Do I exist? Am I Invisible?

An indescribable hole comes into my chest and sense of self whenever my family forgets about me. Just the other day, my mother told me about how my brother, whom I hadn’t seen in two years and loved, was going to fly into California, where my other brother and his family lived, and that they were going to drive down and all get together — and she asked me, not if I wanted to join them, but she asked me if I could water the plants for her while she was gone visiting.

They were talking together and planning a family reunion without me and never thought to invite or include me.

But this isn’t the only time it happened. They’d been doing this for years, where I’d find out way later that they’d been all planning some family thing and never told me, or included me in the conversation.

Sometimes my mother would even speak for me and say to the entire group of relatives, ‘Liza won’t mind,’ or, ‘It’s okay Liza and her kids will do it,’ with me standing literally right there and me having haven’t said a word on my feelings, yet, or what I was doing with my own family. They’d set dates for things without even including what my availability was, even though they had all worked together on what would work best for all of them.

My ex-mother-in-law was at her house once with me, and the woman had to leave and needed to take a cab when my mom nicely chimed in without a thought for my own thoughts on the matter or my time, ‘Liza would love to take you home. You don’t need to call a cab.’

Whether I did or didn’t mind actually doing that, she deleted me and my choice of an opinion.

‘Deleted,’ is a good word for how it feels. My inner thoughts don’t matter or exist suddenly, and it makes an almost out-of-body experienced sensation. It’s a surreal empty hole that you feel like you aren’t really there.

Sometimes my parents ignore me when I speak. They might ask me something or feign interest for the first sentence of something I say, (as if that’s what they’re ‘supposed’ to do) but then they act as if they forgot I was talking to them and will start talking over me about a different topic entirely, to someone else, or they will literally walk away from me mid speaking and never return.

It happens more than I can count, to the point, that I just give up trying to open up or share anything important with them, especially not something personal that means a lot to me, because when I do, it hurts in that deep hole way when they smile, and then just get distracted and walk away.

There is never a recognition of rudeness on their part or, ‘I’m sorry, I got distracted,’ or, ‘I forgot.’ They literally will just never recognize the fact that I had been speaking about anything.

So, to protect me, I’ve built up this wall. I know they don’t care about the inside of me, my thoughts, and my feelings. I know I’m ‘boring’ or ‘not worth’ their attention unless it’s something they want to hear, so by recognizing this, I’ve now taught myself to not try and share with them.

It was a hurtful process to recognize because I wanted my parents to accept all of me and what I wanted to share. I wanted that connection. They are my parents, what kid or kid-adult doesn’t want acceptance and that attentiveness and approval from their parents? But realizing the truth is what is going to heal me and be okay without the approval of two people who don’t want to know the real me.