Becoming Invisible

“It does not take much to make us realize what fools we are, but the little it takes is long in coming.” ― Flannery O’Connor

When you’re on the older side of life, when you have illnesses/disease (and mine are trite when compared to what others my age suffer from) you tend to become invisible.

It’s not some purposeful trick, not some voodoo magic, not some shitty thing you just read about on the world wide waste – it’s a form of self-preservation.

You find yourself regularly, if not quite often each day, backtracking over your life.

You cringe of the things you’ve said, you audibly lament over horrendeous decisions you’ve made. You are deeply aware of how foolish you have been, and that it has taken a lifetime to come to grips with your foolishness – a foolishness that has hurt others, something you never intended to do.

You realize the time to exit the circus may be still far off, but also keenly are aware that it could be tomorrow.

You still, in an odd way, look upon the opposite sex, or same sex, in the same way you did when you were 40 years younger, and you can’t fathom why. The same attractions are there, the same proclivities haunt you, and you wonder why.  The same scent from years before, still attracts you now.  The same tilt of the head, the same wry smile, the same gentle hand, keeps you a bit spellbound.

The f**kery from jackals, from war-mongers, from psychopath’s – the
“leaders” of us all – you understand all too well – is utter bullshit…and you solemnly understand at the same time that most others don’t give a shyte.  They are still wrapped in the insanity of believing, too young to understand the lifetime of experiences you’ve had, or too apathetic to give a shyte.

You attempt to suffer quietly, to become invisible, so as to not to be too much of burden to your loved ones, but it becomes increasingly difficult to do the the everyday…the simple tasks that you did without thinking, just a few years back, that now you need help with – it is depressing.

You can’t scream to your world how much you hurt each day. The world really doesn’t want to hear it…and you don’t want to hear yourself saying it.  So, you try to become invisible.

The body is still there to be seen, the smile is there, albeit, a bit more wrinkled and undone. The grey hairs are there as a sort of testament that you’ve endured it all.

But with the grey hairs comes the quiet acceptance that you at last understand the foolishness of what was presented to you as a way of life…believing in all the rot the corporate shysters and media whores present. Their’s is utter shittery, utter f**kery, utter lies upon lies upon lies.

And so…you become invisible – but not on purpose.

You may attempt to write, might attempt to share of what you still have left by volunteering for that from your heart, you hope, might move the heart of those you’re helping.

You sometimes wonder why – why keep giving, why keep reaching out to others, why keep loving a mostly loveless world.

Yet sometimes, on a warm Summer night, as you take a step outside and breathe in the smoky scent of a humid Summer night – you have an elderly dawn of thought, and understand in your heart and soul, that what you give, sometimes in an invisible sort of way, is all that keeps hope alive, keeps love alive…both for you, the invisible, and those invisible souls you help in invisible ways, that is, in the end…pure love.

“I write to discover what I know.” ― Flannery O’Connor

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Tonight’s musical offering:

Sir Colin Davis – Edward Elgar – Enigma Variations – Variation IX (Adagio) “Nimrod”

Photo credit: http://www.unsplash.com/@amitjain0106