The Invisibility Curse

Christmas Miracles Chaos
I learned the importance of being invisible when I was ten.  

It was Christmas Eve, and, just like every Christmas Eve, we made the ¼ mile trip down the road to my grandma and grandpa’s house.  Both sides of my family subscribed to the family compound philosophy (aka: they all lived within ½ mile of each other); consequently, all of my mom’s family members were crammed into this small house.  

While my grandparents were alive, we thrived on tradition. I never questioned what would happen on a holiday because we had a set plan for each of them. And our Christmas Eve tradition was to go to my Grandma and Grandpa O’Dell’s house with my aunt, her kids, and their kids.  We would eat, someone would read the Christmas story, one of the men would disappear, Santa would show up, the kids would be scarred, the female adults would be embarrassed, gifts would be distributed and opened, and then we would go home. This went down like clockwork every year.  

For this particular Christmas Eve extravaganza, my mom tried to help my aging grandparents out and go shopping for the gifts they would be giving me and my older brother.  This also happened to be the golden age of video cameras, and my parents had just purchased a new one.

All was going as smoothly as you can imagine.  Santa had shown up; several of my cousins had cried; and at least one of my older, adult cousins had been mortified with the quintessential requirement of sitting on Santa’s lap.  One of my parents had the video camera, and my brother and I were on the living room floor, poised and prepared to open our gifts from our grandparents.

I began unwrapping my gift.  Inside the neatly wrapped box was...a hairdryer. See, ten is a really weird age.  It’s one of those ages where no one really knows what to get you because, by this point, parents know if they buy toys, you’ll play for them for a week and then they’ll be shoved in a corner.  But, they also know if they buy you socks and underwear, well, yeah, that’s a hard no. So, my mom thought she was doing me a favor by buying me a hairdryer from my grandparents AND giving me a card with money in it.  That’s an important part of the story. I smiled my obligatory smile and said my obligatory “thank you” before waiting patiently for everyone else to finish opening their gifts.

And this is the point where everything went terribly wrong.

After I opened my hairdryer, my older brother began unwrapping his box, a box that was strangely familiar and similar in size to my own box.  I’ll never forget the look on his face as he opened that box, partly because it’s on video and we still watch it, and partly because it was a look of pure shock.  My older brother promptly lost all of his good sense, looked right at my mom (and consequently at the camera) and said, “a hairdryer” What does a fourteen year old boy need with a hairdryer?”

Crickets.

My mom was mortified.  My dad was laughing. And everyone else was stuck in that awkward place of not knowing whether to laugh or crawl under the table in embarrassment.  At just the moment where you would expect my brother to realize what was happening and die of complete shame, he just kept going. It was one of those slow motion, train-wreck experiences where you can’t really decide if you want it to stop, but you know you can’t quit watching.  My mom tried desperately to explain that she just wanted us to have a gift to open instead of just an envelope of money, but no one was hearing her at that point.

And as it went on and on, I just wanted to will myself to be invisible.  

I was embarrassed  for both my brother and my mom.

And I knew I never wanted to be in either of their shoes ever.

Being Invisible

I spent my teenage years carefully orchestrating and attempting to control any situation where I might be forced to endure the same embarrassment and laughter I witnessed that night.  I avoided situations of uncertainty like the plague. As long as I could control my variables, I was okay. As long as I was confident in what I was doing and knew what to expect, I was comfortable being on stage and in front of people, but as soon as an element of uncertainty was introduced, my anxiety would rear its ugly head, and I would do everything in my power to hide it.   At conventions or school events, when they asked for volunteers to go on stage, I would avoid eye contact and pray I wasn’t picked, willing myself to once again become invisible.

As a senior in high school, I was voted on the prom court.  This meant that I had to walk all the way across the gym, up the stage stairs, and stand on the stage for what seemed like an eternity while everyone at the prom watched.  And then, I would have to stand there awkwardly as the king and queen were crowned. And then, I would have to dance with a random other member of the court, again while everyone watched.  And, to make my anxiety even worse, my boyfriend at the time felt the need to tell his aunt, who was doing my hair for the big event, that, yeah, I was on the court, but there was no way I would win.

Seriously, God, could you please just make me invisible and make this go away?

I responded like a champ and simply didn’t talk to him the rest of the night!  

Avoidance for the win!

But not really.

The Problem with Invisibility

Here’s the problem with invisibility:  if you are invisible, you can’t be seen, and not being seen is deadly.  It’s deadly because it kills your authenticity and replaces it with an image.  And, no one can live up to an image forever. Eventually, the veneer will crack, and people will get glimpses of who you really are.  They’ll get glimpses of the you that throws a fit because a 14 yr old boy has no use for a hair dryer. They’ll get glimpses of the you that is petrified to be center stage in uncertainty with everyone staring at her.  They’ll get glimpses of the you that is anxious, hurting, emotional, vulnerable, and scared.

The real you.

And that’s scary as hell.
Okay, maybe not quite as scary as hell, but you get the idea!

We live in a world that is crafted, created, airbrushed, edited, revised, and posted.  

A world that is driven by likes, followers, swipes, retweets, and shares.

A world that isn’t real.

A world where more value is placed on an image than on authenticity.

A world where connections happen more often between screens than actual human beings.

A world where it would sometimes be easier to just be invisible.

But we have a choice.

We have the choice to fall prey to the invisibility curse and maintain our images, or we have the choice to show our real, messy, ugly, vulnerable, hurting, and scared selves to the world.

Without the editing.

Without the revisions.

Without the need for likes, shares, swipes, and retweets.

Our real selves.

And there’s freedom, and redemption, and beauty, and truth in showing our real selves to the world and overcoming the invisibility curse.  There will be undoubtably be moments of embarrassment, moments of discomfort, and moments where hiding and being invisible seem easier than being real.

But, maybe today is the day you can take the chance to be real, to show your authentic, unedited, imperfect self to the world.