There are moments where being seen
feels heavier than it should.
There are moments where
the absolute inability to just be
tightens
until there is no space left…
How much of it was about feeling threatened.
I don’t know.
Why some people felt easy,
and others felt impossible.
Why I could exist freely in certain spaces —
and in others, feel completely exposed.
As if whatever I was experiencing internally
was somehow visible to everyone around me.
As if even the invisible things
could be seen and judged.
There was never a moment of just being.
Always something people would notice.
To correct.
To criticise.
My laugh.
My voice.
My body.
The way I moved.
The way I existed.
Moments where the
absolute inability to just be
tightens
until there is no space left
Every detail under a magnifying glass —
visible and exposed.
The closer I walked to the wall,
the less likely I was to be seen.
If I could position myself just right —
behind something, next to something —
I could disappear a little.
If I kept busy,
or looked busy,
I wouldn’t be fully visible.
My entire being desperate
to shrink into itself and disappear —
while at the same time thoughts escalated,
intensifying within me
until the pressure became so immense
there was no capacity left to contain it.
My entire being desperate
to shrink into itself
and disappear
Even simple things carried weight.
Voicing an opinion.
Being the first to answer.
Standing somewhere on my own.
I would rather not vote
than risk being the only one.
Rather disappear into the group
than be recognised as different from it.
There were ways of managing it.
Ways of shaping how I was perceived.
Wearing a uniform
or working out –
it transformed me
to someone defined by context.
That felt acceptable.
It gave me something to hide behind.
But anything that made me stand alone —
even just the possibility of it —
felt like too much.
If I thought I might be the only one somewhere,
I would hesitate.
Wait.
Or not go at all.
Because being alone meant being seen.
And being seen meant
there was nowhere to hide.
And yet —
even in all the effort to not be seen,
life was still happening.
Conversations.
Moments.
People who were simply there —
not analysing, not noticing.
Those thoughts don’t hold me the same way anymore.
But they haven’t disappeared completely.
There are still moments
where it creeps back in.
Quieter now.
Less convincing.
But familiar.
And maybe that’s part of it.
Not eliminating it entirely.
Not fixing it.
But learning to live alongside it —
without letting it define every step.
Because even within that tension —
between what feels real
and what actually is —
there is still a life being lived.
Not perfectly.
Not always comfortably.
But still, steadily,
moving forward.