Invisible

As far back as I can remember, I have never really felt like I belonged. Anywhere. I have always felt like the odd one out in my family. I could never really relate to my friends when I was younger, I didn’t feel comfortable in my own body (in some ways I still don’t), the typical 9-5 job situation never appealed to me, married life and kids didn’t match my goals, and I always “knew” there was something else or more out there for me. I just never saw myself being happy in the conventional lifestyle that society pushed for. Conveniently enough, I was always just looking for that “something else,” but I never quite found it. A perfect way to live, always on a mission for something I wasn’t even sure I could actually find.

I spent a good amount of my life wanting desperately to be approved of, to be "cute" enough, special enough, wanted, valued, or even just seen. At the minimum, being seen could have changed my life. I remember when I went from wanting to be seen to wanting to be completely invisible. I had spent my whole entire life looking for ways to be seen and noticed. After college, I sunk into a confusing space, and I found the ways that being invisible could help me survive. Stepping into that identity of invisibility finally fit. It was natural, I was used to it, and even better, no one noticed. Disappearing was safe, it was easy, and it took the heartache out of everything. Why? Because there was no wanting. You can’t feel disappointed when you don’t want. Invisibility was the safest space I had ever been in.

In my family, I felt like the awkward one who was always the focus of lots of judgment. I was confused and could never decide anything on my own. I constantly asked my siblings what they thought I should do. I never had a thought of my own about what steps I could or should take. I felt like the one person who was always doing something wrong and was never good enough, whether that was because of the way my parents treated me, or because things were never very rosy or successful for me. I wanted to pave my own path, but I was too afraid to because no one believed in me. How could I believe in myself when no one around me did? I thought no one believed in me because I was not worth believing in. So I lived my life like that. I lived as though I did not matter.

For me, college was a time of self-discovery. I think it is for most people, but it was somewhat different for me. For one, I had never gone to school before. It was my first time existing in a space on my own. I was always smack dab in the middle of my two sisters, and outside of that I was just child number four. I was the baby-sitter, the person who made lunch and dinner on Tuesdays. I did the laundry and combed my sisters’ hair. In the eyes of my family, I was also proud, quiet, and vain. My quietness was often attributed to a bad attitude and selfishness. The truth is: my silence was a symptom of my broken heart. I was a devastatingly sad and lonely child. I didn’t really have anything special going on inside of me. I was just invisible number four. That was my life, and though I knew something was wrong, I didn’t know anything else.That was just what I knew life to be.

After college, after the opportunity to become more me, more alive, I still chose invisibility. I had started down this path of life, vibrance, experience, and relationships, but it ended so quickly. I went to my alma mater for only two and a half years. It was not until after my first year that I started coming out of my shell. I think I needed more time to blossom. I didn’t choose invisibility as a child, it chose me. I spent those years tormented because I wanted more. Now, as I was becoming an adult, I realized that wanting nothing was easier. Choosing invisibility took the pain out of not being seen. Victim no more. I had a college degree and invisibility. That was how I would get through.

At least those were the blatant and subliminal messages that I was taught growing up. So, when I got to college, I got to explore. I even discovered that I had a personality. I could be loud, I could be adventurous, I could do things without my sisters and they didn’t have to be invited every time. I gained a best friend who was actually just mine. How weird. I discovered I can sing, I can be funny, I have anxiety, and I can do things without other people thinking it’s a good idea.

Now that I am looking back, no one ever really complained about me when I was that lost and timid version of myself. I did what was expected of me and I never stepped outside of the lines. I was compliant, I didn’t get into trouble hardly ever, but I was not anyone. I was the absence of a person. A shadow to anyone around me. As soon as I started building my own life, challenging others’ expectations of me and becoming my own person, that’s when people started complaining about me and having “issues.” Whenever I have had authentic and honest emotions or feelings about anything, I become a problem. This has always been true for me.

When I was curling their hair, painting their nails, and raising their kids, everything was fine. As soon as I started waking up, as soon as I wanted to rise from the ashes and the pavement and every other dramatic freedom analogy there is, people stopped liking me. I was arrogant, cocky, selfish, annoying, too strong in my opinions, ungrateful, and too sensitive. I was lost. I said it myself a million times. Only now am I starting to realize I had been lost my entire life. Those confusing times were just me trying to be found.

I learned that the only way to matter in life was to be good enough for the people around me. The harsher the critic, the more important they were. My job was to fit into the boxes people taped together for me. My job was to keep others comfortable, no matter how that killed my soul and diminished my gifts. My job was to be so uncomfortable with myself as a person that the idea of me having any type of gift was repulsive to think about. I had to be good enough. The irony of that is: the only way to be good enough was to view myself as completely worthless. Because I viewed myself as that, I was that. I was completely worthless, but I was accepted.

I do not want to be invisible anymore. While choosing invisibility, I learned a lot about myself. I have come out of those lessons knowing that I have too much love, light, and world changing power to stay in that place. I cannot truly be bold, brilliant, and beautiful as long as I choose not to be seen. My greatness is something that needs to illuminate. I owe it to myself to give it a chance to shine.

What I am reminded of is this: You are allowed to take up and fill the space you occupy. Does anyone else deserve to take up space more than you? How can another human be more deserving? Why do we jump to move out of the way for others and don’t demand the same respect for ourselves?

To everyone who fights to keep others small: Don’t spill your insecurity on us and expect us to live life according to your own discomfort in society. I have cradled and bottle fed my own insecurity for long enough, I have finally removed the training wheels and started moving freely without them. I do not know exactly where I want to go, but I know I want to keep moving. I want to get past this, I don't want to stay down where life is not being lived to the fullest.

No one belongs here more than me.

No one belongs here more than you. The end.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” -Mary Oliver