Sugar Words

Do you ever look up at a cloudy sky and feel a wave of melancholy? 

Sometimes I wonder if the sky is simply trying something new, like slipping into a puff-sleeved dress, or devouring cotton candy with reckless hunger. And when it hears the collective sigh of humans interpreting its mood all wrong… does it change? Does it soften into melancholy itself? How does it feel to be misunderstood?

The fear of being seen in a way we dread is born from many places: society’s judgment, constant conditioning to conform, and the small punishments we endure for being anything other than what is expected. This fear often speaks in questions:

• What if they think I am crazy?
• What if they think I am too much?
• What if I get cancelled?
• They will think I am rebellious.
• I do not want to seem too sensitive.

Like you, I too have been misunderstood again and again, in more ways than I can count. My work has carried the same burden. I have been called too sensitive, too much, too ambitious for my age (which I am still unsure how to measure). The harder you try to outrun misunderstanding, the more you risk erasing yourself. And still, misunderstanding finds you. Then they say: she is too plain.

It is like running from your fear. The faster you run, the faster it chases, until the collision hits you like a hurricane. So instead, what if you simply allowed yourself to be misunderstood?

As an artist, my work is often interpreted in ways I never intended. I know now this is a kind of compliment. But when I first began, I wanted my work to land exactly as I had imagined. I would over-explain, painstakingly lay out my process, only for people to shrug: That’s too complicated.

In a world of perfectly curated, colour-coded carousels, a red-and-black splatter with no neat in-between will be unsettling. Unapologetically unsettling and, inevitably, misunderstood.

The more I accepted that misunderstanding is inevitable, the freer I felt. I stopped filtering my creative impulses. I stopped worrying about how people would receive them. Letting go of the need to control how you are understood, whether in art or life, allows you to live more truthfully. It lets you focus on what brings you joy, what helps you grow, and what feels natural, instead of twisting yourself to ensure no one feels discomfort.

No matter how many languages you learn, being misunderstood is not something that can be avoided. But more than that, it should not be avoided. 

When someone reads your work and interprets it in an entirely different way, you are being given a glimpse into a world unlike your own. That is a gift. Instead of bristling, let curiosity guide you. Ask yourself what led them to that interpretation. In doing so, you unlock a bigger world, and that new perspective can feed your creativity.

The same applies in relationships. The right questions can reveal as much about you as about them, and from that comes clarity – the choice to draw closer or step away. The beauty of being misunderstood is that even when you’re “wrongly” understood, there are truths hidden in that wrongness, waiting to be uncovered.

Be brave enough to be misunderstood. Create as if misunderstanding were the point. Love as if being called crazy does not frighten you. Build a life as if every misplaced question propels you forward.

Have the courage to be yourself, despite, despite, despite.