Being Invisible

The problem with living as an invisible person is that you aren’t actually invisible. People can still see you. They still require things of you.

The first thing I do every morning after getting the kids off to school is turn off all the lights. Depending on the time of year, I also cut off the heating or air conditioning. After all, it’s just me. I’m nothing. I’m no one and the less impact I make on our price of existing is for the better. This includes utilities and lights.

I know this has something to do with the household I grew up in as a kid. The less noise I made, the less I existed, the easier it was to make it through another day. One day, I just evaporated completely. My body mass exploded into tiny little vapors of water and I was sucked out of the window by the power of the sun.

Somewhere along the way I became a solid form again. Somewhere in there I became a person instead of vapor caught in the wind. I fell in love. I fell in love with someone who loves me back. We had children. Vapors don’t have children or fall in love. Pixar hasn’t animated that movie yet… so I remain a human.

I romance things to be able to get through them. I downplay my successes because invisible people don’t get accolades. Invisible people don’t do anything exceptionally bad and definitely don’t do anything extraordinary. Invisible people don’t make ripples.

As a child, I used being invisible for preservation reasons. A survival technique. My problem now is that I don’t need to be invisible. There is no one to hide from anymore. I made good choices that put me in a safe place as an adult. My muscle memory still makes me want to be invisible, although survival doesn’t require it any longer.

So here I am, every week, turning off everything in the house to erase myself from existence. A routine I’ve developed before I sit at my computer to write stories about an alternate universe and made-up situations. At some point, I should stop making myself invisible.