Sometimes I don’t need an answer. I just want to feel heard.

Does anyone ever wake up and you just feel good? 

Like you’re getting ready to leave the house and everything is suspiciously good? That was me this past Sunday. 

I was happily rambling about work on the way to church. And truly, when I mean rambling, I mean rambling. I’m actually a very quiet person. The speak when spoken to kinda lady if you will, so when I get rambling it’s never ending. 

One thought piled into another, which turned into something completely different and somehow came full circle to my work… again.

I’m driving us to church like I do most Sundays, feeling light, My mom, however, was on her phone. Not remarkable, a pretty common sight actually.

 It’s pretty normal for her to be on her phone when she’s got an idea in her head and using ChatGPT to create a visual. 

She had been trying to figure out the way something would look in our yard since early that morning. Which, admittedly, is important if you’ve been trying to make your yard look beautiful. 

But eventually I stopped and asked, 

“You’re not listening to me, at all, are you?” 

Without taking her eyes off her phone, “Not at all.” 

Honestly, any other day I probably would have appreciated her honestly.. That day? I didn’t appreciate the answer.

The next words out my mouth were mostly fueled by snark. A simple, “Got it. Don’t talk about work with you ever again.” 

That got her eyes off her phone and a quick, “You’re mean,” thrown back at me. 

I agreed, I can be mean, but something about that moment really caught me off guard, especially her stating she’s heard this before. 

So I told her, “I’ve never told you this before. You assumed.” 

And let me tell you if that didn’t blow the top off the car. The truth of the matter was, I hadn’t told her this before, maybe something similar at some point.  

I don’t think I have ever told her why it bothers me when she doesn’t listen. 

I’ve never said, When I’m talking to you and you’re absorbed in your phone, it feels like you don’t care what I’m telling you.  

And to be fair, maybe she doesn’t. She doesn’t have an obligation to care about what I’m saying, but a little faux interest would have been nice.

It hit my annoyed button and an immediate sarcastic comment flew out my mouth. 

What happened next honestly bothered me more than the actual argument. 

She started saying she was tired of people being mean to her. That she was just going to start doing whatever she wanted, stay in her own little word, and not bother or burden anyone every again. 

And my thought was, When did the conversation turn into this? 

It frustrated me because I felt ignored and pushed to the side. I felt like my feelings were brushed aside and somehow the conversation had turned into her being a burden. 

Maybe what really frustrated me was that I never meant to make her feel like a burden.  

I never asked her to stop what she was doing, or even suddenly become fascinated by whatever I was saying. 

But I wanted her to hear me. 

Not just listen but to actually hear me. 

And when I sat with myself, I realized the problem was with the expectation. 

I expected her to know what I needed without ever sitting down and saying “When I’m talking to you and you’re absorbed in your phone, it makes me feel like what I say doesn’t matter.” 

Instead of saying that, I got annoyed. Frustrated enough to make a sarcastic comment. 

And then expected her to somehow understand everything underneath it. 

That’s not exactly fair, is it? 

Sometimes, we get so comfortable with the people closest to us that we forget they aren’t actually mind readers.

We all jump to an assumption that they’ll know what we need. 

We assume they’ll see the truth glossed over with a joke. 

And we assume they’ll listen to us ramble without trying to fix anything. 

That’s probably where I went wrong. My anger and hurt didn’t come from her being on her phone. 

“It came from not feeling important enough to put it down.”

It came from, not feeling important enough to put it down.  

That’s two completely different things.

I know my mom loves me. I know she cares about me. But she was trying to figure out what flowers would look good in the yard. 

And yeah, in the grand scheme of things, not a malicious act… But feelings don’t just wait around for the grand scheme.

They show up. 

Sometimes they feel like sarcasm. Sometimes they feel like a sharp tone. 

I think that’s what happened to me that morning. 

I wasn’t trying to start an argument.

I wasn’t trying to hurt her feelings. 

I just wanted my mom to listen to me for a few minutes.

The part i’m trying to take from this is, she shouldn’t always put her phone down and I shouldn’t jump straight to annoyance. 

But maybe I need to get better at saying what I actually meant before the sarcasm says it for me. 

Because sometimes, “You’re not listening to me”  really isn’t about listening. 

It might actually mean, “I want to feel like what I’m saying matters to you. That I matter to you.” 

And maybe that’s how I should’ve started from the beginning. 

More soon,

Quill