13. Why Kindness Hurts?
Kindness is supposed to feel good.
That is what we are taught.
A gentle word.
A hand reaching toward us.
Someone asking, "Are you okay?" and actually waiting for the answer.
These things should feel comforting.
Sometimes they do.
Sometimes they hurt.
Not because kindness is cruel.
Because it reaches places we have spent years protecting.
There is a particular kind of pain in being treated gently after learning to expect hardness.
The first instinct is often suspicion.
Why are you being kind to me?
What do you want?
How long will this last?
We ask questions we may never say aloud.
Kindness can feel like a language we understand perfectly but have forgotten how to speak.
I think many of us become comfortable with what is familiar, even when what is familiar hurts.
We learn the shape of disappointment.
We become fluent in distance.
We understand how to survive being ignored.
But tenderness?
Tenderness asks something different from us.
It asks us to remain present.
To stop preparing for the moment everything disappears.
To believe that a good moment is allowed to simply be good.
That can be terrifying.
For a long time, I thought the hardest thing I had ever done was survive pain.
I am no longer certain.
Sometimes the harder thing is allowing myself to believe that I deserve gentleness after surviving it.
Pain gives us an explanation.
Kindness removes the excuse to keep hiding.
When someone is patient with us, we can no longer tell ourselves that the world is entirely cold.
When someone stays, we are forced to consider the possibility that perhaps we are not as impossible to love as we once believed.
That possibility can be frightening.
Hope has a way of making us vulnerable.
There are people who know how to accept suffering far more easily than they know how to accept care.
They can listen to someone else's problems for hours.
They can offer comfort without hesitation.
They can tell a friend,
"You deserve kindness."
But when kindness turns toward them, something inside them steps backward.
They change the subject.
They make a joke.
They say,
"I'm fine."
They apologize for needing anything.
I understand that instinct.
Sometimes accepting kindness feels like admitting how badly we needed it.
And admitting that can make old grief rise to the surface.
Perhaps that is why kindness hurts.
It reminds us of all the moments we spent without it.
A gentle voice can make us remember every time we were spoken to harshly.
A patient person can make us realize how long we have been waiting for someone to stop rushing us.
A hand reaching out can reveal how tired we are from carrying everything alone.
There is grief inside gratitude sometimes.
Not because the kindness is unwanted.
Because we wish it had arrived sooner.
I think we should talk about that more.
We are often told to be grateful for the good things that find us.
And we should be.
But gratitude does not erase the sadness of what was missing.
Both can exist.
I can be grateful for the person who stayed...
and grieve the years I spent believing everyone would leave.
I can appreciate tenderness...
and still feel afraid of it.
I can accept kindness slowly.
There is no shame in that.
Maybe kindness does not need to be received perfectly.
Maybe we are allowed to be suspicious at first.
Maybe we are allowed to step back, take a breath, and ask ourselves whether this gentleness is real.
Trust is not built in a single moment.
Neither is the ability to receive love.
Sometimes the first act of kindness is simply not running from it.
Staying long enough to let someone finish their sentence.
Believing a compliment for three seconds longer than usual.
Accepting help without immediately promising to repay it.
Saying, "Thank you," instead of, "You didn't have to."
Small things.
Almost invisible.
But small things can become beginnings.
I am learning that kindness does not always need to be earned.
That sentence still feels strange to write.
Perhaps it will always feel a little strange.
But I am learning.
And maybe that is enough.
Because kindness hurts sometimes.
It touches the bruises we thought had become invisible.
It reminds us of what we needed.
It shows us how long we have been surviving without it.
But perhaps, with time, the pain begins to change.
Perhaps one day, kindness stops feeling like a threat.
Perhaps it becomes something quieter.
Something familiar.
Something we no longer feel the need to apologize for receiving.
And perhaps the heart, after years of protecting itself, finally learns a new kind of courage.
Not the courage to endure.
The courage to be held.
— Jean T. Hatoum
Author of I Wrote So I Would Not Fade and J’ai Écrit Pour Ne Pas M’effacer
Thank you for giving my silence a place to land.
If these words felt like home, the rest of the map is in the book.
And if you are able to, supporting my journey helps me afford the medication that keeps my own fractured ember burning.
I’m not finished surviving out loud. 🕊️
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