Performative Frank

If I know that I care, how do I know that they care?

If someone means the entire world to me, will I ever know if I do to them? 

I think it’s pretty obvious that I care a lot about people, especially the ones I value most. Yet sometimes I think about whether they do the same for me. That I fear that I don’t matter enough to someone. And so I start searching for a greater proof that they might. 

I could spend an entire night teaching someone with hours of preparation before hand with back and forth to make sure there are no remaining misconceptions left and yet I can leave the call not ever knowing if that moment mattered all, let alone how much it meant to them. 

Back in sophomore year, on the day before Honors Precalculus exams, me and my friend would always get on call for a few hours late at night to study. Like all previous study sessions I usually do, I tend to be a teacher figure for the people I study with. It’s quite enjoyable and so I find myself doing it really often without much thought. This was the first ever time I had done a study session with a friend before and because of that, I never really realized that I can’t just “fuck around and find out” while trying to teach others. And because of that, I would always spend a lot of wasteful time relearning something in the moment and my friend would get angry at me. Things like, “You don’t know what you’re doing.” or “You suck at teaching.” I never really let it get to me because I think my ego exceeded those comments but at that time, I think the general idea I took away from it was that my friend didn’t really appreciate me teaching at all.

Fast forward to last December, I visited his house and his mom tells me about how back in sophomore year, my friend would often tell her about how I spent a lot of time helping him. She specifically told me how she always knew I had a kind heart, but that’s not the main point of the story. The bigger idea is that until she told me, I always thought that those study sessions meant nothing to my friend at all. When I left his house that night, I teared up because for one of the very first times in my life, not only was my existence acknowledged, but what I brought to the table was finally appreciated.

Something that I’ve only recently noticed is that no matter what you say or do, you can never fully understand another person. More specifically, you’ll never truly know how much you mean to them and what goes on inside their head.

If you think about it, nothing really changed that night. Those study calls happened almost 2 years ago. The only thing that changed was me learning a new way to see something and that vision meant a lot to me.

Maybe that’s the saddest part of being a human being. The idea that no matter how much someone means to you, you can never know how much you mean to them. You can collect pictures, memories, conversations, or literally anything else that might symbolize a touch of care, but you can never see what they see.

Or maybe it’s the most beautiful thing. The fact that we can never know urges us to keep living. To keep exploring and discovering each other for who we are and what we have to show.

Next Post: Crushing A Crush (6/22/26)

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Photo(s) of The Day:

Today I went to a family barbecue to celebrate Father’s Day. I had a lot of fun talking with some family relatives about life. Here’s a picture of the table and another of my little brother putting a cheese slice onto a burger patty.