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.