How to Disappear Without Anyone Noticing

How to Disappear Without Anyone Noticing

Genre: Poets / Psyche / Social Com

Style: Poetic diary/narrative fragments

Day 1

Start small.

Don’t answer texts immediately. Let the blinking notifications pile up like unwashed dishes. Smile when people ask if everything’s okay. Say, “Just tired.” They’ll nod. They always nod.

Day 7

Wear quieter clothes. Earth tones. Soft fabrics. Fade into beige backgrounds. Wear your hair the way no one notices. Don’t wear perfume. Smell like clean laundry and nothing else.

Day 14

Stop volunteering opinions. Don’t interrupt. Nod thoughtfully when people speak over you. Let them mistake your silence for grace.

Day 21

You’ll notice people stop asking how you are. Not out of cruelty. Just habit. We train them, after all. Train them not to look too closely. Train them to accept, “I’m fine,” like it means something.

Day 30

Be helpful. Be endlessly, devastatingly helpful. Fold the laundry no one notices. Remember birthdays. Clean up without complaint. Make yourself essential but unremarkable. Like electricity. Or mothers.

Day 45

At a party, they call you “low maintenance.”

They mean it as a compliment.

You laugh like it doesn't sting.

Day 52

Scroll through pictures of yourself from five years ago. You’re smiling too hard. You’re wearing red. You’re not afraid of taking up space.

You wonder what happened to her.

You wonder if she’s still somewhere under all this quiet.

Day 60

Go out for coffee alone. Sit by the window. No one looks twice. You’ve mastered the art of stillness. Of being background.

Day 72

At work, they forget to copy you on the big project. You find out later. You say nothing.

You wonder what else you’ve missed while becoming invisible.

Day 80

You see a woman crying at the bus stop. You almost sit beside her. But you don’t. You’re afraid she’ll see through you.

You wonder if maybe she’s disappearing too.

Day 93

Your body is still here, but your voice has moved somewhere far off, like an echo in a canyon. When you speak, it comes out softer than you intended.

People tilt their heads and say, “What?”

You shake your head. Never mind.

Day 100

Someone compliments your earrings. You forgot you put them on. You forgot you still wanted to be noticed.

Day 108

Your mother says you’ve changed.

She says it like she misses the mess of you.

You want to tell her that you do too.

Day 120

You write your name in lipstick on the mirror. Just to see it. Just to remember it’s yours.

Day 135

You buy something ridiculous. A neon scarf. It makes no sense. You wear it to the grocery store. A little boy says, “You look like a superhero.”

You nearly cry in the cereal aisle.

Day 142

You leave a voicemail for an old friend. You say, “I miss you.”

You don’t explain further. That’s enough.

Day 160

You stop apologizing when someone bumps into you. You let your “excuse me” live in their throat instead of yours.

Day 175

You remember how to laugh with your whole face.

Day 200

You take up space on purpose. Sit in the middle. Wear color. Say no. Say yes. Say I’m not okay if you’re not.

Let people flinch. Let them adjust.

Day 250

You see someone else vanishing. A woman behind a register. A man in a waiting room. A teenager with eyes like doorways.

You meet their eyes. Smile.

It’s enough. It’s a signal: I see you.

Day 300

You keep disappearing. But now, you also reappear. A little each day.

You are learning how to be visible again.

Final Entry

Here’s the truth:

You were never meant to be background.

You were never designed to vanish.

You are here.

Still.

Louder now.