Eternal Ephemerals

The weight of understanding

She sat by the window, the pale light of the early evening settling across the room, turning everything soft and gray. Her tea had gone cold in her hands, but she didn't notice. The cup was just something to hold, an anchor for the thoughts swirling endlessly in her head.

It had happened again.

That moment when someone else's anger, someone else's pain, had curled itself around her like smoke, choking her thoughts, clouding her clarity. Not choking, really—no, it was subtler than that. It wasn't that she couldn't breathe. It was that she'd given up the need to, as though holding her breath for them was the most natural thing in the world.

Her friend had called her earlier, her voice tight and brittle, recounting the latest argument with her boyfriend. The details were a blur now. Something about a forgotten promise, words exchanged too harshly, his frustration at feeling smothered, her sadness at feeling unseen.

When her friend had finished talking, her voice trembling on the edge of tears, she'd expected her to say something, to take her side.

"That's awful," she could have said. Or maybe, "He shouldn't have spoken to you like that." Or even the easiest one, "You're right to feel hurt."

But instead, she'd been silent.

Not because she didn't care. Not because she didn't love her friend. But because the words wouldn't come. How could she say he was wrong when she could so clearly see why he'd acted the way he had?

She imagined him, feeling overwhelmed, suffocated, retreating into himself not because he didn't love her friend, but because he didn't know how else to protect his own fragile edges. She imagined how his words might have come out sharper than he intended, how maybe he regretted them the moment they left his mouth but didn't know how to pull them back.

Her friend had been crying, her voice raw, and still, she couldn't say it. She couldn't say, "He was wrong." Because in her mind, he wasn't. Not entirely. Not once you really thought about it.

That was the problem, wasn't it? She couldn't look at a situation without peeling back its layers, without tracing the lines of someone's pain back to its source. Every harsh word, every selfish action, every misunderstanding—if you looked deeply enough, if you stepped into their shoes and saw the world through their eyes, it all made sense.

And if it made sense, how could you blame them?

She leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window, her fingers curling tighter around the teacup. She thought about all the times she'd done this—unraveling arguments, heartbreaks, betrayals, even her own pain, until the edges blurred and she couldn't tell where right ended and wrong began.

It wasn't just her friend's boyfriend. It was everyone.

The ex who had ghosted her after a year of promises. She'd cried for weeks, torn between sadness and anger, until one night, lying awake in the dark, she'd thought: Maybe he just couldn't handle it. Maybe he was too afraid to say goodbye.

Her father, who had never been quite present enough, always distracted by work or stress or something just beyond her reach. For years, she'd felt the ache of his absence, the sting of his indifference. But then she'd thought: Maybe he didn't know how to be anything else. Maybe he was carrying weights I couldn't see.

Even her best friend in high school, who had spread that stupid rumor about her, who had looked her in the eye and lied when she confronted her. She'd been furious at first. But later, after the dust had settled, she'd thought: She was insecure. She was afraid of being left out. It wasn't really about me.

No one was ever at fault, not completely. Not when you took the time to understand them.

But wasn't that the problem?

Her chest tightened as the thought rose, sharp and clear, like a crack cutting through the fog of her empathy.

How could she hold anyone accountable if she always understood?

Wasn't anger supposed to be a boundary? A way to protect yourself, to say, "This hurt me, and you shouldn't have done it"? How could she ever say that if all she could see was the reasons why they'd done it?

She pressed her fingers to her temple, her thoughts spinning faster now, circling the same question over and over again.

Does this make me over-accommodating?

She thought about her friend on the phone, how her voice had wavered with the weight of her hurt. She hadn't known what to say. Not because she didn't want to comfort her, but because she couldn't pick a side. She wanted to say, You're right, but she also wanted to say, I see where he's coming from.

It felt wrong to say either. It felt wrong to say nothing.

The truth was, she didn't know how to hold anyone accountable when she could feel their pain so deeply it swallowed her own. And wasn't that dangerous, in its own way? Didn't it mean she'd forgive anyone, everyone, no matter what they did?

Her fingers loosened around the teacup, her arms dropping to her sides. She thought about the times people had told her she was "too nice," how they'd said it like it was a compliment but with a faint edge of worry, as if they were afraid for her.

Was this what they meant?

She closed her eyes and let her thoughts drift back to her friend, crying on the other end of the line. It wasn't that she didn't feel her friend's pain. She did. She felt it as deeply as if it were her own. But she felt his, too.

She always did.

Why can't I just... let people be wrong?

The question hung in the air, unanswered, as the light outside faded into shadows.

It wasn't that she thought everyone deserved forgiveness. It wasn't that she thought their actions didn't matter. It was just... if you could see their pain, if you could understand it, how could you hate them for it? How could you hold on to anger when you knew it wasn't simple, when you knew they weren't simple?

Her mother had once told her she forgave too easily. "You're going to let people walk all over you if you're not careful," she'd said, her voice half-scolding, half-loving.

Maybe her mother had been right. Maybe this was what walking all over her looked like. Or maybe this was what grace looked like.

She didn't know.

All she knew was that the anger she should've felt at people—the righteous indignation her friends seemed to summon so easily—never quite came. It was always tempered by something else, something quieter and harder to explain.

Was it a weakness? A strength? Or just... who she was?

She sighed, setting the teacup down on the windowsill and pulling her knees to her chest. The room had grown dark around her, the music still playing faintly in the background.

She didn't have an answer. Not yet. But as the night deepened and the world outside quieted, she thought: Maybe she didn't need one. Maybe it was okay not to know.

For now, she would sit here, with the weight of understanding in her chest, and let herself feel it.