Visibility, Overthinking, and Internet Strangers

I left a completely normal comment online and accidentally turned it into a full emotional event about connection, visibility, and whether people actually see me.

I commented on someone’s post online today.

I know, I know. You’re probably thinking….um…so what?

But I’m one of those people that quietly always hides in the background. I take in things, but rarely do I make my presence known online. So a lot of thought went into me commenting on this particular post. Entirely way too much thought. And way too much going back and forth about whether or not I should even post it in the first place.

(I may have mentioned a time or two that I am notorious for overthinking.)

So the interaction itself was incredibly normal. I responded to something someone shared, they liked the comment, and that was it. There wasn’t any conflict, or any indication whatsoever that anything bad had happened. And yet, I then spent the next hour mentally drafting approximately 32 different explanations for why they didn’t respond the way I had hoped.

Did I misunderstand what they meant? Did I somehow make it about myself? Did I sound too intense? Too eager? Too opinionated? Did they read my comment and think, “this woman completely missed the point…what an idiot”?

I was flooded with every single one of my insecurities and deepest wounds in the 2 seconds that it took her to like my comment. And yes, you read that correctly…she actually liked my comment, and yet, my brain still took me down this spiral.

I think part of what made it feel emotionally loaded is that I had quietly built a sense of connection with this person long before we ever interacted. You know when you follow someone online for a while and they start to feel familiar? Not in a weird parasocial “I think we’re secretly best friends” kind of way – more in a very human, gradual way. You listen to their stories. You read their writing. You start recognizing their energy, their humor, their heart. And without fully realizing it, you slowly start feeling connected to them.

Meanwhile, they are simply existing. Completely unaware that you have quietly appointed them as “someone who feels safe and lovely” in your internal world. This girl quite literally has no clue who I am, and what it meant for me to comment on her post.

But despite her not having the slightest clue who I was, part of me hoped the interaction might become a tiny moment of genuine connection. I don’t know that I was expecting instant friendship, or even “we are now soul sisters because of one comment.” (or maybe I was…?) But I think what I was really seeking was just that feeling of mutual recognition. Like maybe the warmth I had quietly felt toward this person for months might briefly reflect back at me too.

And I think that realization made me unexpectedly emotional, because connection and being seen matter deeply to me.

Which is maybe why ambiguous interactions can feel so strangely tender sometimes. Because when you finally step out from observation mode and allow yourself to participate, there’s often a quiet hope underneath it: If I show up honestly, maybe connection will meet me there. And when that doesn’t happen in the exact emotional way your nervous system secretly hoped for, the brain gets very dramatic very quickly.

See? You misread the connection. You were too much. Too intense. This is why you stay quiet. This is why you stay in the shadows.

It’s funny how I allowed a tiny moment of uncertainty to turn into a full emotional narrative about my worth. But honestly, that’s what I do. I spend a lot of my life watching from the edges – reading, admiring, feeling connected to people while remaining mostly invisible myself. And somewhere along the way, invisibility started to feel like safety. So when I step out of it, even slightly, even just to leave a comment on someone’s post, there’s suddenly a lot riding on it emotionally. And it isn’t because the stakes are actually high, but because somewhere underneath it all is the question I’ve been carrying for a long time: What if people see me and decide I’m not good enough? Not smart enough, not interesting enough. Too weird. Too much. Not enough.

But then I remembered something that made me stop spiraling…well, at least a little.

Not too long ago, someone sent me an incredibly thoughtful message after I had shared something personal with her. She checked in on me and asked how I was doing. I was so touched that she took the time to not only think about me, but reach out.

…and…

I never responded.

Not because I didn’t care, or I was annoyed, or I thought she was weird. Honestly, I was touched by her reaching out. But I saw the message when I was busy and told myself I’d answer later. Then enough time passed that it started feeling emotionally “big” in my head. The longer I waited, the more pressure I felt to respond perfectly, until eventually my brain decided it had been “too long” and that replying would somehow be more awkward than disappearing entirely.

(Which is both irrational and, I suspect, extremely human.)

And I kept thinking – how many times have I been on the other side of this? How many times has someone’s silence felt like proof of something, when really they were just overwhelmed, or overthinking, or quietly going through something I knew nothing about? How many times had I made someone else’s very ordinary moment into a story about my own worth? (I actually thought my mom didn’t like me anymore because she was responding with quick texts this past weekend…don’t mind the fact that she was at a wedding…no, this was clearly my mother out of nowhere deciding she didn’t like me…).

Maybe the stories we create about other people’s silence say a lot more about our fear of not being wanted than they do about what the other person actually feels. I’m sure there are people out there that read that and think, “Uh…yea.”

But I’m not one of those people.

Posting that comment was not a big moment. It was small and ordinary, something most people do several times a day without a second thought. But for me it wasn’t, and I did it anyway. And then I spent all morning in my head about it. But you know what I did after that? I wrote about it here.

I quite honestly don’t know if the spiraling ever fully goes away for me. But maybe courage was never about that.

Maybe it’s just noticing your brain trying to turn uncertainty into self-rejection – and choosing to show up anyway.