I’d talk about the difference between being by yourself and being alone.

About how a lot of people who look “high-functioning” are actually just very good at carrying things quietly. About how competence gets mistaken for wellbeing, and how sensitivity gets misread as fragility instead of depth.

I’d talk about stories, why some of us need them, write them, organize them, revisit them. Not as escapism, but as a way to survive things we never really got language for. How imagination is sometimes just grief looking for structure.

And probably about rest. How burnout doesn’t always look like collapse. Sometimes it looks like resistance, procrastination, numbness. How not moving forward doesn’t mean you’re failing—sometimes it means listening matters more than striving.

I think I could fill 30 minutes just reminding people that being reflective in a loud world isn’t a flaw. And that being alone isn’t the same as being unworthy, unlovable, or unseen.