Have you ever felt comfortable being invisible? I have. For a long time, I believed I was safest that way existing without being seen. Or if I was seen, only briefly. A glimpse. You see me, and then you don’t.

There was a season when being invisible made sense. I didn’t want to take up space. I was mirroring the environment I was in the energy of it. And that energy was thick. Heavy. Hard to breathe in. Hard to be in. So I shrank. I became quiet. I turned into a shell of myself just to survive it.

That choice didn’t come easily. It came after countless conversations where I over-explained myself, only to still be misunderstood. It felt like I was speaking a completely different language. Eventually, I stopped trying to translate. I retreated silently. I didn’t like it but it was necessary. It was the only way I knew how to protect my peace and keep my sanity intact.

You’d think that kind of invisibility would harden a person. That it would make me bitter or closed off. But it didn’t. It made me better. It turned my attention inward. I began to evaluate who I wanted to be and who I didn’t. I wondered if some of the things I disliked in others were reflections of parts of myself. Or warnings of who I could become if I wasn’t paying attention.

That invisible time wasn’t wasted. Not one moment of it. It was a training ground. A quiet classroom. A growing place. Even unseen, I was becoming. And somehow, that makes all the difference ✨