The one language I never understood

I spend most days’ lunch breaks in silence—a pulsing, heavy silence that wraps around me like armor and solitude. The noise of others recedes to a far-off hum, to a world I can only observe and never touch. It is like viewing life through a pane of glass. I don’t sit alone because I prefer it that way but because I don’t understand how to enter that world. My silence is not empty—it is filled with words that I do not know how to speak and emotions that I am too scared to express. It’s the sound of needing to be part of and not knowing how.

It’s not that I don’t like people; quite the opposite, I frequently ache to belong, to be ushered into that discreet rhythm of common tales and knowing looks. But their conventions of living—those fine, constantly changing social codes—are like smoke in my hands. Each smile appears to say a word unspoken, each silence fraught with a meaning that I cannot decipher. I stand outside their lives like a child who watches a dance they were never invited to join, not knowing the steps, not knowing if they ever truly could.

I try. I do. I mimic. I study. I rehearse invisible scripts in my head, line by line, scene by scene, in the hope that I might get it right this time. But the choreography of the links is just beyond my reach. It is a beautiful dance, which I can only watch from the darkness.

I sit on the sidelines, pulse racing, heart hurting, immobilized by the fear of being off beat, of eliciting confused stares or gracious pity.

It’s not only a loneliness that cuts deep, but also broad—a canyon gouged out in my chest. It resonates in every silence I maintain, in every instant I remain silent from speaking for fear of saying the wrong thing. It’s the kind of hurt that doesn’t scream—it whispers and whispers constantly, like wind through cracks in an old building. A quiet, invisible wound that no one sees, but I feel every time I’m stuck out there, nose pressed against the window of a world I wish I could be a part of.

I exist silently in a world of extroverts that idolizes the most vocal person in the room, where boldness is confused with brilliance and silence is misconstrued as weakness. Charisma is the language of this world, and we who exist in silence are compelled to negotiate in quiet. I fight a silent war on a daily basis to interpret its language—a language constructed of implication and innuendo that calls for attention and performance.

I study the expressions, the inflections, the rituals of connection, trying to make sense of it all.

I see how people glance at me—a fleeting, polite smile that doesn’t quite reach their eyes, a glimmer of discomfort, confusion, maybe even pity. It’s as if they can sense that I don’t speak their emotional language and that I inhabit a very different world.

One where words are chosen carefully, where silence is a refuge, not a defeat. And in that fleeting look, I feel the widening breach between myself and all the others—a chasm of misunderstanding I don’t know how to bridge.

But just when I think I’ve figured out a piece of the code, the rules change. Again. Some new expectation surfaces out of thin air. Some new contradiction voids what I thought I’d learned. It’s like playing with a puzzle whose pieces consistently shift shape—an endless cycle of try, fail, and despair. And it is absolutely exhausting, like following a mirage through a desert, each step taking me further into thirst, confusion, and isolation.

Why are the unwritten rules of society so complicated? Why do they curve and bend like shadows at dusk, always just out of grasp? They’re not written down, yet everyone else appears to have them—everyone, that is, but me. It’s as if the whole world has access to a play, and I’m the only one who didn’t get the script. I blunder through scenes, ad-libbing dialogue and flubbing cues while everyone else performs with rehearsed ease. It’s an unjustifiable riddle with no solution, a test I never studied for and could never pass. And even if I study diligently, I always fall behind—undetected, unheard, unseen.

I feel like screaming sometimes, not in anger, but from the sheer, unmixed pain of never quite belonging—a pain so profound it seems to be knit into the texture of my very existence.

I’m always standing in the rain, cold and wet, gazing at the warmth of life shining through a window I cannot open. I knock, I knock once more, but nobody listens. Or, even worse, they listen and look away.

It’s a quiet pain, a storm raging behind a calm exterior. Each fake smile is a crack in a fragile mask. Each conversation I pretend to understand hollows me, like an echo trying to mimic a voice. Sometimes, I feel like a ghost in my life—present but unseen.

I am carried along with the crowd, arms outstretched, trying to find something to cling to but finding only air. It is the sort of loneliness that not only pains—it clings, it whispers, and it devours.

I dream repeatedly of a vacant corner—not so much a location as a sensation. A secret sanctuary constructed of tranquility and comprehension, apart from the din, the censorious glances, and the intolerable necessity to masquerade.

I picture it embracing me like a blanket after a harsh winter, enveloping me without expectation, without need. A space where I do not have to interpret my silences for consumption, where I do not have to perform to be loved.

In this dream, silence isn’t awkward—its reverent. Words aren’t required to shout in order to make a difference. Pauses aren’t gaps that need to be filled but openings in which meaning blossoms.

I miss that sort of connection that does not reach the surface but travels directly to my soul. I miss being in the company of fellow travelers—people who speak to me in truths, walk with their hearts exposed, and find beauty in my passion, awkwardness, and raw honesty. Individuals who do not require me to be other so that I may be loved but love me exactly because I am not. I sometimes worry it’s only a mirage my heart creates in order to survive.

Yet still I dream. I dream because the pain of longing is more manageable than the burden of surrender. And in that dream—in that gentle, imagined haven where I am visible, audible, comprehensible—I am whole for a fleeting and agonized instant. Not perfect. Not healed. Enough. Human.

To discover that spot—to discover those individuals—is to pursue starlight across an endless sky. It is lovely, far away, unattainable, and yet I reach my soul for it. For even the unattainable radiates promise. Even the impossible bears a spark of hope.

And so I dream—not with hope, but with desperation. With a yearning so intense, it sears inside me. I dream because somewhere beneath the pain, I still have hope for being found. So I go on until that time—silent, suffering, but with a kind of stubborn dignity. I listen, even when it’s painful. I learn, even when the things I learn are wrapped in solitude.

I stay awkward because it’s the only thing I know.

And through it all, I stay me—broken, overly sensitive, reaching through the silence with trembling hands, hoping that someday somebody will reach back.

Will you teach me the unwritten rules of society? Not with a sigh, not in judgment, but with a warm, gentle tone—like a match in a room that has been dark to me for so long.

Teach me to speak without fear.

Teach me to be without apology.

Teach me why everybody else knows the dance and I’m still standing on the sidelines of the floor.

Please—recite them to me as if you wish me to belong, not merely survive.