One way that the game makes me feel understood is when after your father dies Dr. Instance will try to console you by giving a reason why his death was at least not meaningless, that it will be able to save lives in the future.
And instead of just expecting you to feel better after that, or even just giving you the binary options "You feel good/still bad" there are a bunch more options, and one of them is "You feel numb".
And when you pick it, she just says "It's okay to feel that way", in a way that can seem unusually understanding for her, although still not like much.
But actually I think I never felt so understood and accepted about feeling nothing (and I do this a lot in my life), no guilt-tripping, no shaming that I should feel sad, no awkward attempts to force me to feel better, no desperation in her answer or overly apologetic words that would make me feel like I am doing something wrong. Just letting me be the way I am and not trying to push me in any direction.
It's been over a year since that encounter, I only have had it once at this point, and I haven't forgotten anything about it.
Also not how Cal actually managed to lift me up with his words and love shortly after, the words he speaks after it in Geoponics over how he misses him, too, and how after I gifted him a cake he talks about finding someone to make him happy and I could tell him "You already make me happy" which is the truest thing I could have said at that point.
Shortly after, the secret admirer thing happened and I realized I really wasn't as alone as I thought I would be.
Then I realized none of that is likely to happen the next life, when Tammy is around again and I felt despair wash over me that I had never felt before from a story and it's what inspired me to start a fanfiction that I have now I think been writing for exactly one year today, as consistently as I have never written anything in my life, with the longest break being two weeks in February when I had a lot of things in my life distracting me.