do we see ourselves only through our reflection in others?
I read an article the other day that really hit home about a man who had spent a few years in isolation and how he lost sense of himself because he never talked to anyone at all after being offered a cheap place to live far and away from everyone. Apparently his closest neighbor was several miles away and he spent nearly two years away from even talking to any other human being. There was the idea that you lose sense of who you are not seeing yourself reflected in those around you. Perhaps you don’t really exist if nobody else acknowledges you, perhaps you don’t matter if you are invisible.
I think I’ve been falling down a slow decline for many years. I am an invisible creature, moving in and around other people sometimes, but I rarely, if ever, talk to anyone. And when I mean talk, I mean more than just general pleasantries, more than the polite transactions that occur weaving through your daily life. I speak to Don, sure. I have many conversations with myself in my head, but they are often mean, critical and really obnoxious cruel and chiding things that leave me feeling worse than I used to feel. Moving away from New York City in my thirties, the only place I’ve ever felt grounded, maybe wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had, especially since it led to the absolute implosion of any relationship I could have had with my maternal blood line. I am invisible to them, I am irrelevant, I am novelty now, a closed chapter in a book that never should have been opened as it was. If I had stayed in the City, I am sure I would be dead, taken out by the invisible virus that seems to be taking so many. But perhaps I would have been someone, finished school, made my way out in the world in better ways than I have. I would not have Don, and I would be alone, I am sure of it, as there were literal hundreds I went through in my search for him. He is home for me, but I am not sure what I really do for him. As he’s keen to remind me, he was just fine before I came along.
At this point the one thing that has saved me is my shit memory. Eventually I will forget the things that have hurt me. Eventually I am sure I will just be a husk, just an empty shell of a thing that once held a person with promise, someone who mattered to really anyone more than the handful who haven’t forgotten me. I realized the other day that my memory has been my most valuable asset, the lackthereof. I thought I had a super amazing attitude with life that I was some kind of super survivor, but really what happened was my shit genes gifted me with a body that has fallen apart, taking my brain and short and long term memories with it. It is hard to be hurt by what you can’t remember, after all. Sure I can recall some people over the past two or three years who have been gleeful to leave me and enjoyed torching any sense of self I had along the way: Lisa, Erin, the maternal line. But at some point they will be just footnotes in my story, people that might have been a part of my life for a decade or two, and they will fade back to the recesses of my past, my present undefined, malleable soon to be invisible, too.
I’ve contacted the surgeon about whatever the hell I have to do next, chest cracked open for the third time. Maybe this time I will be able to forget ALL of the pain, instead of having to have it dance around the corners of my hazy vision. Maybe I will die. Maybe it doesn’t matter either way since I am invisible. Maybe this is all not real, maybe I am not even really alive. Maybe I am stuck in a dream without a good end. Maybe it doesn’t matter anyways.
All I know is…I don’t fucking matter. And I am invisible and I reflect nothing.
