The Art of Disappearing

I don’t know when I started disappearing. Maybe it was the day Chris died. Or maybe it was the slow death that came after, grief as erosion. Silence as acid. A daily un-becoming. It’s a strange kind of grief, the kind that doesn’t scream. It just settles into your bones and makes a home there. Quiet. Heavy. Unmoving. And maybe that’s the worst kind, the kind that doesn’t ask for attention but eats you alive from the inside out. The kind that whispers you out of your own body. That makes your skin feel too thin, like your soul is leaking out and no one notices the puddle left behind. I think that’s where I’ve been living lately. Not in the kind of pain that draws sympathy, but in the kind that makes people look away. The kind that turns you invisible.

I’ve been disappearing. Not all at once. It’s been slow. Subtle. Like watching a photo fade under sunlight. Maybe you don’t notice it at first, not until you realize the details are gone, and all that’s left is a ghost of what once was. I don’t remember when it started. Maybe it was the day he died. Or maybe it actually started long before that, and I just didn’t notice because he was still here, and I could still breathe. Now, I sit in rooms full of people, and still, I vanish.

Chris was my place to land. The one person I never had to shrink myself for. I could unravel in front of him without apology, and he’d just sit with me in the wreckage like it was the most natural thing in the world. He didn’t flinch at my intensity. He didn’t need me to filter my words or explain the way I feel everything like it’s fire beneath my skin. I was allowed to be all of me. And I didn’t even realize how rare that was until it was gone. He met me at the place where the world stopped making sense, and made it feel like that was exactly where I belonged. Like maybe being “too much” was just enough for someone who got it. And now he’s gone. And with him, the one place I could set it all down… the armor, the fear, the masks. He was my breath in a world that keeps trying to suffocate me. And now I’m forced to hold it all in.

I laugh when I’m supposed to. Smile with such a convincing believabilty. Nod like I’m present. But inside, I’m curled in some dark corner of myself, begging to be seen. Not looked through anymore. Truly seen. There’s a difference. I’ve learned that the hard way. I used to be loud, not just in volume, but in essence. You could feel me when I walked into a room. I took up space, and not in a way that demanded attention… just in a way that was honest. Unapologetic. But I’ve learned how to shrink. How to dim my fire. How to bend myself and manipulate into something quieter, easier to swallow. I’ve become sugar water. Sweet enough to be tolerated, but with no real nourishment left. I’m so tired of being easy to swallow. Now, every word feels like it needs to be translated. Every feeling needs to be made smaller, quieter, prettier, something other people can handle. I filter every thought, measure every word. I walk on eggshells that I know are already broken. I’ve gotten so good at shaping myself into what others need that I don’t even know who I am anymore. I don’t recognize the sound of my own laugh. I don’t know what makes me feel alive. I don’t feel real. I don’t even feel human anymore.

I walk into rooms and feel like I vanish the moment I enter. I say the right things. I nod at the right time. I’m pleasant. Polite. Nice. But inside, I’m unraveling. I feel like a hologram of myself. I keep thinking, if someone looked close enough, really looked, they’d see it. They’d see the emptiness behind my eyes, the exhaustion in my soul. But no one ever does. Maybe I’ve just become too good at hiding or maybe no one actually cares. So I learned to cage it. To wear a smile that doesn’t reach my eyes. To say ‘I’m ok’ even when I’m slowly ceasing to exist. I don’t even see myself in the mirror anymore. The eyes looking back at me are hollow. Not haunted. Just… tired. Soul tired. Like even my spirit has decided I’m not worth the fight some days. I can feel it happening in real time… that vanishing. That fading. And I’m self-aware enough to know it’s happening again. I feel the filter activate before I speak. I feel the ache of wanting to scream just to know if anyone would actually hear it. But I can’t stop it.

I’ve learned how to make myself easy to love. And in doing so, I’ve lost the parts of me that needed love the most. I don’t feel emotionally safe anymore. Not really. I give the softest parts of myself to people who handle them like weapons. Who say they love me, but really only when I make myself smaller, quieter, easier. I’m punished for my vulnerability, crucified for my sensitivity. Every time I open up, it gets used against me. Every fear, every moment of vulnerability, thrown back as daggers, like a punishment for daring to be soft. So now I catch myself measuring every word, calculating what version of me is most acceptable in any given moment. I’m constantly editing. Constantly performing. I’m walking on eggshells that have already been shattered beneath my feet. And still, I tiptoe. Still, I try desperately to please. Because somewhere along the way, I started believing that love meant tolerating discomfort. That being loved actually meant comprising to the point of fading. And it’s killing me.

Since Chris died, it’s like the world stopped feeling safe. He was my mirror. My anchor. The one person who didn’t need me to pretend to be anything. Without him, I don’t know where to put all this too much. There’s no place to lay it down. No space where I can breathe without bracing for the impact that has proven to crash into me every time. I miss him in a way that’s more than missing. I ache for the safety he gave me. And the truth is, I didn’t know how rare that kind of safety was until it disappeared. I’m terrified I’ll never feel it again and that all of my too much is going to suffocate me.

