“You’re always a priority.”

They’re reassuring words, but what happens when someone hears them and quietly wonders, “When?”

It’s something we don’t always talk about: how a person can be loved and still struggle to feel considered.

It’s a difficult conversation to have with someone you love. You worry that you’ll sound demanding or jealous, so you explain yourself carefully. You understand that there are other people to love, responsibilities to handle, and places to be. You have a life full of those things, too.

But somewhere along the way, you’ve started wondering where you fit.

You watch plans come together for other people. Time gets found. Arrangements get made. And you remember a moment when you needed that same effort—when you would have given anything for someone to recognize that you needed them and find a way to be there.

Those moments stay with us. Sometimes a new disappointment brings back an old one we thought we had put away. We find ourselves trying to explain today’s hurt while carrying something that never quite healed.

I think feeling like a priority lives in ordinary things. A call because someone wants to hear your voice. Being considered before a decision is made. A promise followed through. Someone remembering that you’re having a hard day and checking on you without being asked.

It also lives in how someone responds when you say, “I’m hurting.” Can they listen long enough to understand? Can they be curious about why their reassurance hasn’t reached you?

Because being told you matter and feeling that you matter can be two very different experiences.

Most of us don’t need every hour. We don’t expect every plan to revolve around us. We have our own work, our own dreams, and people we love. But we want to feel considered in the life we share. We want to know that when something matters deeply to us, it matters to the person beside us, too.

There can be a loneliness in having to keep explaining that. Eventually, a person may begin to wonder whether they’re asking too much, when what they’re asking for is care they can recognize.

Maybe it’s a conversation worth having in our relationships: What helps you feel like a priority? And have I shown you that lately?

The answers may be different for each of us. What feels like care to one person might not be what another needs. That’s why listening matters—and why those conversations deserve kindness.

We all want to hear that we matter.

We also need moments we can look back on and say, “That’s when I felt it.”

Wishing you love and light,

~Anne Dennish~