Back in October 2025, I visited the Stranger Project in New York City.
If you’ve never heard of it, it’s exactly what it sounds like: letters from strangers. Confessions, regrets, grief, love, fears. Tiny pieces of people’s lives left behind for someone else to find.
I went with a friend who was visiting from Los Angeles because I knew two things. First, that he would appreciate it. Second, that he would not judge me if I cried.
I knew I would cry.
It had taken me over two years of living in New York to build up the courage to go. Looking back, I think I know why.
For the first time, maybe ever, I felt understood.
I had felt understood by books before. There are characters I have loved because they thought the way I thought or felt the way I felt. I even have two tattoos that I got because of said characters. But fictional people can only take you so far. They are carefully crafted to tell a story. They are not real.
These letters were. Reading them, I found myself wondering: are we all just hiding from each other?
Are we all walking around carrying thoughts and fears and griefs that we are too afraid to say out loud?
Because for most of my life, I have felt like no one understands me. But somehow, in the project, I read letters from strangers that put my thoughts into words and, even anonymously, decided to share them with the world. If I could so easily find people at an exhibition in New York who felt the same feelings, how could I not find them in real life?
I know that I am sensitive. I know I get upset quickly. I know I feel things deeply.
I also know that these traits are usually described as flaws.
But I have never understood why.
Why is it wrong to feel deeply?
Why is it too much to be anxious when something scares you, sad when something hurts you, or overwhelmed when life becomes overwhelming?
I am not trying to convince anyone that my version of events is the right one. I am only trying to show how they looked from where I stood and how they made me feel.
The things that touch our hearts are rarely logical. They are simply ours.
When I tell someone I am anxious, I do not necessarily need them to tell me there is nothing to worry about. When I tell someone that something hurt me, I am not asking them to decide whether it should have.
I think that is what frustrates me the most.
People often listen, but they do not hear.
They nod. They agree. They make sympathetic noises. But sometimes I can see it in their faces and mostly through their eyes that they have already decided that I am overreacting, that I am being dramatic, that I will get over it.
The conversation becomes less about understanding what I am saying and more about convincing me that I should not feel it in the first place.
I think this is what has always frightened me most about love and relationships. I think I have always had a vision that romantic relationships are supposed to be the place where someone knows you better than anyone else, where you can let down your guard and trust that the person across from you will understand. And I think he does know me better than anyone. But there’s still this gap in understanding that I am unsure how to mend.
I have learned that closeness and understanding are not the same thing. Someone can know your favorite color, how you take your coffee, your favorite books, and still look at you with complete confusion when you try to explain what is happening inside your own head. Or worse, annoyance.
There is a particular loneliness in being vulnerable with someone you love, only to realize they are hearing the words but missing the meaning.
I am not asking anyone to agree with me. I am not even asking them to think I am right. I just want someone to believe that what I am feeling is real.
Maybe that is why I have always loved the Mad Hatter’s line in Alice in Wonderland, which I have recently seen all over social media.
“You’ve lost your muchness. You used to be much muchier.”
I think about that quote a lot whenever I see myself shying away from my feelings to keep my relationships with the people around me comfortable. If there’s no depth, there are no misunderstandings.
Standing in the Stranger Project, surrounded by the words of people I would never meet, I realized that maybe none of us is as alone as we think.
Maybe understanding was never supposed to mean finding someone who feels exactly what we feel. Maybe it is simply finding someone who lets us feel it without rolling their eyes.
Someone who does not try to solve us but solves with us.
Someone who sits with us for a moment and says, “I may not know what that feels like, but I believe that it feels that way to you.”
I walked out of that exhibit thinking about all those strangers who had trusted someone enough to leave a piece of themselves behind.
And I wondered if we are all undersharing our lives. If we are all carrying around the same thoughts, waiting for permission to say them out loud, out of fear that the other person would not understand.
I still do not think anyone can truly understand another person completely, as we all experience the world differently.
But I think there is something beautiful in trying.
And maybe that is enough.
Maybe being understood does not mean finding someone who sees the world exactly as we do.
Maybe it means finding someone who is willing to stand where we stood for a moment and look.
I just ask, please don’t ever call me dramatic again.
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