“Nat, do you ever feel like you deserve something, but life has been so unfair to you?”
I asked, feeling a little heavier than usual.
“Sometimes,” he admitted.
“But I think, on the whole, life has been unfair in my favor more than it has been against me. What were you thinking about that was unfair?” he asked.
I started typing.
“A lot of things… everything that had happened. Everything I had kept to myself. Every disappointment I had tried to move past, every time I felt like I deserved better, every moment I wondered why being a good person had never seemed to make life any easier.”
Then I deleted it all.
Instead, I replied, “I’m feeling a little emotional. Maybe because I’m about to have my period.”
Sometimes, it’s easier to blame your hormones than explain everything that’s been sitting inside your heart.
When Everything Feels Like Too Much
Lately, I’ve been under a lot of pressure. My cat, Jack, has been sick, and worrying about him has made it difficult to focus on anything else, especially writing. I’ve been struggling to finish something since Monday, and with my period approaching, my emotions have been all over the place.
Thankfully, I have Nat to talk to every day.
I’m someone who tends to bottle things up, so having someone who genuinely wants to know about the little details of my day has become a lifeline. We talk about serious things, share song lyrics, exchange random nonsense, or come up with hilariously useless suggestions that make me laugh.
Honestly, those conversations help more than I realise. They give me a little escape from everything that’s been weighing on me.
“I feel sad. Everything bad that’s ever happened to me comes rushing back. I feel like I’m not good enough. I feel unloved, unwanted,” I confessed to Nat.
He responded as most people would.
“You’re good enough. You’re loved. You’re wanted.”
I know he meant well, but those words felt a little hollow. Maybe it’s my hormones talking, or maybe it’s just me, but I can’t shake the feeling that life has been unfair.
I see people who have hurt me living their lives as though nothing happened, while I’m still trying to make sense of the things they did. It feels like the people who caused the pain get to move on while the ones who experienced it are left doing all the healing.
Have you ever felt that way?
You try your best to be a good person. You give people the benefit of the doubt, make an effort, and try to understand them even when you’re the one who’s hurting.
Then, when things don’t work out, you start questioning yourself.
Was I too nice? Should I have spoken up sooner? Did I give people too many chances?
Why does it feel like being kind sometimes makes you an easier person to hurt?
I Thought Being Nice Would Be Enough
Yesterday, I came across a video that hit me harder than I expected.
The woman in the video said:
“We have been told that niceness will get us love, will get us security, will get us belonging, will get us worth. It’s a lie.”
She explained how constantly avoiding conflict and trying to please others can leave us feeling violated, especially when we keep putting our own needs aside.
That part stayed with me.
I think many of us grow up believing that being a good person means being understanding. We make excuses for people, give them another chance, and convince ourselves that being patient will eventually lead to something better.
Until one day, we realise we’ve spent so much time understanding everyone else that we’ve forgotten to look after ourselves.
We don’t speak up because we don’t want to hurt anyone. We don’t ask for what we need because we don’t want to seem demanding. We keep adjusting, hoping people will eventually treat us the way we’ve treated them.
Then, when we finally feel hurt, we wonder why nobody noticed how much we were struggling.
I think that’s what has been happening to me. Little by little, I feel like I’ve been losing interest in things I used to enjoy. I find myself wanting to spend more time alone, becoming cautious about meeting new people, and expecting disappointment before anything has even happened.
I hate that.
I don’t want the things other people have done to me to change the way I see everyone else. I don’t want to become bitter or spend my life thinking about people who have hurt me.
Yet, after everything I’ve been through, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to see the good in people.
A Part of Me Still Wants Them to Feel What I Felt
I’m not going to pretend I’ve reached a certain level of forgiveness.
I haven’t.
A darker part of me still wants the people who hurt me to experience the consequences of their actions. I want them to understand what it feels like to be disappointed, unwanted, or treated badly by someone they genuinely cared about.
I know wishing for someone else’s suffering won’t undo what happened.
Still, when you’ve spent so much time trying to make sense of something that never should have happened, it’s difficult to simply tell yourself to move on.
People often say to let go of negativity, forgive, forget, and focus on yourself.
I understand the intention behind those words. I just think we sometimes underestimate how difficult it is to reach that point.
You can’t force yourself to feel okay when something still hurts. You can’t pretend an experience didn’t change you just because you want to be a better person.
Sometimes, you need to acknowledge that you’re angry, disappointed, and still trying to understand why someone treated you the way they did.
Those feelings don’t make you a terrible person.
What matters is what you choose to do with them.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wishing bad things would happen to people who hurt me. I want to reach a point where their lives no longer matter so much to mine.
I just haven’t figured out how to get there yet.
Sometimes, You Don’t Need Someone to Fix You
I think this is why I appreciate Nat so much.
