It’s still morning here. But I already had a perspective-changing moment. I don’t need to go into the details of what happened. The germane point is that I experienced a moment in which it was very clear that the only other person who was in the same space as me did not (or perhaps could not) see or notice me. I was invisible.
This moment brought up all sorts of feelings. Initially, I was frustrated, angry, and annoyed. Part of me wanted to shout, “Hey! I’m right here!” But I had things I needed to get done so kept calm and carried on.
But, as these things do, the moment kept returning to my mind. There’s something to be learned from this. And so I’ve been sitting with it at moments. I wrote about it in my journal. And now I’m writing about it here.
Being invisible actually felt quite familiar, as something that I’ve experienced regularly in the past. And that’s because it is something that I’ve experienced often in the past. But I didn’t really have the words to name that feeling. Now I do. Examining this moment from today allowed me to articulate what had happened to me in many previous moments. “Oh! I was invisible all those other times too!” It feels very good to be able to name and thereby validate those other times that I’d been rendered invisible.
But this morning’s moment of invisibility stood out because even though it was a familiar feeling, it wasn’t familiar from recent times. In other words, I’ve been able to build up my life and myself such that I am rarely rendered invisible these days. How so? I see myself. It’s actually that simple.
And there was something else to be learned from this moment this morning. The other person (who did not see me) and I were sharing physical space (although this other person did not seem to be aware of that). I think that there have been times in my life when I have been invisible and my response has been to try to render myself visible by taking up more physical space; when the physical realm has been my primary place of interacting with the world. The physical/ bodily world has been the primary space for making myself visible.
But as I sat with this moment, I realized that physical body-space is only one third of the story of human experience. I also have a mind and a spirit. And perhaps these moments when I am invisible in the physical worlds are small reminders from my mind and spirit that my body — and how it is seen or not seen — is not the end of my story. In fact, it’s not even a narrative thread in the story of my body. The story of my body is the story of my body, not how it is seen or not seen by other people.
I just googled the phrase, “Invisible Man” because this experience made me think about re-reading Ralph Ellison’s novel. Of course, a good portion of what came up on the first page of this search was about the 2020 horror movie. There’s some layer of irony in that. Oh, and trust that I did get sucked into the horror film trailers. And will probably end up watching it at some point. No judgment (of myself or anyone) there. It’s telling that the book is rendered invisible by the movie. IYKYK.
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Rhena Writes 