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The Curse of Being Good at Context

I’ve been thinking about how good I am at understanding people. Call me an airhead and proud, but really, I am good at it. Maybe too good. It’s like my brain is wired to read between the lines, catch the half-hidden sighs, the subtle shifts in tone. I can sense when someone’s tired before they say it, when a smile is just a mask, when words are doing damage beneath the surface.

And I do it so naturally that I barely notice I’m doing it. I make excuses for people before anyone else even feels the sting. 

They didn’t mean it. 

They’re hurting. 

It’s not personal. 

I rehearse their backstories and soften their edges, as if by understanding them better, I can protect myself from being hurt.

But here’s the thing I’m only now starting to admit to myself: while I’m fluent in everyone else’s pain, I’m utterly mute about my own.

When I withdraw, I hear the word “cold.” When I set a boundary, it’s “too much.” When I flinch at a careless comment, I’m “overreacting.” No one pauses to consider what makes me shut down, what fear curls inside me, what wounds I carry silently.

I’m the expert at contextualizing others, but I’ve never bothered to ask for the same kindness.

Maybe I thought if I understood their hurt, I could survive mine. Maybe I believed that explaining away their damage would make my own invisible, or at least less heavy.

But understanding doesn’t erase pain. It doesn’t make the cuts heal faster. It just lets me carry the weight—alone.

I’ve been the translator for everyone else’s brokenness, the one who connects dots no one else sees. But in the process, I forgot that my story needs telling too. That my hurt deserves a voice.

Therapy taught me something simple, but hard to accept:
You don’t have to justify the pain inflicted on you to acknowledge it.

I don’t have to excuse people’s actions to validate my own feelings.

I can hold my boundaries without apology.
I can say “no” without an explanation.
I can feel deeply without fearing I’m too much.

The curse of being good at context isn’t just the burden of knowing other people’s histories—it’s the silent suffering of your own narrative getting lost in the noise.

And maybe the hardest lesson is this:
Sometimes the loneliest place isn’t being misunderstood—it’s being over-understood.

When people see the why but never really see the who.

So now, I’m learning to pause the translations. To stop explaining. To sit with my own story, unedited, unsoftened.

Because my pain isn’t a footnote. It’s the headline.

And it deserves to be heard.

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