Last night I attended an event, and I felt completely alone.
Not in the dramatic, movie montage way. It was the quiet kind of alone that settles in your chest like the fog of an older memory. I was surrounded by women celebrating, connecting, laughing with one another like they were all lifelong friends. I felt like I was fading into the wallpaper. A wallflower. A fraud. An outcast who didn’t quite belong.
It wasn’t new. It was painfully familiar. The same sensation I carried as a teenager when bullying made me make myself smaller and observe from the edges, both with a yearning to belong and a wish to disappear. Last night, that old energy came crashing in before I even realized what was happening. I had the very real sensation of disappearing into the background, just like so many “wallflowers” on wallpaper.
By the next morning, I was left with a heavy mix of sadness, unsteadiness, isolation, abandonment… and, circled in my journal with red ink: curiosity.
I know that as someone with a Life Path 7 and a Human Design of Investigator, curiosity is basically my default setting. I’m wired to search for knowledge, patterns, and hidden truths. It’s a beautiful gift most of the time. It helps me understand the world and myself on a deep level, it helps me be a great therapist. But sometimes I forget how not to investigate everything.
In social moments, my mind goes five layers deep: scanning energies, replaying old wounds, analyzing micro cues for rejection, trying to “solve” why I feel invisible. While everyone else chats on the surface, I’m in full research mode. And that hyper investigation often creates the very isolation I’m trying to protect myself against. The teenage wallflower learned to observe and analyze as survival. Adult me is still unlearning when that tool isolates instead of serves.
Lying in bed with low energy and that familiar stuck feeling, I gave myself two choices:
1. Fall deeply into the energy today and lose myself in pity.
2. Acknowledge that the old pattern is here, meet myself with present truths, and choose something kinder.
I chose the second one. Even though I don’t fully know what it looks like yet.
Right now, what I can do is keep meeting these feelings with compassion, mindfulness, and curiosity. Not the sharp, dissecting kind of curiosity that spirals into “why am I still like this?” But the soft, open kind: “What does this sensation feel like in my body? What does my younger self need to hear today? How can I be here with this without needing to fix it immediately?”
That’s my goal for today, and I’m declaring that it is enough.
Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh captured this gentle practice beautifully when he wrote about difficult emotions: “Breathing in, I’m aware of the painful feeling within me. Breathing out, I smile and embrace the painful feeling within me.” His words remind me that we don’t have to fight or analyze the feeling away, we can simply recognize it, hold it tenderly like a mother cradling a child, and let that soft awareness be enough in the moment.
It’s easy to judge these moments. For me to think I “should” be more outgoing, more present, less triggered at an event meant to be uplifting. But my Investigator nature needs solitude to recharge and integrate. Crowded, high energy spaces can overload that system, especially when old echoes are knocking. Recognizing that isn’t failure; it’s wisdom. Part of me wishes people could understand that about me and love me anyway, but how could they if I never tell them? So this is my confession.
If you’ve ever felt like the wallflower in a room that’s supposed to feel welcoming or if certain events or crowds pull up old stories of not belonging; I want you to know: I SEE YOU. You’re not alone in feeling alone sometimes.
I am using today as a growing day. I can’t imagine tilled soil loves the process of being broken up, loosened, and patted back down over and over either, but it’s necessary.
I’m learning that the background is a good place to observe but not a place to live.
Growth doesn’t always look like bold action or sudden confidence. Sometimes it looks like sitting with the heavy feelings, circling the word “curiosity” in red, and choosing to meet yourself kindly anyway.
Today, that’s what I’m doing. And for now, that is enough.
If this resonates, I’d love to hear in the comments: Have you ever had a wallflower moment that surprised you? What helps you meet old triggers with compassion instead of criticism?
With softness and curiosity,
Holly
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