Just yesterday, I watched a girl laugh at a joke she didn’t find funny.
Not a real laugh—just a quick, practiced sound,
a reflex built from years of knowing when to play along.
Her friends didn’t notice.
They grinned, clinked their glasses, kept talking.
But for half a second, her face fell,
and I saw it—
the quiet between the noise,
the moment where she was just herself.

And I just stood there.
I didn’t ask if she was okay.
Didn’t tell her I knew what it was like
to sit in a room full of people and still feel alone.
Didn’t tell her that sometimes, pretending to belong
is lonelier than never belonging at all.

But here’s what she didn’t see:
I recognized that laugh because I’ve used it, too.
I’ve filled silences with words that weren’t mine,
nodded at conversations that never really reached me.
And I’ve left rooms where no one noticed I was gone,
wondering if I was ever really there in the first place.

This is how it always is.
People think loneliness is being alone,
but I promise you, it’s lonelier to be misunderstood.
It’s laughing on cue,
filling a space where you don’t quite fit,
and realizing—when the night ends—that no one saw you at all.

I feel everything at 110%,
but I only know how to show it at 10%.
And silence has never been good at explaining itself.