Invisible

Is it that it's tiring, or that I'm tired? I can't tell anymore, but Lisa would say it was the latter. I've been avoiding seeing her for the last couple of months because I'm not sure why; I guess it's because I think that she will judge me like I judge myself.

"It's just so tiring. When will it stop? Why does it keep happening?" I ask him, a tear rolling down my cheek.

"It's not that bad." He reassures me.

"It feels like it is."

"I know. I know it's hard to see it now, but you've come so far in the last few years. Just remember that in the past there have been times where you haven't got out of bed or left the house for days on end, sometimes weeks." He reminds me. "At least you don't hurt yourself anymore." He finishes softly.

Sometimes I forget how much we have been through together; how much I have put him through. I look at him through the tears and try to stop the worst of the memories from resurfacing. But he is right, things are much better now than they ever had been, but it's hard to see that through the despair; it feels like I will never come out.

"I suppose I should call Lisa." I say. He agrees that it is a good idea, but I am petrified.

A week later, when I am feeling defeated I finally email her. She is happy to hear from me. She has been thinking about me while she has been away on holiday, eating or shopping or something like that. She would love to see me. It's nice but I am not sure how to feel about it; she is my psychologist, not my friend.

I am functional. We see our friends, go out, watch movies, eat delicious food. There are moments where briefly I am happy with me. I am someone who can bring people together, inspire people to follow their dreams. We sit around a table at a cheap and cheerful restaurant and my friends retell the stories of how we met to people I don't know, and I am flattered that they remember these stories, and feel as though they are worth retelling.

Still, the moments are short-lived. I am bad at receiving compliments. They compliment my outfit, I change the subject. I don't want to talk about it. The attention makes me feel exposed. I notice things I never used to, things I wish I didn't notice now, like the inappropriately flirty comment a friend of ours makes while his girlfriend is standing next to me or the guy I thought I just met (but have apparently met 20 or so times in the last 10 years) leaning in too close and holding too tightly around the waist when he speaks to me.

Gully says they are drunk, which is true, and I am not annoyed with them; but this sudden awareness brings back memories of life when I was younger. After a friend's birthday party once, a girl, Amber, sent me an email saying how great it was to hang out with me and previous to the party she had always hated me because she thought I wanted to steal her boyfriend. A guy, VM, in computer science once told me all the girls (I didn't know) who hung outside the rec centre strongly disliked me. In the pub once, my friend, Carl, told me Christine who I had barely said two words to hated me.

I became hostile towards myself. I wondered, then, if I had done or said something I couldn't remember to create these situations, but I realize now that sometimes I merely need to exist for them to arise.

My cousin, Min, comes over one evening with her husband and a bottle of wine so that we can sample a meal for her new business venture. She is excited and nervous, because of all the people she has taken the meal to, she knows I will give her the most honest feedback. It's delicious, but I don't like the apricot and the watery consistency. She values my frankness.

She gushes about how great I have been, how much she appreciates it, how I have been her "ray of sunshine" through this venture and how nobody has given her as much support as I have, not even her family. I am flattered, but I wish she wouldn't say these things to me. I am unsure of how to respond. Embarrassed. I am excited about what she is doing. I can help her, so I do. But I really wish she wouldn't keep saying these things. I do not know how to receive the compliments.

Lisa did an exercise with me once. She put me on a stage and told me to imagine everyone who had said anything complimentary to me recently was in the audience, saying those things and cheering for me. She asked me to respond, and the imaginary attention caused me to have an anxiety attack.

Sometimes I wish I was invisible.

Gully says things will get better. I'm not sure. At some point, while I was on holiday floating in the pool looking up at the sun shining through the clouds, a tear slid down my cheek and I realized I was tired. Really tired. I heard my breathing, felt the sun against my body and decided that the only thing I was capable of doing was breathing through.

All I had to do was breathe through, because that couldn't go on forever. One day the breathing would stop, and I would become invisible.

But sometimes even that feels hard.

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