Misunderstood — Summary

LenaTerhaar11.12.17Sad

I don't know how to be anything other than intense. I don't know how to experience without feeling and thinking too much. I don't know how to sit still and quiet my mind and just be. I am always searching, always questioning and struggling to find the meaning in everything. I am passionate and I am deep. And that's why I am so often so misunderstood.

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Few poems say so plainly what they mean. The speaker describes herself as an intense person who cannot switch off. Three of the six lines begin with "I don't know how to," and the repetition makes it sound like a confession: she can't feel without overthinking, and she can't sit still and simply "be." Her mind keeps working, searching and questioning, always hunting for meaning in everything.

Then the tone shifts. In the fifth line she claims her intensity as something positive, calling herself "passionate" and "deep." The final line explains the sting underneath: because she is this way, other people often don't get her.

The mood is quiet, honest and a little lonely. There is restlessness in the list of things she can't do, but also a kind of pride. The poem doesn't ask for pity so much as for recognition, and it will feel familiar to anyone who has been told they think or feel too much.

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