Sometimes I feel completely invisible. There are times when I go through a day and I feel completely isolated, not able to be seen, as if I don’t exist. It brings up feelings of lonely and sad, and at times it’s as if these feelings will crush me emotionally, and then I feel very small and very young.
I recognize this goes back to childhood, when I grew up feeling isolated, especially among my peers. Yes, I had a roof over my head, two parents who stayed married to each other, many things to be grateful for. Emotionally though, most of my time was spent by myself, in my room alone, reading my favorite books and living in the world of the characters I found there, perhaps because I believed my life was empty. I so yearned to have friendships with other children but for whatever reason, those friendships eluded me. And later on when I was older, all I wanted was a boyfriend and that seemed to always elude me too.
I still wonder about friendships. I recognize I struggle with trust issues when it comes to friendships. I don’t believe friends will be there for me, especially if I ‘m going through a difficult time . Can my friends understand what I go through and are they willing to stay my friends even when my life isn’t sunshine and butterflies? I have history behind friendships where when I went through a rough time, the friends dropped me. That hurts and brings up those thoughts of being invisible.
With romance it is the same. When I have been in romances, I always wanted someone who will be there for me when things are not going well. It’s easy to have relationships with people when things are good, but will they be there when things are not? Again, I have had romances with people who were not capable of being there for me. I can remember incidents with different men where I felt invisible again, within the romance. Something went down in my life that was difficult and instead of a hug or emotional support I got the blank stare and/or unwillingness to be there for me. So hurtful.
All my life I have been wanting that feeling of knowing that there are people who will be there for me. At no time does this come up for me more strongly than around my birthday. From childhood and into adulthood I have had this yearning that on at least one day of the year I would be special, thought of, planned around, considered, and that I wouldn’t need to remind people of this. I want people to come to me and do things for me without my having to say “Oh, by the way, my birthday is coming up.”
Sometimes this happens, with either friendships or romances. Family members do acknowledge my birthday for which I’m grateful. But in my mind there is still that doubt, that wonder, that uncertainty. And when I’m the one who has to remind people or make my own plans for celebrating my birthday, I feel sad, lonely, unloved, not special, invisible.
Off and on I used to have this belief that if only I had a boyfriend or husband, at least then I would be sure of one person who would do for me and make my birthday special. That hasn’t always been true with past romances, though thankfully at times it has with certain men. And for that I’m grateful too. But it goes back to the feeling invisible thing again. I wish sometimes so hard that I would be with someone consistently or permanently whether a romance or marriage or even a friend, where I could count on that relationship. There’s a line from the film “Shall We Dance?” with Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon where she talks about how being married means someone will be a witness to our lives. She talks about each spouse in a marriage promises to care about what happens in the other spouse’s life whether it be important or trivial.
Maybe the above idea only exists in movies and can’t ever happen in real life. I don’t know because I haven’t been married. But I continue to believe that it would be nice to have someone ask me how my day was. Truth be told, I do have those people in my life. None of them is a romantic partner and at times I discount the folks who aren’t romantic partners and think it doesn’t mean as much. But that’s not true at all. I have people who I know value me and to whom I matter. But always inside is that little girl who spent her life reading books about the lives of other people. And as an adult I spend my life listening to the stories of the lives of other people. Ironic, isn’t it?
In times before, I have been too wrapped up in friendships and romances with chaotic people. I seemed to be attracted to chaotic people and needed to do some personal healing work around letting go of connections where chaotic was the order of the day. That left me exhausted and just as invisible because it was always about them and not about me. Today I have put distance between myself and chaotic folks as much as possible. Today much of the wreckage from the chaos is cleared away, and I work harder at keeping my distance from emotional chaos, And now the lonely little girl is coming to the surface because there is finally room for her and her feelings. I guess I put her needs aside because I wasn’t ready to deal with them or didn’t know how or if I could get those needs met, like that of needing to be noticed. All I can do is continue to try.