I AM NOT WHO YOU SEE

Dear Beautiful Woman,

No matter who you are or what your story is, there is something about you that I cannot see.

Perhaps right now you are wondering how you’ll get to the end of today without the world recognising that it’s not okay to try to hold everything together alone. Perhaps nobody knows you’re struggling. Perhaps you’ve made absolutely certain that they don’t.

There is an empty chair with your name on it. Within that space, an identity has been created for you — partly by the world and, in some ways, by you. But it does not define you.

Not in your deepest moments.

Not when you’re alone.

Not in that moment when you finally ask yourself : Just WTF am I doing right now?

There are outside pressures on us. Some we allow to evolve, some are chosen for us, but so much of it happens silently, almost like a whisper.

One decision leads to another. One moment of acceptance becomes an expectation. We do something once because it needs to be done, then again because we did it last time, until somehow it simply becomes ours.

This is our space. This is who we are. This is where we belong.

And perhaps nobody deliberately put us there.

Perhaps we just kept saying yes.

We have been dancing to the tune of others for so long that sometimes we no longer recognize the woman doing the dancing. That isn’t to say we’re unhappy with everything we’ve achieved. Perhaps we studied. Perhaps we built a career. Perhaps family was our path. Perhaps we chose all of it and would choose much of it again.

But those were only the first decisions.

What happened next was so gradual that we didn’t even realize we were sliding down a laundry shaft, gaining momentum so fast that somewhere along the way we stopped asking where we actually wanted to go.

More responsibility. More roles. More tasks.

We didn’t settle for one role — that’s not what we’re supposed to do. We are superheroes. We can be carers, mothers, sisters, business owners, leaders, role models, lovers, partners, providers and a whole bunch of other titles.

And we get so accustomed to doing it all that eventually doing it all becomes part of who people believe we are.

Perhaps part of who we believe we are.

We juggle. We multitask. We cope.

But who stops to ask: Is this actually what I want?

Do we even permit ourselves to be okay with not being okay?

We have created a world in which we are always doing, always coping, always answering yes when someone asks if we can manage one more thing.

And then we wonder why nobody sees us- why we are left feeling unseen.

But perhaps they do see us.

Perhaps they see exactly what we’ve shown them.

They see the woman who can cope. The woman who will sort it. The woman who doesn’t need help because she has never asked for it. The woman who says, “I’m fine,” while privately wondering how the hell she’s going to get to the end of the day.

We desperately want someone to notice. Someone to look beyond the version we’ve presented to the world and ask:

“Can I help you with anything today?”

Yet I wonder what we would say if they did.

Would we finally tell the truth?

Or would we smile and say: “No, I’m fine.”

There is another woman sitting in another chair.

Perhaps you’ve looked at her and believed she couldn’t cope at all.

What of your sister? Yes, you. The woman who has lived with rejection. The woman battered and wilted by the constant misconception that she is incapable.

Maybe she’s been told she isn’t ambitious enough. Intelligent enough. Strong enough.

Perhaps the life she chose became evidence, in the eyes of others, of her limitations.

She’s only a mother.

She’s only a housewife.

Only?

What do we actually know about her?

Do we know what she is capable of? What she dreams about? What she carries quietly every day? Or have we looked at the chair she occupies and decided we know the woman sitting in it?

Two women.

One perceived as capable of everything.

One perceived as capable of very little.

And perhaps neither woman is who we see.

It is so easy to look at another woman’s life through the lens of perfection.

We see the career woman who appears to have everything organised perfectly, but we don’t see the loneliness she may carry home with her.

We see the mother with her beautiful little brood making their way to school, but we don’t see the sleepless night that came before it or the five minutes alone she might be desperately craving.

We see the woman who always says yes and assume she wants to.

We see the woman who says very little and assume she has nothing to say.

We see confidence and don’t see fear.

We see weakness and don’t see courage.

We see success and don’t see sacrifice.

We see what a woman carries. We don’t always see what it takes for her to carry it.

And while we are looking across at another woman wondering why her life seems easier, happier or somehow more complete than ours, perhaps she is looking back at us wondering exactly the same thing.

How strange that we can stand beside one another, each believing the other has something we don’t, while neither of us really knows the private truth of the woman we’re looking at.

Who asks, “How are you?” and truly means it?

And perhaps the more uncomfortable question is:

When somebody does ask, do we tell them?

Imagine waking tomorrow to sunlight flooding through an open window. You walk onto the veranda, except this isn’t your home. You’re on a tropical island and you’re alone.

There is no business to run. No phone. No computer. No children calling for your attention. No partner asking where something is that is exactly where it has been for the last ten years.

Nobody needs anything from you.

Nobody knows what you do.

Nobody knows what you’re capable of.

Nobody knows what you carry.

There is nobody here to be impressed by you, disappointed in you, grateful to you or dependent upon you.

So who are you when nobody is looking?

Perhaps at first it feels glorious. The sunlight on your face. The silence. The delicious novelty of having absolutely nobody to answer to.

But then something unexpected happens.

You begin to miss it.

Not necessarily the pressure or the endless list of things waiting to be done, but the people attached to it. The life attached to it. The reason you carry so much in the first place.

Because perhaps the weight was never the problem.

Perhaps much of what you continue to carry, you carry through love.

The family. The friendships. The work. The responsibilities. The people who know that when life goes sideways, you will probably be the one who turns up.

And suddenly this beautiful paradise reveals something you weren’t expecting.

You don’t necessarily want another life.

You want this one.

You just don’t want everything you give to it to become invisible.

You don’t need someone to take the weight from you.

Sometimes you simply need someone to acknowledge that it has weight.

To look at everything you quietly give through your work, your care, your friendship and your love and say: “I see what you do for us. Thank you.”

And then perhaps it is time to come home.

Back to the noise. Back to the responsibilities. Back to the people we love and the lives we have built.

Back to the chair.

Except perhaps we see it differently now.

The roles we carry can challenge us, exhaust us and occasionally make us wonder just WTF we are doing. But perhaps they are also part of the reason we grow.

Life has a habit of changing just when we think we’ve finally got the hang of it. There will always be another door opening. Another responsibility. Another person who needs us.

And maybe we don’t need everyone to understand what it takes to sit in our chair.

We don’t need applause.

We don’t need medals.

We don’t need to be told how remarkable we are.

But every once in a while, it would be nice if someone stopped long enough to notice.

To see beyond what gets done and recognize the woman doing it.

To understand that capability does not make the weight any lighter.

To say: “Thank you. I see what you do for us. I appreciate you.”

Because perhaps that is all we were asking for.

Not another life.

Not freedom from this one.

Not someone to rescue us from everything we carry.

Just the acknowledgement that what we give matters.

So perhaps every now and then we should step away from our chair. Go outside and look back through the window at the life inside.

Look at what we have built.

Look at the people we love.

Look at everything we contribute simply by being part of their lives.

And remember that being needed is not always a burden.

Sometimes it is evidence of how deeply we have loved and how generously we have lived.

Perhaps the chair was never empty because nobody saw us.

Perhaps we simply needed someone to recognize what it takes to sit there.

The empty chair is not always lonely. Sometimes it is our throne.

xx Lei