Sonder by Shahd Mohamed Elgendy (17, Egypt)

Some days, I like to lose myself.
Drift between the corners of others’ minds. Hoping to get a slow artificial faint to act as a getaway from the aching of my own mind.
I watched a girl sitting alone on the bus, happiness obvious on her face while she held her phone; a boy searching for his love in a city, but not doing what he wanted; there was family spending time together, but with each member thinking of his own personal life. 
We are all so close that we can feel our breaths crossing, colliding in the air.
Have we ever noticed how unaware we are? Have we ever seen the ghosts behind people's eyes? 
We're moving between the people in the crowd, touching but not connecting. 
We don’t realize that we're all just background noise to each other's lives. 

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"Sonder" is a noun, a word created by The Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows, a web series that defines newly invented words for strange yet powerful emotions.
It’s defined as the profound realization that each random passer-by or stranger is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. Populated with friends, families, goals, plans, routines, worries, and craziness, the same as yours.
An epic story that runs invisibly around you, like the roots which extend underground.
As tens of thousands lives you'll never know exist, you may appear only once in the background in the form of a judging opinion. 

I’m sorry.
I wasn't aware of all of this happening. I don't like the ordinary, but I followed it. I considered all what brings out my comfort as everybody's nature and all what doesn't as follies. 
But I was wrong.
And I guess, it’s okay as long as I’m not anymore. 
I've learned that it’s normal to be abnormal.
And that it’s okay to be complicated. 
Sonder; it’s the sudden feeling of realizing that everybody around has their own obstacles. It's one out of eleven feelings you go through, lost inside but lacking the ability to put them into words. 

On a windy day, when all people were home. 
Trying to avoid catching the spreading virus. 
I was wondering: how much time had passed while we were like this? And what were the reasons for it? I was lost in my own thoughts until one of them hit hard. 
I've seen you listening to the world's murmurs. 
Wearing yourself out with worry and trying to cage your pains gained from others judgments (including my own).
Making horrible efforts to just live peacefully, to live with yourself. 
I know that I will never understand a person until I consider things from his point of view, until I get into his skin and walk around his thin heart strings and mind corners.
I realized lately, that comfort sneaks to your veins lingeringly.
I know how much you suffer. 
And that was when I first felt Sonder, the feeling billions were feeling but didn't know how to define until this dictionary made it. 
I hope you can forgive me for doing such a thing, for saying much but feeling more. 
I've never meant it. 

I was in a war with myself; I decided to change everything. I reshaped myself, rebirthed my soul. 
I used to cage myself in a comfort zone, that one that always put me in the role of a victim. But I have questioned myself once.
Is this silence I listened to from being an all-time victim better than the noise you made?
And starting from here, the game changed. 
I faced the reality. 
I'd rather spend the days left in my life listening to your noise. 
This war I entered with myself - you won it. 

There was a book published in 1995 called Emotional Intelligence written by Daniel Goleman; a book about Goleman's theory, the theory of experiencing emotions and not letting them experience you.
I guess I was too late to understand this.
Maybe I am not the original owner of your heart, but I now know how to take care of it.