"I know how you feel."
"I've been there."
"This happened to me too."
A burden shared is a burden halved, I have heard it said. And my friends who say the above are the best people in the world with the best intentions. I know they are trying to comfort and bring on healing. Which is what makes it hard to say what I am about to.
You don't know how I feel. You may have a similar experience, but you and I are not identical.
You cannot possibly look at things the same way I do. While its easy to put human experiences into neat little boxes and label them "sad","happy" or "angry", there arte actually infinte permutations which may exceed the number of human beings there actually are.
So you don't know how it feels. And I don't know how you feel. But you can sit with me, hold my hand, let me cry a little, cry a little with me, and give me a hug on my last sniffle.
Knowing it hurts can be enough to comfort me. You don't need to know how it hurts.
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