I don’t have a picture today, so if you’re reading this I’m sorry. Today, I just don’t feel like pictures. Today I feel invisible. I feel very, very invisible. This invisibleness, it’s a story. I guess I’ll tell it today while I’m hiding in the bathroom listening to the shower run. Random fact: I actually like to write in the bathroom with the water running. It’s calm and peaceful and just what I need. So, I’m not going to feel awkward about hiding in the bathroom with my Chromebook and letting a few tears fall. That’s okay. It’s okay. 

So, this story begins with a little girl who loved to read. She walked the halls of her elementary school with her nose buried in a book everyday. She loved books, she loved reading, and she loved to write. She read Little Women in the third grade and her teachers thought she was nuts. Maybe a little gifted. Maybe not. Then in fourth grade she wrote her first poem. She had a teacher that year that let her read her poems in class. That teacher was awesome. The next year, teachers said she was a good writer. Then everything went downhill from there. She wrote lots of poems before she became invisible. She shared them with her father and he told her she was fabulous and a amazing writer. Somewhere, her grandmother still has her first poem, framed. 

Then the girl with the amazing imagination and great talent for writing started to fade. She was becoming invisible and no one even noticed it. Her writings weren’t lighthearted and cheery anymore. They were desperate and sometimes hopeful. With a stepmother who never told her she loved her and a father who was becoming invisible too, she started imagining how she wished life would be and then she wrote her first story. And her second. And her third. And they were desperate and sometimes hopeful. 

BY the time the little girl reached high school she was almost completely invisible. She wrote and she wrote and she wrote and she wrote, yet no one saw. No one saw her and no one heard her. Still, she kept writing and still, she kept fading. The end of high school came near and she was merely a shadow clinging to the walls of the school and her home. She hoped one day someone would discover her. That they would unfade her, that they would smile at her, make her uninvisible. Then one day, her words were heard. Then they thought she was crazy. This girl who had been slowly fading and becoming invisible even when she reached out for help and reassurance. Even when she begged someone to see her. Even then, when they thought she was crazy, she was still invisible. They couldn’t seem to find her because she had completely disappeared. 

Sometimes, the little girl still feels invisible. 

So remember to look for the people who are fading. 
Don’t let them become invisible.