One Moon: A Room Full of Strangers

A Room Full of Strangers

ONE MOON COLUMN | ISSUE TEN | ISOLATION

Written by Priscilla Zhang (she/her) | @p.zhangxy | Columnist

Last week in counselling class, we were talking about trust.

One idea from our handout stayed with me: sometimes, the people who put the most energy into helping others or giving advice are the ones who find it hardest to share their own concerns.

I recognised something in that.

Moving to another country has made me think about trust differently.

You can meet people easily. Saying hello is one of the most ordinary things you do every day. Trusting someone is another matter.

When you move to another country, almost everything has to be built from the beginning. New places. New routines. New faces. New ways of speaking, joking and studying, even knowing when it is appropriate to ask someone a personal question.

There is a Chinese saying that when you give a rose, the fragrance stays in your hand.

I have always liked the idea behind it: what we give to another person does not simply leave us. Something remains.

Perhaps trust works in a similar way.

When we offer someone our trust, we are not simply giving something away. We are also creating the possibility of receiving it back.

Every week, we sit in a circle, taking turns being counsellor, client and observer. Face-to-face, it can feel strangely confronting. There is nowhere to hide for very long.

Someone shares something personal, and the rest of us listen.

Someone takes a risk and speaks honestly, and the room makes space for it.

Someone allows themselves to be uncertain, and nobody rushes to fill the silence.

You begin to notice how someone pauses before answering, how their voice changes when something matters, how difficult it can be to sit with silence without immediately trying to fill it.

And somewhere in that process, something changes.

You start offering trust.

And, slowly, you start receiving it too.

Perhaps belonging is not only about finding people you can hold space for.

Perhaps it is also about finding people who will hold some space for you.

Before studying counselling, I had already experienced wanting to help someone and not knowing how.

Someone very close to me went through a very difficult period in her life. I wanted to help her. I wanted to understand what she was experiencing. I wanted to say the right thing.

But wanting to help someone does not mean knowing how to reach them.

Sometimes you can stand beside someone and still feel impossibly far away.

I used to think that being there for someone meant doing something: giving advice, finding solutions, making things better. Now I am beginning to understand that sometimes, being there means something much quieter.

Listening.

Staying.

Making enough space for another person to be themselves.

When you are far from home, it is easy to think of isolation as being alone.

But loneliness is not always about the number of people around you.

Sometimes you can sit in a classroom full of people and still feel like an outsider.

Sometimes you can speak the same language and still feel that something has been lost in translation.

And sometimes, unexpectedly, a room that was full of strangers four weeks ago can begin to feel like a place you belong.

I don't think I have stopped being an outsider.

I am still an international student. There are still things I miss from thousands of kilometres away. There are still memories of home that the people around me cannot share.

But perhaps belonging does not require becoming indistinguishable from everyone else.

Perhaps it begins with something much smaller.

Someone remembers your name.

You feel safe enough to speak.

Silence no longer feels awkward.

You realise that you are not only listening to other people anymore.

You are letting them listen to you, too.

And then the class ends.

I look around and think about how strange it is.

Four weeks ago, we were complete strangers. Now we have shared feelings, listened to each other's stories, and trusted each other with things we might not normally say out loud.

It is a little crazy when I think about it.

And I am grateful.

Grateful for the privilege of hearing your stories and your feelings, and, perhaps just as importantly, for the chance to let you know me, too.