Like I'm Invisible
When I came up with the idea of giving all my journal entries the titles or partial lyrics of songs, I thought I was being soooo clever. I'm finding however, that the songs then become embedded in my brain and go around and around, reminding of my current woes and sometimes even past ones! I'm questioning my judgement, but I have just enough OCD tendencies to make me feel that now I have to keep up the premise. I know it doesn't matter, but this is just the kind of thing that ends up tormenting me--as if I don't have enough "real" things to keep me busy worrying!
I often wonder if anyone would really miss me if I died--I mean beyond the normal shock and mourning period. Oh, yeah, my kids would miss all the things I do for them, buy for them, bail them out of, take care of......they'd have to train a new person at work to replace me......my therapist and psychiatrist would have to find a couple new clients...... Other than that, I haven't really made any kind of significant contribution to humanity. In fact, I've produced two drug-addict, lying, thieving felons who can't get jobs because they have records, so in a sense, I've actually De-tracted from society! Yeah, yeah....I know....."It's a Wonderful Life" and all that.....
But seriously, people seem to look straight through me. I live in a house with 5 other people and entire days go by without me seeing anyone--even though everyone's home. At work I'm all alone in my little lab all day. My desk is in the corner and my back is to the door. I have an analyzer on each side of me, which are both pretty noisy, so I don't hear much of anything going on outside of my 24' x 16' room. Entire days go by and I may speak 5 minutes total to anyone. It's not that I don't want to socialize, I just don't have time. I'm always very busy. Even when everyone else seems to be goofing off, I always have stuff to do.
I don't always get a chance to go to lunch when the majority of the office goes, and even when I do, half of them are speaking to each other in Russian and the other half are out somewhere. Most of the time nobody thinks about me until there's some kind of problem. They forget to tell me that there's an office meeting scheduled. They forget to tell me when someones relative dies. They forget to ask me when they order out lunch. One day the entire office was out in the waiting room watching the aftermath of a car driving through the store window across the street. Literally, EVERYONE but me was out there. I was blissfully unaware, carrying on with my job. I didn't hear a thing about it until 6 HOURS LATER! One of my co-workers said, "Oh, I thought you knew. I thought I saw you out there with everyone." Sometimes they even ask me about office gossip--LIKE I WOULD KNOW!!!
Everyone thinks it's HILARIOUS. I think it's pathetic. I'm not kidding. If there was a fire, I probably wouldn't hear the alarm and nobody would come to see if I got out safely! Yeah, some of it is because I'm just not out and about chatting all day long and people DO forget, but it isn't just an occasional thing. It happens daily! And it really hurts me. I know I'm being oversensitive about it, but there it is. I try not to let it bother me and laugh it off most of the time, but sometimes it's just more than I can bear on top of everything else.
I'm also aware that it's pretty typical for kids to take their parents for granted, but it gets really old when they get up in their 20's and they're still only calling when they need something. Here's what I really don't understand. I get that my husband is angry with me for reasons I will never understand, and that we're "separated", but we ARE the same house and he doesn't extend the common courtesy one would give a roommate. He'll run out to the store, but not mention that he's leaving or ask me if I need anything. The kids will come looking for him and I didn't even know he was gone! When he comes in he never greets me. When I had roommates in college, we would say "hello" when we walked in and the other person was sitting right there and mention when we were leaving. I'm not even talking about going out of the way to find me if I'm in my room or something. I kind of thought that was just being polite to say "Goodbye, see you later." Or "I'm running to the store, need anything?"
I know that men notoriously don't notice a new hairdo, but when you've been a blond for 15 years and go back to brunette??? That's kind of glaringly obvious! Not a word from him. About a year ago I was on my way to work and took a face plant off the front porch because instead of fixing the wobbly step he just removed it and didn't bother to mention it!! After I swore, laughed, and checked to make sure I hadn't knocked out any teeth, I went back in to check out the damage. I stood there at the kitchen table wiping the blood off my face right in front of my husband who was eating breakfast and reading the paper. He didn't say anything and neither did I because I was still kind of in shock and thinking about being late for work!
Talk about "road rash". By the time I got to work my eye was swollen shut, my lip was about 3 times its size, I was bruising and my face looked like raw meat where I had taken a few layers of skin off (I jokingly referred to it as "macro-dermabrasion"). Children stared. Adults turned away in horror! My youngest took a picture and sent it to all her friends. : It really looked like I had been beaten! I WILL say everyone at work went out of their way to stop by my lab that day and ask me why I wasn't in the ER getting a CT scan! Oh, except the doctors who told me I had done a pretty good job on myself and that I had better put ice on it. Talk about compassion!!
When I got home that night, I was on the way in and my husband was on the way out. We skimmed past each other in the doorway and I looked him square in the eye. Nothing. Not a twitch of an eyelash! I waited 3 days for him to ask me what had happened, and then I realize that he probably thought I had overmedicated myself and fallen in my "drug-induced" stupor. So I said very matter-of-factly, "By the way, I wasn't "impaired" (as he likes to term it) when I fell on my face and did this. It happened because you moved the step." He said, "Did what?" I looked at him, pointed to my face and said, "THIS!" He glanced at me and said, "Oh, I didn't notice." OMG!! HOW COULD ANYONE HAVE MISSED IT?????? And once I pointed it out how could he have absolutely NO reaction?? I was stupefied. That's when I realized the depth of his total and complete disregard of me.
