildren.

We were only that: just stepchildren.

I searched for love from people around me, validation of who I am and what I can do, and I kept looking for it. I still do, even after finding God. I don’t think there’s ever going to be a time where I completely change who I am.

There are going to be days when I feel like I really need people right now, but they’re going to disappoint me.

Or I’m going to be highly sensitive to the words people say or the things people do to me: being silent after a joke, not responding to a text, all those dumb little things that I really don’t need to worry about. They get to me. They make me feel like I’m just not good enough, that I’m not worth the time and energy. On the days that I feel especially tired, impatient, and weak, it gets to me the most.

I definitely need people. I just can’t lean on them so much to the point where they can be the ones that solve my problems. It’s not healthy. I can’t help myself because I just never had what I felt was unconditional love growing up.

Neither has my wife, and that’s why she will cry and feel defeated over her lack of close friendships.

I’m no different.

We’re stuck in this life, wishing for a deep connection, only to find that no one will ever understand.

Lean onto God over people.

People will never understand, nor should they be able to. You don’t understand them either.