Invisible and Tired

August 28, 2025

I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know when I started shrinking myself down just to fit into this life I didn’t even mean to build. I used to feel like I had something to offer, like I had value, like my voice mattered. Now I feel like a shadow of that person—an echo of someone who used to dream and fight for things. I wake up every day already tired, like I’m carrying a weight that no one else can see, and I’m not sure how much longer I can keep pretending I’m fine.

I feel invisible. That’s the word that keeps circling in my mind. Invisible. I show up. I give everything I have—my time, my energy, my heart—and somehow it never seems to be enough. No one says it outright, but I feel it in the way I’m overlooked, dismissed, taken for granted. It’s like I could disappear tomorrow, and life would go on just fine without me. That realization guts me more than I want to admit.

I tell myself to be grateful, that I should just be thankful I’m alive, that I have what I have, but that doesn’t stop the ache that sits heavy in my chest. Gratitude feels like another mask I put on, another way I silence myself so I don’t come across as bitter or ungrateful. But God, I am bitter. I’m bitter that I give so much of myself away and get so little back. I’m bitter that I’ve settled into this life that doesn’t feel like mine anymore.

I keep thinking I need a change. Something drastic, something that will shake me awake. But when I try to picture it, I freeze. What would I even do? Quit everything? Start over? I don’t even know where to begin. I’m so tangled up in routines and responsibilities that I feel trapped. And maybe that’s what scares me the most—not just being undervalued, but feeling powerless to change it. I’ve let myself become so small, so quiet, that I don’t even know who I am anymore.

Sometimes I want to scream. I want to break something, cry until my body has nothing left. I want to run away from all of it—leave behind the expectations, the constant giving, the people who don’t see me for who I am. I want to feel alive again, to feel like I matter. But then I remember everything that ties me here, everything that keeps me stuck. The fear of letting people down. The fear of failure. The fear of stepping into the unknown and finding out I’m just as invisible there, too.

And so I stay. I stay quiet. I stay small. I stay tired.

Writing this down feels like peeling away a layer of armor I didn’t know I was wearing. I don’t have answers. I don’t have a plan. I don’t even know if I have the strength to change anything. But I do know I can’t keep going like this forever. Something has to give.

For now, all I can do is sit with this truth: I am not okay. I am exhausted. I am undervalued. I need a change. And even though I don’t know what that change looks like yet, I know this—acknowledging the ache is better than burying it. Maybe this is where it starts.