How to understand everyone

In less than twenty-four hours, there had been a dress-up dinner party and a morning at work. She was no longer quite sure which foot to dance on. Or whether she was standing on one foot at all. Let alone two.

She had always found an odd kind of comfort in sitting in a room full of people she knew and understanding them. Or believing she did. It gave her a sense of importance, perhaps even made her feel a little special, to decipher each of her colleagues’ personality traits. She knew who needed attention, who needed reassurance, who needed to be funny, who needed to be louder than everyone else.

But last night, there had been nothing comforting about it. Could she really call a sudden window of clarity comforting? No. She would be lying. There was nothing comforting about seeing things clearly. It was rather alienating.

As she observed everyone around the dinner table, she realised that everything she thought she knew about them had, in some way, been a reflection of herself. She was sitting there in her pink Barbies, thick white gym socks, flowery leggings and patterned top. She had thought she would be visible. Seen. Appreciated, perhaps.

But they were louder. They wanted to be more special than the person sitting next to them. They wanted to be noticed by everyone. And the funny thing was that she wanted to give them exactly that.

So she sat there, in the middle of everyone, with very bright make-up and rosy lips painted onto her face for the occasion, and she listened. She laughed. She noticed. She asked questions. Of all the things she was so willing to give them, she suddenly realised that they were the very things she needed for herself.

Mostly a voice. Mostly some space to be heard.

It is interesting to be surrounded by strong characters who all need to be the main character of the evening. And when it is a dress-up party, there is at least a better excuse to act out, to stand out, to become a slightly larger version of oneself. She sat there and, slowly, her light began to dim. The pink of her Barbies became dull. The mismatch of her clothes was not funny anymore. She felt empty and overwhelmed at the same time. Unheard and unseen.

But wasn’t she feeling, after all, just like everyone else?

The little girl had always felt alienated. That was probably why she spent most of her time with one real friend, her neighbour, and one invisible friend. Her name was Lyne. Together, inside their imaginary bubble, they lived far away from everyone else’s reality. They had built a world in which everyone answered to them, where their needs were met by invisible hands, where magical thoughts could cure the world.

Did she feel different and weird?

Yes.

Did she know another way to live?

No.

It is a world she can still reconnect with sometimes. Especially the morning after the party, when she washed the make-up from her face and put on a comfortable pair of leggings. She was teaching two classes that morning, so naturally she stayed at the studio longer than usual.

The studio is a little like her childhood world. Of course, her invisible friend is long gone. Her best friend lives on another continent now. And yet, somehow, it feels as though her inner world is answered by the people she encounters there.

The strange thing is that they come wanting the same things she does. She can see it. And there, she can give those things without her own light having to lessen. She shares something from her invisible world, and she is understood. They take something from her invisible world, and they feel understood. It is a beautiful exchange. Or perhaps she only thinks it is because she needs it to be.

Do they really need to be understood?

That is a question she will have to think about.

Maybe that, too, is only a reflection of her own needs.