60 Moons

What do you do when you do not know where to go or what to do? I thought you needed to ask for help. But what if no one around you is willing to help you? What if nobody agrees with what you want to do? What if nobody understands what you want?

What if you do not even understand yourself?

What do you do then?

Feeling trapped is probably one of the worst feelings someone can feel. Have you ever seen a dog in a shelter? When they are in that cage with food and water, one could think they basically have everything they need to survive, which means they are fine. Yet, when people come in to see them, they get extremely excited. It is almost as if dogs had feelings. It almost feels as if they thought those humans were going to get them out of those cages. Help them. Free them.

It is almost as if they had hope.

So are they really fine?

This is a brief report on what it means to feel trapped and misunderstood, and I am sure a lot of people will relate.

Regardless of all the huge movements happening right now, society does not tolerate even the smallest differences between people in the way we think, behave and feel. Regardless of all the protests and campaigns to help people change their attitude towards women, black people, immigrants, LGBTQ, climate change, and other huge and important causes, that I will limit myself to list to try to keep this article as short and bearable as possible, people still do not accept when others believe in something different than what they believe in, even if it is the tiniest little difference. We -because I must include myself in this issue- still do not give ourselves the opportunity to listen to what others have to say about what they believe in, we do not give others the opportunity to express themselves.

And we do not give ourselves the opportunity to be wrong and accept others were right.

Why is it so hard for us to make mistakes, why is it so hard for us to accept that we made a mistake. Why is it so hard for us to accept that we were wrong. Why is it so upsetting for us.

I thought humans made mistakes.

It is not their problem, it is ours. The fact that we cannot tolerate to be wrong it is our issue... not theirs.

Feeling trapped can, both, happen physically and mentally. You can either be trapped in a place where you cannot get out, or be trapped in your head where your thoughts make you feel helpless.

It is true that people who are physically trapped can also experience feeling mentally trapped. And it just makes sense. If you’re trapped in a place, your mind is also going to make you feel helpless, like if you are never going to be able to be free again. Like there’s nothing in the world that can change this situation you are in. Which ultimately will lead to frustration and anger.

But there are also people who without being physically trapped are still mentally trapped, and that is a suffering that is just as real as being physically trapped, and it hurts even more because these people are not understood.

On the other hand, there are people who, even though are trapped in a place, still manage to be mentally free. Props to Viktor Frankl who found meaning in his life while being trapped in an Auschwitz concentration camp.

I wish we could all have that strength.

But some of us are weak, and we still cannot understand why there are certain things that happen to us. And even though we try, really hard, to see the positive things in certain situations, sometimes the issues are too overwhelming and we do not have the mental “tools” to handle them.

It is ok to be weak. We all need help at some point.

But what if you try to get help from the people you trusted the most to, both, help you and understand you, and they decide to turn the back on you? What do you do then? What if they do not understand that this problem you are having is truly an issue for you because they do not see the importance of it, they think you’re over reacting, they think your problems are not important.

Or simply because it is just not an issue for them, so they decide to become blind and not see how this is affecting you directly.

Now, you do not have their help nor your own tools to help yourself... you’re trapped.

And you are trapped because people decided to be selfish enough to not listen to what you had to say about your problems, nobody wanted to listen to your opinion and your point of view.

It has been 60 moons since I got stuck, trapped, without help. I have seen the moon change 60 times. But have I changed with the moon? I am sure I am not the same girl I was five years ago, yet I haven’t changed my views about life or opinions, and people slowly but surely are accepting how I think. Although accepting does not necessarily mean understanding. And some people decided to not even try to understand.

People do not want their thoughts and beliefs to be challenged nor changed, so they do not give themselves the opportunity to listen to others that have different points of views.

The problem is that people do not know how behaving like this could be affecting others.

I know other people have said this before, but I cannot stress this enough: We need to start to be aware of the way we are acting towards others, because we do not know how this could be harming them. But also , we need to be aware of our own issues and limitations: Why are we not being able to listen to others?

And maybe the world can start to change, one person listening to others at a time.

LISTEN!