Not a self-pity fest ...

I was re-reading my posts and wanted to make it clear that I did not choose to write this blog as a way to indulge in self-pity or moan and complain. This is a way to make one part of my reality in some way visible... to have my voice.

When I'm walking or driving around town I often look at all the pretty houses and well kept yards, and I think how lucky those people are to have what they have. How happy they must be behind those doors, with their families and comfort and peace.

But I don't know they're happy, any more than anyone realizes how unhappy I am. For all I know they are feeling some of the same things I am. For all I know they are just as invisible as me. I suspect that at least some of them are.

I suspect that we're becoming a community of invisible people, everyone living two lives - the happy, respectable, public life, and the messy private life. And each and everyone one of us are just fighting to keep it together, to keep the private life from falling apart completely while keeping it hidden from the rest of the world.

Or maybe it's just me.

When invisibility is forced on you...

I got a call today, from someone close to me who is always complaining about being poor and having a hard life. I get these calls from time to time, about how they can't make ends meet and the bills are piling up. And then the news that they bought some new toy... a Wii or a Kindle or who knows what.

And a blanket of invisibility falls over me. It seems to get thicker, heavier, more permanent with each of these conversations.

It's not that she doesn't know my own pitiful financial situation, which is in reality significantly worse than hers. I can't buy a t-shirt, never mind a Kindle. But it seems that with each of these calls, my own situation is minimized and dismissed, and I become more and more invisible.

I try not to allow myself to disappear, my voice to be silenced, by situations like these, by people like this in my life. But, somehow, it seems impossible and inevitable. How to I honor myself and the reality of my life when I am made insignificant and irrelevant? It's as though my issues don't matter as much, my life is not as important. So when I become over-shadowed my life seems to disappear, and I am invisible.

How to torture a travel addict

It's like a special kind of torture, when you're a travel addict forced to listen to everyone else's travel stories, everyone else's plans.

I was obliged, the other day, to politely listen to another parent as she gushed about their family travel plans for the next year. They had recently returned from a trip to China and were already planning a second trip there, about the same time next year. In the meantime, they were planning a Caribbean Cruise and maybe a quick trip to Europe. She went on and one, rightfully excited about the prospects.

I can't blame her really, or the many others who tell me about their travel plans, because they don't know the real me. For all they know I don't even like to travel. For all they know, I choose not to travel. How would they know that I crave travel, that sometimes I think I'm going to burst out of my skin if I can't manage to go somewhere soon, somewhere far away? How would they know that I'm so desperately poor I can't afford a trip to the beach for the day, never mind anywhere else?

A couple of days after I listened to this family's envy-inducing travel plans, one of my own family members called to tell me all about their plans for a family trip to Disney World. Though Disney is one of the last places on earth I care to go, it's still travel. And then my parents told me about all the places they are planning to go over the next year, including Hawaii and several locations in Europe. My family knows my passion for travel, or should, and should be aware that my failure to travel at this time is financially induced and not actually by choice. But they can't help telling me about all their own plans.

Chalk it up to a side effect of being invisible I suppose... Warning: Invisibility may cause extreme discomfort when faced with people who are able to live out your dreams and passions.

How I came to be invisible

I used to be somewhat annonymous. I could go out around town without ever seeing anyone I knew. I could go out for a drink or to the movies alone without feeling self-conscious. No one knew me, after all. I could freely do what I wanted without fear of being judged.

But, then, through a series of jobs and community envolvement, I started to become well known in town. I became acquainted with more and more people over the period of a couple of years, until it seemed like over night I knew nearly everyone in town. Suddenly I can't go anywhere without running into someone I know at least a little.

I went for a mammogram and knew another woman in the waiting room. I've become an expert at hiding things in my shopping cart when I go to the market and Walmart, so that I don't have to advertise my shopping habits and private life to everyone I am obliged to stop and chat with. If I go out to lunch in town it is pretty much guaranteed that within an hour I'll see at least six people I know. And forget Farmers' Market day.

It didn't take long before I was missing my anonymity, and choosing to drive as much as a half hour out of time just to have a cup of coffee without running into anyone.

But with all this increased exposure and familiarity came an odd contradictory feeling that nagged at me, until one day I finally identified it. I was in town, desperate for a cup of coffee without a dollar in my pocket, and trying to figure out where I'd come up with the money to keep the utilities turned on for another month, and I ran into one of the many many people who had come to "know" me. That's when it hit me.

Of all these people that had come to know me, not one knows the real me, the reality of what my life is. In truth, not even my family knows the whole truth of who I am, of what I live. I run around town, attending events and doing my job, smiling and chatting with dozens of people every day, but it's not really me. Its a facsimile of me, a public image that is comfortable for others to see and greet.

But not one of them knows what my life is really like, that I don't make enough money each month to make ends meet, that there are weeks I can't afford to buy groceries to feed my child, that I suffer from a depression so powerful it takes all my energy not to curl up in bed and cry for days on end, that I'm so lonely it feels like a knife in my gut turning all day long, that I am constantly fighting a whole host of self-destructive behaviors, that I am surprised each and every day that I'm even still alive. But there's also some good things that no one knows about me, that I can be extremely silly and goofy from time to time, that I'm an extremely passionate person, that I love to sing in my car, that I'd love to take some time off and travel around the world.

I realized suddenly that I was like a ghost in a crowded room... surrounded by people and totally invisible.