I have been content on my own for as long as I can remember.

My grandmother likes to tell a story about me as a toddler. I was in one of those old wooden playpens, happily occupied. If I wanted out, I would remove a slat, climb out, have a look about while my mother was napping, and then climb back in.

Not because I was trapped.

Because I was content.

My mother says I didn’t cry much. I didn’t fuss. I wasn’t dramatic. I was observant. Quiet. Self-contained. She says this as though she is still slightly puzzled by it, even now.

For most of my life, I never thought much about it. I did not feel misunderstood or wrong. I simply assumed everyone processed the world internally the way I did. It took some years to realise that was not quite the case, and a few more to understand why some people found that surprising about me.

Friendships were uncomplicated, which was perhaps made easier by the fact that most of my friends were boys, both growing up in England and after we moved to the States. There was very little emotional analysis, very little drama. We talked, we laughed, we moved on. When something hurt, I thought about it privately and then got on with things. It wasn’t suppression. It was regulation. And it suited me perfectly well.

As I grew older, I began to notice how differently some people move through the world. Some need to speak their thoughts aloud to make sense of them. Some need regular reassurance. Some need visible affection and affirmation in quantities that would exhaust me simply to think about. I do not say that unkindly. People are wired differently. I have simply always been wired rather quietly.

I have always needed very little of any of that.

That independence has served me well. It has made me capable and resilient. It has allowed me to stand on my own two feet without placing much demand on anyone else. I am not a worrier. I do not spiral. I am rarely overwhelmed, and on the occasions when something does land heavily, I process it quietly and move forward without much fuss.

But I sometimes wonder what it costs, being the steady one. People assume you are fine because you present as fine. They assume nothing hurts because you do not make it visible. They assume you prefer to handle things alone because you always seem to manage it.

And honestly, they are usually right.

Being reserved does not mean being empty. It simply means the waters run deep and still, rather than loud and visible.

People rely on me, and I don’t particularly mind that, up to a point. There is something straightforward about being trusted to hold things together. But steadiness, I have noticed, has a way of becoming an expectation rather than a gift, and I am not infinitely patient with that distinction being lost on people.

The girl in the playpen did not need rescuing. She was content in her own company, curious about the world on her own terms, and perfectly capable of letting herself out when she chose to.

The woman she became is much the same. She loves the people in her life fully and without reservation. And she knows, quietly and without drama, that whatever comes her way, she would be alright. There is a particular kind of freedom in that knowledge. Not coldness. Not distance. Just the steady, certain understanding that she was built to stand.

— Kate