Did I Exist?

I was never part of it. Not for years. Not in the whispered secrets. Not in the plans made in rooms I wasn’t in. Not in the jokes that landed before I could hear them and felt like I was one of them. I was the pause before laughter. The space between words. The moment of hesitation before someone’s eyes moved past me— as if I had never been there at all. I learned how to walk without sound. How to answer without weight. How to take up space without anyone realizing something was standing in it. I have spent my life watching people leave rooms without realizing they never spoke to me. I have nodded through conversations that weren’t meant for me, stood in circles where no one noticed they were standing closer to each other than to me. I waved to people who were never waving at me. I was never forgotten. To be forgotten, you have to be noticed first. I was never ignored. To be ignored, someone has to choose not to see you. I was never invisible. Invisibility is a trick, a skill, a decision. I was something else. Something worse. A shape without a name. A sound that never formed. The static between radio stations. The chair that only gets noticed when someone needs a place to sit.