Now, I feel myself fading. I feel it happening, and I physically can’t stop it. That’s the worst part. I’m aware. I watch myself filter. I feel the exhaustion of pretending. I know I’m not okay, but I can’t seem to say it out loud without fear of being misunderstood or worse, judged. I feel the hollowness in my chest and the emptiness behind my eyes and the sharp grief of knowing I once believed in forever, and now I’m just trying to survive the right now.
There is no safety now. Only performance. Only half-sentences and rearranged emotions, carefully placed so no one gets uncomfortable. But what about me? I am uncomfortable. I am in pain. And no one sees it. And maybe the worst part isn’t the perpetual state of loneliness, but the fact that I don’t even blame anyone for not seeing. I’ve polished the performance so well that even I believe it some days. Until I can’t. Until I lay in bed at night and remember what it felt like to be loved without limits. To be understood without translation. To be loved without condition. I believed so deeply in that kind of love. Believed it could last. Believed it was mine to hold on to. And now I don’t know what I believe in anymore.

I just know I’m tired… Of being invisible, of shrinking, of surviving a world that never asks how I’m really doing. Who respond, “no, I see it. I just don’t care” when I do finally say it out loud. I’m not okay. And maybe that’s the most honest thing I’ve said in a long time. Now I know love isn’t always a refuge. Sometimes it’s a performance. And the only place I ever felt like I could drop the act is up in smoke. With him. With the version of me that still felt like I was worth saving.

I took that safety for granted. I thought it would always be there. I thought I had time. And now all I have is this ache. This longing. This overwhelming sense of being too much and never enough at the same time. I am soul-tired. I don’t want to keep shrinking to be digestible. I don’t want to keep performing palatable pain so the people who “love” me don’t have to feel uncomfortable. I just want to feel real again. I want to feel seen.

I don’t know how to come back to life when the only person who made this place feel safe is dead. I don’t know how to resurrect a soul that’s been starving in plain sight. And maybe I won’t. Maybe this is just who I am now, someone who remembers what it was like to be seen, and carries that memory like a splintered light inside a body that no longer feels like home. I walk through my life like a ghost with a pulse. Breathing, but not really alive. I’ve become a fading photograph in my own story. Some days I wonder if anyone even notices I’m not really here anymore. If they can tell that the version of me sitting at the table is just a shell of a human, while the rest of me is buried six feet under the weight of what I can’t say out loud. I didn’t stop talking because I had nothing left to say. I stopped because no one was really listening. And now the silence feels safer than the truth ever did.

And if grief is the last place I ever get to be fully known, then maybe that’s where I’ll stay. With him, in this constant state of ache. In the silence. In the one place I was never asked to disappear.

Author’s Note:
Originally written July 28, 2020 - What it means to be alive and unseen in a world that only loves the performance

I wish I could tell you I walked away the moment I realized I was disappearing. I wish I could say it was just a dark season, a passing storm, and that I found my breath again right after writing this. But that wouldn’t be the truth. The truth is, I didn’t walk away. I faded. Slowly. Deeply. Until the girl I had been was see through. Until I became someone I didn’t even recognize, someone who was so used to performing safety that even when no one was watching, I kept the mask on. I shut down so fully, so quietly, I almost didn’t notice I’d gone completely numb. And the world kept spinning, as if I hadn’t vanished.

But I’m not in that place anymore.

Years of therapy helped, my “paid bestie,” as I affectionately call her, became the one place I could finally say the ugly things without shame echoing back. But even still, I never said most of them out loud. I just emailed her these entries like that was enough. The problem was, I kept picking it all back up when I left her. Like grief souvenirs I didn’t know how to live without. I didn’t know how to exist outside my trauma yet. Letting go felt impossible, because pain had become my identity. Fading had become my normal.

Everyone tells you therapy is about learning to be your own safe place. To stop needing others to validate, to soothe, to hold you. I understand that now. I respect it. But I’ve never fully agreed with it. I think we do need others. I think humans were designed for deep, emotional intimacy. For connection. For safe places to land that exist outside of ourselves. Without that, we start dying in slow, unnoticeable ways. We shrink. We silence ourselves. We become tolerable, and then we disappear.

But this time… I didn’t disappear forever. Because for the first time since Chris, I found another kind of safety. One that wasn’t forced by DNA or bound by childhood trauma and memories. A safety that chose me. That sees me fully and stays anyway. Someone who doesn’t flinch when I unravel. Someone who doesn’t just meet my soul where it is, but invites it to finally rest, to grow, to just exist freely. I’m no longer surviving love. I’m living it. In every raw, wild, beautiful form that I’ve longed for. Someone who proves that the most vulnerable parts of me can be safe. That love can be wild and calm, reckless and gentle, all at once. That someone can look at the full weight of who I am and want to stay.

That kind of emotional safety is rare. I know that now. I won’t take it for granted again.

This piece was written in a time when I didn’t believe I could ever feel that kind of connection again. But I was wrong. And I want you to know, if you’re reading this in your own season of fading, that you’re not wrong for wanting to be seen. You're not broken because you crave a place to land. You're just human.

And somewhere out there, your place exists. Don’t settle for anything less than soul-safety. It’s real.
I found it again and this time, you can bet I’m holding on with both hands.