He’s not trying to turn every conversation into a lesson or immediately tell me what I should do.
He listens, shares his perspective when I need it, or talks to me about something completely unrelated.
And that’s exactly what I need.
I don’t always want advice or someone telling me that everything will be okay. I can be grateful for the good things in my life while still feeling disappointed about the things that have hurt me.
Both can be true.
I can appreciate having someone who cares about me while wishing certain people had treated me better.
I can enjoy my life while still having moments when I feel sad about what I’ve experienced.
Sometimes, I just want someone to sit with me in the dark, not to tell me how to find the light, but to hold my hand until I’m ready.
Someone who doesn’t make me feel like my sadness is an inconvenience.
And I think that’s what makes the difference.
Not having someone who always knows what to say, but having someone who doesn’t make you feel like you have to hide what you’re feeling.
Maybe Being Kind Doesn’t Mean Being Available to Everyone
I came across another quote that reminded me of this whole situation.
Keanu Reeves is often credited with saying:
“If you ever notice, the people who often end up alone are those who love too much, care too much, and are too gentle and kind.”
I don’t know whether being kind is the reason some people end up alone, and I don’t think kindness should be something we regret.
Still, I understand why the quote resonates with people who have spent years giving more than they receive.
Sometimes, you care about someone so much that you forget to ask whether they care about you in the same way.
You become the person who checks in, makes an effort, remembers the little things, and tries to understand when someone is having a difficult time.
Then, when you need that same care, you realise not everyone knows how to give it.
That doesn’t mean you should stop being kind.
It means kindness shouldn’t require you to keep abandoning yourself.
You can be understanding without accepting everything. You can forgive someone without inviting them back into your life. You can care about people without making their happiness your responsibility.
Being generous to others doesn’t mean you have to keep giving when you’re the one who needs care.
Maybe that’s something I’ve been trying to learn.
Not how to become less kind, but how to stop giving so much of myself to people who don’t know what to do with it.
So, Why Does Life Seem So Unfair?
I wish I had a simple answer.
I wish I could tell you that everything happens for a reason, that people eventually get what they deserve, or that being a good person guarantees you’ll be treated well.
I don’t know if any of that is true.
People hurt you and never apologise. You can do everything you can, yet things still don’t work out. You might spend years trying to heal from something that another person barely remembers. And sometimes, you have to accept that you may never get the explanation or apology you wanted.
I think that’s one of the hardest parts of growing up.
Realising that life doesn’t always reward you for being kind, that doing the right thing doesn’t guarantee the right outcome, and that you can love someone deeply while still being hurt by them.
Maybe some things are simply unfair.
Maybe some people will disappoint us, and some experiences will leave us with questions we never find answers to.
That doesn’t mean kindness is pointless or that we should become people who no longer care.
It means learning how to care without losing ourselves in the process.
I don’t want to spend my life carrying the weight of everything that has hurt me. I don’t want to become someone who expects the worst from everyone or loses the parts of myself that still enjoy laughing, writing, travelling, and discovering new things.
I want to be able to trust again, not blindly or without boundaries, but enough to let good people into my life without constantly expecting them to hurt me.
I want to be kind because that’s who I am, not because I’m hoping someone will finally treat me the way I deserve.
Perhaps that’s the answer I was looking for when I asked Nat whether life had ever been unfair to him.
I wasn’t really asking about life.
I was asking whether he had ever felt like he deserved better, wondered why certain things happened to him, or looked at someone else’s happiness and questioned why his own life had turned out differently.
I think a lot of us have felt that way at some point.
We don’t always talk about it. We just carry on with our lives, hoping that one day the things that hurt us won’t feel quite as heavy.
I’m still disappointed in some people. I’m still trying to make peace with things that happened, and I’m learning how to protect my own feelings without shutting everyone out.
Tomorrow, I might feel better. I might read this post and wonder why I was so emotional, or laugh at how dramatic I sounded.
Or maybe I’ll realise that I was simply having a difficult day, and there was nothing wrong with admitting it.
Because sometimes, you don’t need to have everything figured out.
You can appreciate the good things in your life while still acknowledging that some experiences hurt.
You can be grateful for the people who love you while wishing others had treated you better.
You can feel disappointed without letting it become the whole story.
Maybe life hasn’t always been fair to me.
Maybe it never will be.
Still, I don’t want the things that hurt me to take away the things I still have to look forward to.
I want to keep writing, laughing, and loving the people who make my life better.
I want to believe that there are still good things waiting for me.
One day, I hope I’ll reach a point where I no longer feel the need to ask why life has been so unfair.
Not because everything suddenly makes sense, but because I finally feel okay with the life I’m building, even if some parts of it never turned out the way I wanted.
For now, this is how I feel.
And I think that’s okay.
Love,
Auri Duham🌻
