Loads of people know how I feel, apparently. Also, just in case I don’t have it in hand, loads of people can help me out with knowing how I’m feeling myself. Which is just as well really. Because most of the time, I genuinely haven’t got a clue.

I don’t know how I feel about most things, and I definitely don’t know how anyone else feels about anything. Obviously I can guess, or imagine… I mean, I do have some capacity for empathy. But that’s not quite the same thing, is it? Rather than ‘I know exactly how you feel’, probably the closest I can offer is something along the lines of ‘I can guess how I might feel if I were in your position’. More accurate, less of a snappy phrase. Also strangely, less comforting. Because most of the time, we want to think that there’s someone else who does know how we feel. We like sharing, and we like being understood. And most of the time, the person saying they know just how we feel is saying so with the intention of making us feel better, and less alone.

Most of the time. Sometimes, though, it’s just plain annoying. Sometimes I really want to ask people why they feel they’ve felt the same, and how they know how what I’m feeling feels. But I can’t. Partly because it feels a bit rude, and partly because I can’t actually work out how to structure a sentence with so much repetition of the word ‘feel’. And I’m really not a massive fan of talking about feelings. And sometimes, it feels a bit like theft. Not of the feelings themselves – no-one would want to steal my feelings. Or maybe they would – how would I know, I have no idea how anyone else feels, so maybe my feelings are a million times better than anyone else’s. But I don’t mean theft of feelings. It’s more about the sense of individuality – there I am, busy explaining how I feel, thinking I’m entertaining the troops with something interesting and unique, and then it turns out everyone else has been there, done that. Nothing to see here.

The worst, though, is when someone tells me how I must feel. As in, ‘you must feel so angry / upset / scared / insert other random emotion of choice’. Must I? Because I don’t know if I did, actually. I kind of thought I was feeling fine, up to that point. But now you’ve got me thinking. Now, not only have you taken ownership of my emotions and basically instructed me to feel a certain way, but you’ve also put what is generally a series of pretty negative ways to feel into my head, so now it turns out I am thinking about feeling those things after all. Great. Thanks a bunch.

I realise this all sounds very navel gazing and pretty ungrateful – people are mostly well intentioned and I’m sure I’m as guilty as anyone else. And it really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I guess the nagging question at the back of my mind, though, if everyone is so sure about how I feel all the time, is how come they don’t know when I feel I’d really like them to stop going on about it?

But anyway. Enough. No further explanation needed. I’m sure you know exactly how I feel.