Monologue #4: The Ache of Being Seen

There is a part of me I’ve preserved—not out of authenticity, but out of loyalty. Not the noble kind, but the silent, complicated kind that grows in the shadow of family. Specifically, the side of my family that holds tightly to tradition, to status, to tangible markers of success. Half of me comes from that world. Half of me understands it, even when I don't belong to it.

It’s not a daily battle. I live my life, I walk my path. But somewhere inside, I still carry the hope that one day they’ll look at my life and say: Yes, that’s enough. Not because it aligns with my values, but because it fits their mold—success that can be touched, measured, praised. A big house. A name. A number. That strange, hollow currency of worth.

I know it’s superficial. I say that plainly. But it’s honest. And it’s mine—this strange ache for a kind of acceptance that I know wouldn’t fulfill me. Still, it lingers. Because I love them. Because I was shaped, in part, by them. Because to be accepted by those you value—on their terms—can feel like safety, even when it’s a cage.

I’ve played the scene in my mind a hundred ways. Their pride, their approval, matched to external success. Never to my joy. Never to my passion. Those things, they never quite knew what to do with. Their love is not absent. But their understanding is.

What kind of love is it that persists without understanding? I don’t know. Maybe it’s duty. Maybe it’s tradition. Love, in bloodlines, often comes with an unspoken contract: we are bound by history, by name, by proximity. And that is a kind of love. But the love I crave—the one that sustains and liberates—is made of recognition. It is the kind I’ve found in souls who are not kin by blood but by resonance. The kind that says: I see you. As you are. Without needing you to change to be enough.

And I’ve tried—God, I’ve tried—to explain myself. To translate. To bridge the gap. I gave up eventually, maybe out of exhaustion, maybe wisdom. And strangely, that surrender freed me. It showed me that understanding isn’t owed. That my path is my own.

But still. I don’t know what it feels like to be accepted by them for the sheer fact that I exist—that I am enough, without translation. That grief has no sound. Only space.

Maybe that’s what this is: an acknowledgment. A reckoning. A decision to carry forward only what’s mine, and leave the rest behind. Because I am learning. And part of that learning is knowing when to stop carrying things that no longer serve the journey.

Letting go isn’t easy. It’s not clean. It’s not instant. It feels like saying goodbye to a village you grew up in, even when that village never truly saw you. You walk forward without a map, only the clarity that this path—uncertain, unsanctioned—is yours. That has to be enough.

And when I choose to love now, I try to do it with fewer expectations. No ladders. No scorekeeping. Just presence. Just the truth of recognizing another and saying: you don’t need to earn your place here. That, to me, is the kind of love worth carrying forward.

With Grace & Ink,

Mai