You are worth knowing

A Line From a Movie

I was watching a movie recently when a line stopped me completely.

“Twenty-three years of telling you the kind of pizza I like and it still doesn’t occur to you to get it. It makes me feel that I don’t matter.”

I had to sit with that for a moment. Because it is just pizza. And it is everything but pizza at the same time.

I kept thinking about it long after the movie ended. About how one sentence could hold so much. About how the person who said it was not really talking about pizza at all. They were talking about twenty-three years of being overlooked by someone who had every reason to pay attention.

And I think most of us have felt that. Maybe not in those exact words. But in that exact feeling.

Twenty-Three Years

Twenty-three years is not a short time.

That is birthdays and holidays and ordinary Tuesdays and every version of a person that has existed in between. Twenty-three years of being in the same room, sharing the same table, living inside the same story.

And still. The wrong pizza.

I know that sounds small. I know if you said it out loud to the wrong person they would laugh and tell you that you are being too sensitive. That it is just pizza. That it does not mean anything.

But I think it does. I think the small things always mean something. I think the small things are actually the whole thing.

It Was Never About the Pizza

What that line was really saying is this. After all this time, after all these years of existing beside someone, they have never thought to remember. Not once has it occurred to them to think about what you would want before they made the choice.

And that is not a small thing to carry.

It is the kind of thing that does not announce itself. It does not arrive as a single wound. It accumulates quietly, one overlooked detail at a time, until one day you are sitting across from someone who has known you for two decades and you realize you have been invisible to them the entire time.

Not intentionally. I do not think it is always cruel.

I think it is something quieter and in some ways harder to name.

It is the simple, consistent failure to wonder about you. To ask. To remember.

What It Means to Be Known

I have been thinking about the difference between being loved and being known.

Because I think you can love someone without really seeing them. You can be present in a person’s life for years and still be mostly oriented toward yourself.

Toward your own preferences, your own comfort, your own version of how things should go. And the people beside you quietly learn to shrink. To not mention the pizza. To stop expecting to be considered.

To be known is different. To be known means someone has paid attention. They have been curious about you, not just comfortable with you.

They have noticed the small things and held them carefully because they understood that the small things are how a person is made.

I want to be known. I think most of us do. And I think the ache of not being known by someone who has had every opportunity to know you is one of the loneliest feelings in the world.

The Loneliness of Being Overlooked by Someone Close

It is one thing to feel unseen by a stranger. Strangers do not owe you attention. But when the person sitting across from you has been there for twenty-three years and still reaches for the wrong pizza without a second thought, the loneliness has a different quality to it.

It is not the loneliness of being alone. It is the loneliness of being invisible while someone is looking right at you.

I Am Learning to Say It Out Loud

For a long time I said nothing. I told myself it was not a big deal. I told myself I was asking for too much. I made myself smaller so the disappointment would have less room to hurt.

But I am learning that saying it out loud is not the same as being demanding. Telling someone they have missed you is not an accusation. It is an invitation. It is giving them the chance to actually see you, maybe for the first time.

So I am practicing the words. Not with anger.

Not with a list of grievances. Just with honesty.

Just with the simple truth that after all this time, I would like to matter enough to be remembered.

Not in the grand way. Just in the small, ordinary, everyday way.

Just the pizza. Start there. Start with the pizza.

You Matter in the Details

If you are reading this and you recognize yourself in it, I want you to know something. The fact that it hurts means you understand what love is supposed to feel like. It is supposed to feel like being seen.

It is supposed to feel like someone holding the small things about you carefully, over time, without being asked.

You are not asking for too much. You are asking for the right thing.

And if no one has remembered your pizza in twenty-three years, let me say this gently.

That is information.

Not a verdict on your worth.

Just information about whether the people in your life have been truly present with you.

You matter. Not in a general, everyone-matters way. You matter specifically.

In the details. In the preferences. In the small ordinary facts of who you are that deserve to be held by someone who loves you.

You are worth knowing.