The Gossamer Thread

I feel unseen.

I was walking around our neighborhood with my husband and our dog, listening to something he was sharing, and in that moment a wave of unseen, unheard, unnoticed started to rise up in me. It wasn’t about what he was saying. It just… took over. And it’s not the first time this week. The past few days that emotion has been hovering, showing up in unexpected little ways. Even a few nights ago, I woke up at 3 a.m. with this urgent need to write about feeling a little used, or unseen, or something in that realm.

And my poor husband has been trying. He sits with me, listens, tells me he loves me, tells me he sees all the things I’m doing. And I know he means it. I know he’s not doing anything wrong. But the emotion is still there, stubborn and loud, like a smoke alarm you can’t figure out how to shut off.

When we got back to the house, he asked what was wrong. I said, “I feel unseen,” and I watched his spirit shrink a little. I didn’t mean that he doesn’t see me. I wasn’t blaming him. But the emotion was simply there.

How do you feel an emotion that isn’t fully true? Or one that doesn’t match the reality around you? What do you do when the feeling is real, but the story attached to it isn’t fully seen?

As we talked, I realized there’s nothing he’s doing wrong. This feeling might be my own history, my own insecurities or old narratives resurfacing. And because we live so closely together, anything small can bump against those old wounds, even if he doesn’t know they’re there. The trigger isn’t him — it’s the deeper place I haven’t fully mapped.

I’m running around the house getting ready to leave for my parent’s house that I am already late to, grabbing my keys and a few other things, and he’s still on the couch.. I pause at the top of the the stairs and say, “I’m trying to find the thread that leads to whatever burner is making my emotions boil over. I have to find the source of the heat.”

Because the truth is, this feeling might not even live inside our marriage or our home. It might not be about him at all. It might come from something outside — a friendship, a past wound, an old belief I didn’t realize I still had. All I can do is follow this gossamer thread gently and try to see where it leads.

And while I’m doing that, I have to ask for grace. For patience. For the space to feel something without projecting it onto him. And I also have to acknowledge the complicated truth that sometimes the people who are our safe place receive the aftershocks of emotions that weren’t meant for them — simply because they’re the ones close enough to hold us when we tremble.