THAT'S why I'm invisible.
I often wonder if anyone would really miss me if I died--I mean beyond the normal shock and mourning period. Oh, yeah, my kids would miss all the things I do for them, buy for them, bail them out of, take care of......they'd have to train a new person at work to replace me......my therapist and psychiatrist would have to find a couple new clients...... Other than that, I haven't really made any kind of significant contribution to humanity. In fact, I've produced two drug-addict, lying, thieving felons who can't get jobs because they have records, so in a sense, I've actually De-tracted from society! Yeah, yeah....I know....."It's a Wonderful Life" and all that.....
But seriously, people seem to look straight through me. I live in a house with 5 other people and entire days go by without me seeing anyone--even though everyone's home. At work I'm all alone in my little lab all day. My desk is in the corner and my back is to the door. I have an analyzer on each side of me, which are both pretty noisy, so I don't hear much of anything going on outside of my 24' x 16' room. Entire days go by and I may speak 5 minutes total to anyone. It's not that I don't want to socialize, I just don't have time. I'm always very busy. Even when everyone else seems to be goofing off, I always have stuff to do.
I don't always get a chance to go to lunch when the majority of the office goes, and even when I do, half of them are speaking to each other in Russian and the other half are out somewhere. Most of the time nobody thinks about me until there's some kind of problem. They forget to tell me that there's an office meeting scheduled. They forget to tell me when someones relative dies. They forget to ask me when they order out lunch. One day the entire office was out in the waiting room watching the aftermath of a car driving through the store window across the street. Literally, EVERYONE but me was out there. I was blissfully unaware, carrying on with my job. I didn't hear a thing about it until 6 HOURS LATER! One of my co-workers said, "Oh, I thought you knew. I thought I saw you out there with everyone." Sometimes they even ask me about office gossip--LIKE I WOULD KNOW!!!
Everyone thinks it's HILARIOUS. I think it's pathetic. I'm not kidding. If there was a fire, I probably wouldn't hear the alarm and nobody would come to see if I got out safely! Yeah, some of it is because I'm just not out and about chatting all day long and people DO forget, but it isn't just an occasional thing. It happens daily! And it really hurts me. I know I'm being oversensitive about it, but there it is. I try not to let it bother me and laugh it off most of the time, but sometimes it's just more than I can bear on top of everything else.
I'm also aware that it's pretty typical for kids to take their parents for granted, but it gets really old when they get up in their 20's and they're still only calling when they need something. Here's what I really don't understand. I get that my husband is angry with me for reasons I will never understand, and that we're "separated", but we ARE the same house and he doesn't extend the common courtesy one would give a roommate. He'll run out to the store, but not mention that he's leaving or ask me if I need anything. The kids will come looking for him and I didn't even know he was gone! When he comes in he never greets me. When I had roommates in college, we would say "hello" when we walked in and the other person was sitting right there and mention when we were leaving. I'm not even talking about going out of the way to find me if I'm in my room or something. I kind of thought that was just being polite to say "Goodbye, see you later." Or "I'm running to the store, need anything?"
I know that men notoriously don't notice a new hairdo, but when you've been a blond for 15 years and go back to brunette??? That's kind of glaringly obvious! Not a word from him. About a year ago I was on my way to work and took a face plant off the front porch because instead of fixing the wobbly step he just removed it and didn't bother to mention it!! After I swore, laughed, and checked to make sure I hadn't knocked out any teeth, I went back in to check out the damage. I stood there at the kitchen table wiping the blood off my face right in front of my husband who was eating breakfast and reading the paper. He didn't say anything and neither did I because I was still kind of in shock and thinking about being late for work!
Talk about "road rash". By the time I got to work my eye was swollen shut, my lip was about 3 times its size, I was bruising and my face looked like raw meat where I had taken a few layers of skin off (I jokingly referred to it as "macro-dermabrasion"). Children stared. Adults turned away in horror! My youngest took a picture and sent it to all her friends. : It really looked like I had been beaten! I WILL say everyone at work went out of their way to stop by my lab that day and ask me why I wasn't in the ER getting a CT scan! Oh, except the doctors who told me I had done a pretty good job on myself and that I had better put ice on it. Talk about compassion!!
When I got home that night, I was on the way in and my husband was on the way out. We skimmed past each other in the doorway and I looked him square in the eye. Nothing. Not a twitch of an eyelash! I waited 3 days for him to ask me what had happened, and then I realize that he probably thought I had overmedicated myself and fallen in my "drug-induced" stupor. So I said very matter-of-factly, "By the way, I wasn't "impaired" (as he likes to term it) when I fell on my face and did this. It happened because you moved the step." He said, "Did what?" I looked at him, pointed to my face and said, "THIS!" He glanced at me and said, "Oh, I didn't notice." OMG!! HOW COULD ANYONE HAVE MISSED IT?????? And once I pointed it out how could he have absolutely NO reaction?? I was stupefied. That's when I realized the depth of his total and complete disregard of me.
THAT'S why I'm invisible.
Replies
apparently lots of people feel invisible... if they can\'t criticize something, they just ignore us