Invisibility training can be un-learned
One of the ways losing my mother changed my life was that my self image went from “I’m special and excellent” to “I’m not special, not smart, and should avoid attention.” My mom saw me as exceptional, intelligent, and full of potential and curiosity that would drive me to brilliance. After she died, school and the world provided no evidence of this, so I stopped believing it. Until I was in my 40s, I didn’t think I had much to offer the world.
For the first few weeks of sixth grade, I was able to talk with my mom about my problems at school — social problems, mostly — by crawling into bed with her in the afternoon. By December she was really dying and couldn’t be there for me any more.
I was exhausted in a way I couldn’t name. When it came to doing anything extracurricular, or taking the harder classes in school, or being a star pupil, my feeling was, “I don’t have the energy; don’t expect me to do that; I won’t.” I was afraid of expectation and ambition.
I discovered that if I kept my head down and stayed quiet, I could almost be invisible. So I remained hypervigilant, did whatever was easiest, and evaded attention. It worked. Teachers overlooked me, and the kids who liked to pick on me ignored me instead, most of the time.
The feeling of relief from acting invisible set me up to under-achieve. By the time I went to high school (9th grade), I believed in my invisibility. I wanted to participate in the wider community’s teen musical, and I did, but I didn’t expect any adult or kid involved to know who I was — even though they’d seen me around the neighborhood for years.
I was in a square-dance scene in the play. My dance partner, also a freshman, was even more taciturn than I was. I tried to start a conversation about wearing glasses, which we both did, and he seemed startled. I assumed not that I had said something wrong, which might have been a more usual form of self consciousness, but that he altogether didn’t know who I was or why I would speak to him, even though we’d been rehearsing together for weeks. I believed nobody out in the world could remember me from one week to the next.
Being in the play was the peak experience of my life then. [A bit more about the play is here.] But when it was over, I had made no lasting friendships. Having trained myself to cope by acting invisible, I didn’t try to keep in touch. I hadn’t even considered it was possible to join the social circles of those nice kids. I saw myself as a single blade of grass, beneath observation, making no mark on the world. I wasn’t even unhappy with myself. My self esteem was decent, but my self image (invisible) was not helpful.
By the time I wanted to apply to college, which was after I’d already graduated from high school, I believed my mom had been wrong about me. I wasn’t extra smart, in fact I was unable to do what it took to really get somewhere. I would not take professional risks. Writings on professionalism and career advancement said things like, “People who got good grades are just good test-takers. Good grades won’t earn you promotions in the real world.” That applied perfectly to me. I’d received excellent grades in high school for the same things I was rewarded for in first grade: being able to read fluently, write a complete sentence, and behave in school. It was meaningless, but it seemed to be all that I could do.
My low expectations led to low-paying jobs, where I expected to be overlooked. I didn’t take a professional risk until I was about 45 years old. I had stopped feeling unmemorable and invisible, and ready to raise my profile in the world a little bit, thanks to several years in a secure marriage and a lot of therapy. (I wish I’d had a therapist after my mom died, but whoever heard of such a thing back then.)
When I found the courage to take a professional risk, it was in a setting that required the biggest, most extraverted version of my personality that I could muster — teaching demanding physical skills and workouts to people of every skill level and attitude. In the seven years I operated my CrossFit gym, I experienced being visible, memorable, and even influential. “Your uniqueness is your strength” came true for me after decades of hiding. (I now teach weight lifting as a personal trainer.)
It feels right that I ended up finding visibility through physical skills and physically demonstrative communication. My journal shows I was trying to build muscles and run fast even in sixth grade, so I think that little girl would approve of my fitness career, even though it took a really long time to find it. Now can I find visibility through writing? We’ll see.
A different framing of the fear of visibility is here.
Wow. Fran, this is an excellent synthesis of how something can manifest and affect the rest of your life. I trust the memoir-writing process is going well.
Thank you, Kathy! I just now finished rereading my first draft. I have lots of notes to guide my re-write and I’m excited about that stage.
Rick, thank you, I’m sure you are right that lots of people have felt invisible for different or similar reasons. It’s so easy not to be aware of it until later, when it’s no longer the air you breathe. I feel lucky that I had the support of a great mom to begin with. I hear you on the “late bloomer” thing. Here’s a writer who quit his job to write a book about late bloomers: https://commonreader.substack.com/p/the-case-for-opsimaths-maybe-late
While your experiences were understandable and difficult, I wonder if many of your peers felt the same need for invisibility, even with full parental structures but no support. Your situation was difficult because you understood what you lost, where others may never have had the support you had initially….. if that makes sense? This is said not to diminish your loss, but to say maybe that your feelings were more common than you may have known. i.e the boy with glasses in your theater production.
I wonder or I think that all successful people hit a point (unlearned invisibility) where we realize that we always had the ability to be better (Dorothy and the ruby slippers analogy) but we needed the image in our minds to change or to get out of the way of our success. For some this happens early with great guidance, for others (like me) it’s when they become “late bloomers”.