I’ve been think­ing about lone­li­ness late­ly, and I don’t mean the kind that comes from hav­ing no­body around you. I’m talk­ing about the strange kind that ex­ists even when you’re sur­round­ed by peo­ple. There are con­ver­sa­tions hap­pen­ing around you, your phone is buzzing, some­one is ask­ing about your week­end plans, and yet a qui­et voice in the back of your mind keeps re­mind­ing you that you don’t re­al­ly feel con­nect­ed to any of it.

It sounds strange when you say it out loud. How can some­one be lone­ly when there are peo­ple around them? How can a per­son feel com­plete­ly alone when they are loved?

Yet I think it hap­pens far more of­ten than we re­alise.

Sep­tem­ber is Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion Month, and each year we are re­mind­ed to check on the peo­ple around us, have dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions and take men­tal health se­ri­ous­ly. Those re­minders mat­ter. But they al­so make me think about how eas­i­ly we can over­look some­one who is strug­gling sim­ply be­cause they don’t look the way we ex­pect a strug­gling per­son to look.

Some peo­ple be­come ex­perts at car­ry­ing on.

They go to work. They an­swer mes­sages. They laugh with friends. They make plans. They at­tend birth­days and fam­i­ly gath­er­ings. They may even be the per­son every­one turns to in a cri­sis be­cause they al­ways seem to know what to do. If you ask how they’re do­ing, they’ll prob­a­bly smile and tell you they’re fine.

And maybe they are.

But maybe they aren’t.

That’s the un­com­fort­able re­al­i­ty. We of­ten wait for pain to be­come vis­i­ble be­fore we take it se­ri­ous­ly. We look for the per­son who has stopped func­tion­ing, with­drawn from oth­ers or vis­i­bly fall­en apart be­cause those are the signs we recog­nise. But many peo­ple are strug­gling long be­fore any of that hap­pens.

Some­times they’re still do­ing every­thing they’re sup­posed to do. They’re just do­ing it while car­ry­ing bur­dens no­body else can see.

There is al­so a great deal of shame at­tached to ad­mit­ting that you’re not cop­ing. We talk about men­tal health more open­ly than we once did, and that is un­doubt­ed­ly progress. Yet talk­ing about some­thing more of­ten doesn’t au­to­mat­i­cal­ly make it eas­i­er to say, “This is hap­pen­ing to me.”

There’s a dif­fer­ence be­tween be­liev­ing peo­ple should ask for help and feel­ing safe enough to be the per­son who needs it. For some, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty feels like los­ing con­trol. When you’ve spent years con­vinc­ing every­one that you’re ca­pa­ble, in­de­pen­dent and man­ag­ing just fine, ad­mit­ting oth­er­wise can feel al­most em­bar­rass­ing. You may wor­ry that peo­ple will see you dif­fer­ent­ly. You may fear they’ll think less of you. You may even wor­ry that once you tell some­one how dif­fi­cult things re­al­ly are, there’s no tak­ing those words back.

I un­der­stand why some­one might choose to stay silent.

With­in the blind and vi­su­al­ly im­paired com­mu­ni­ty, there can be an­oth­er lay­er to this. Many of us spend so much time prov­ing that blind­ness does not pre­vent us from liv­ing full, pro­duc­tive and in­de­pen­dent lives that ac­knowl­edg­ing our strug­gles can feel com­pli­cat­ed. We are con­stant­ly push­ing back against as­sump­tions about what we can and can­not do. The last thing many of us want is to give any­one an­oth­er rea­son to un­der­es­ti­mate us.

But be­ing ca­pa­ble doesn’t mean you nev­er strug­gle.

You can be in­de­pen­dent and still need sup­port. You can be grate­ful for your life and still find it un­bear­ably heavy at times. You can be sur­round­ed by peo­ple who love you and still feel lone­ly. None of those ex­pe­ri­ences makes you a fail­ure, and none of them di­min­ish­es what you have ac­com­plished.

Maybe that’s some­thing we need to re­mem­ber when we check on the peo­ple around us.

When we ask some­one how they’re do­ing, we should be pre­pared for an an­swer that isn’t con­ve­nient.

We may not know what to say. We may feel un­com­fort­able. We may want to of­fer ad­vice be­cause watch­ing some­one suf­fer is dif­fi­cult, es­pe­cial­ly when we care about them. But some­times the most help­ful thing we can do is re­sist the urge to im­me­di­ate­ly make the con­ver­sa­tion bet­ter.

Just lis­ten.

Re­al­ly lis­ten.

Al­low some­one to fin­ish what they’re try­ing to say with­out rush­ing to ex­plain that things could be worse, that every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son, or that they sim­ply need to stay pos­i­tive. Some­times a per­son has spent so much time pre­tend­ing to be okay that be­ing able to say, “I’m re­al­ly not okay,” with­out fear of judg­ment can mean more than we re­alise.

And if some­one tells you they are think­ing about sui­cide or harm­ing them­selves, take it se­ri­ous­ly.

Don’t min­imise it, dis­miss it or as­sume they are seek­ing at­ten­tion. Stay with them, lis­ten and help them con­nect with ap­pro­pri­ate pro­fes­sion­al sup­port.

Sui­cide pre­ven­tion is of­ten dis­cussed in terms of warn­ing signs and cri­sis in­ter­ven­tion, and those things mat­ter. But I be­lieve pre­ven­tion al­so ex­ists in or­di­nary mo­ments, long be­fore a cri­sis emerges. It lives in friend­ships where hon­esty is wel­comed. It lives in fam­i­lies where strug­gling is not treat­ed as a source of shame. It lives in work­places and com­mu­ni­ties where peo­ple don’t feel ob­lig­at­ed to per­form strength every minute of the day.

Per­haps it al­so be­gins with learn­ing to see peo­ple dif­fer­ent­ly.

The per­son who seems hap­py may be hav­ing a ter­ri­ble week. The per­son who is al­ways help­ing oth­ers may be ex­haust­ed. The per­son sit­ting qui­et­ly in a crowd­ed room may feel com­plete­ly alone. We can­not know every­thing an­oth­er per­son is car­ry­ing sim­ply by look­ing at them.

Sep­tem­ber re­minds us to have the con­ver­sa­tion. Per­haps the big­ger re­minder is to gen­uine­ly mean it when we ask.

So ask your friend. Ask your cowork­er. Ask the per­son who has been un­usu­al­ly qui­et. Ask the per­son who ap­pears com­plete­ly fine.

And if they tell you the truth, don’t be afraid of it.

You don’t need the per­fect words. You don’t have to solve their prob­lems in a sin­gle con­ver­sa­tion. Some­times the most im­por­tant thing you can do is stay, lis­ten and help them find the sup­port they need.

This col­umn is sup­plied in con­junc­tion with the T&T Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion.

Head­quar­ters: 118 Duke Street, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad

Email: ttb­wa1914@gmail.com

Phone: (868) 624-4675

What­sApp: (868) 395-3086