I have always wanted to be more understood. All through childhood I felt misunderstood. Who else can understand what it’s like to lose a father before you know you have one and then feel like something is missing but not know what it is or why. Even for another child to understand what it’s like to lose a father; there weren’t many children in the small town I grew up in that had experiences even close to what I had. So, I didn’t really fit in very well. I wasn’t ostracized or bullied. I just always felt different. I stopped going to youth group within a year of starting because I couldn’t relate to the other kids. I had serious issues that I was dealing with and questioning my basic existence and the other kids were worried about getting a zit or their curfew. I went to work with the 2 – 5 year olds instead. I fit in much better there and made a lot of little friends.
Even now as an adult I feel different from the people around me. I see things so differently; I see the seriousness of situations a lot sooner, I have an underlying pain that most people don’t understand. I feel things so differently and I don’t know how to explain my feelings because they are so complex at times that I don’t even understand them. Experiences, like Pasith getting home later than expected, affect me that others would brush off or just give a nod to and move on. I see possible doomsday coming.
I never thought that I could be too understood until my Father-in-law passed away May 29th, 2008. After he passed away Pasith told me that he felt like he understood me better. I was heartbroken. I fell apart. It took me days to get through the fact that we were now in this together. I never wanted him to feel anything close to what I had felt all my life. That feeling of missing someone that takes over your heart and mind at times. I know that feeling all too well and it just saddened me that he now knew that feeling. And the fact that my Dad died 2 weeks before I was born and Pasith’s Dad died 2 days before Pasith’s birthday is just so strange and difficult for me to reconcile. My birthday was a reminder every year of something negative that seemed to outweigh the positive of a child turning a year older. And now Pasith is in the same position. His birthday will always be a small reminder.
A few months after my Father-in-law passed my Uncle passed away and at the funeral my cousin, his son, told me as well that he felt like he finally had an inkling of what I have felt all my life. And it hit me again. It is very hard for me to accept that this just keeps happening. I know that it is nature and it has going to happen sometime but it doesn’t seem to make it any easier when it is someone that you care about and love that is now in the same boat as you.
I have a strong desire to be understood but not like this.
as always, Lisa, you summed it up perfectly. To be understood for the loss, but not because someone else has experienced it. It makes me think of how Jesus explains in Scripture that He suffered so he could console, He forgave us so that we can forgive others… and He experienced human anguish so that he could also understand our sufferings and that we could know He understands firsthand. There is comfort in knowing someone else gets what we are going through…
I think that it’s kind of beautiful, in a bittersweet way, that we all come to understand others as we grow. It’s a fact that life just keeps getting harder, even for the average person. And you started off stripped of the security and blissful ignorance that every child deserves. I know it sounds trite, but what happened shaped who you became. I like your difference. Always have. Think I’d have liked you when you were a kid, too.
And I love the blog. Thank you for writing it.