I wonder if I’ve always been invisible, or did something just happen one day to make it that way. If I knew how it happened, maybe I could change it and make me important again. “Again”, I say, not really meaning it as I don’t think I’ve ever had any importance in this life. Oh well.
It must have been convenient for my mother to be able to forget I didn’t exist. Inconvenient for me as I’d rather not witness my mother being such a whore. If you think that’s harsh, I’ll tell you it’s accurate. I do still hate her for that. Among other things.
Although I wasn’t only invisible to my mother, that was only one of her offences. It seemed, leaving is much easier when your youngest child doesn’t really exist. All those days and weeks she spent somewhere else than home, I bet she didn’t spare a thought for us. Us, me, and my 15-year-old sister who had been given the responsibility to raise an 8-year-old by herself. Often she’d spend time alone by the phone, wondering whether to call the child protection or not. Around town her classmates’ parents were whispering about the two kids living on their own. Eyes were closed, backs were turned.
A singer named Janis Ian sings about “those whose names were never called
when choosing sides for basketball” and I feel that is a completely accurate description of my life. I’m sure there are other people who feel the same way too, but in my life it seems to be true to such ridiculous extent I can’t help but feel some higher power is playing a joke on me. Any value that I may have had seems to be flushed down the toilet and no one told me. If there is any competition, I know I’ll lose it.
Everytime I’m in a conversation about the rights of children, I feel a lump in my throat the size of the shame I feel for having to have gone through the experiences I should have been saved from. If the system works so well, how come nobody cared? Once I thought my time had come when I was told I would be taken into custody if we would keep living with my mother’s psycho boyfriend any longer. A boyfriend who had in more than one occasion locked us out of the apartment for daring to do anything he wasn’t pleased with, and who felt great pleasure in kicking me and not allowing me to eat. Any time I tell someone about that it sounds like a joke, though it’s really not one. A single soul didn’t care about my mother’s alcoholism or that she left me alone at nights. I wasn’t ever asked about what she might not be telling them.
At times when I was depressed, nothing seemed to move people. After attempting suicide three times everyone flew past me just as they had before. Are we really that good at hiding ourselves, the people who swim in dark waters? Or are we just being punished for breaking the rules?
Anorexia? Oh, didn’t even notice you had lost weight.
I am not looking for attention and I do not need your pity. All I’m asking is for you to not just look at people, but to see them.
One could change a life that way.
——-
Back in the game! I can’t believe I forgot to sign up for last week, ugh. Jason‘s surprisingly easy challenge was to write anything as long as every sentence starts with a vowel. The actual execution of the story wasn’t as difficult as I initially thought, I just had trouble coming up with a subject so I ended up writing about real life. Fictional only in the way that I am really not that bitter about anything. I hope. I actually wrote most of this on Sunday already, but the in-laws visiting has been taking all my time so I wasn’t able to finish it until now.
You can see Kat Sidhe’s response to my prompt here. I regrettably haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but according to the comments it’s the bee’s knees, so go read it if you haven’t done so yet!
