There is a death that leaves no body, a hollowing that does not bleed. It happens in silence, in the slow, imperceptible erosion of self. Worthlessness is not an execution—it is a starvation. A slow, measured withdrawal of warmth, of recognition, of the most basic human need: to be seen. I felt invisible as a child, and this was by design.
The Art of Disappearing in Plain Sight
Invisibility was survival. The art of vanishing while remaining in the room. It was knowing how to breathe without sound, move without being noticed, exist without consequence. Because if I was seen, I was an option. If I was an option, I was a target. Some children fight back. Some scream. Some sob and claw at their father’s hands, kick and punch and cry for their mother. I didn’t. I learned young that resistance only prolonged the punishment. Instead, I became small. I made myself into nothing, a slip of shadow at the edge of his vision, silent, compliant, untouchable. Or so I thought.
But breath betrays. A gulp. A flinch. A coffee cup knocked too hard against the table. A moment of distraction that turned his gaze toward me, eyes narrowing like a predator scenting blood. And that was all it took. A single misstep. A reminder that I was there. Then it would begin.
At first, the words. Always the words. Some people say words don’t hurt, that they are just air, vibrations in the throat, shapes made by lips and tongues. But those people have never heard words sharpened into scalpels. Words that don’t just cut, but cleave.
You’re nothing. You’re weak. A disappointment. A waste of breath.
I didn’t just hear them—I absorbed them. Let them settle into my bloodstream, take up space inside my bones, seep into the marrow of my being. I repeated them back to myself long after his voice had gone silent. His voice became my voice. His judgment, my own.
But it didn’t stop there.
Sometimes words weren’t enough for him. Sometimes he needed to see the damage he inflicted. The slap was fast. The belt was worse. The fists were a lesson, the bruises a reminder. A moment of rage stretched into eternity. Sometimes, I counted. I focused on numbers, detached from the sting of it all. If I could just reach ten, maybe he’d stop. If I could just get through this, if I could just— And then it would be over.
I would lie there, ribs aching, vision blurred, ears ringing, waiting for the sound of retreating footsteps. And I would exhale. Because at least it was done. But Worthlessness Doesn’t Stop That’s the trick with worthlessness. It doesn’t need a perpetrator once it has taken root.
At some point, the echoes of his voice became my own. It was no longer just him who saw me as weak. I did. No longer just him who believed I was a disappointment. I did. The bruises healed, but the words? They became gospel. And so, I picked up where he left off. You aren’t good enough. You aren’t smart enough. You aren’t anything. I learned to punish myself in new ways. In doubt. In sabotage. In denying myself love before anyone else could. I honed it into an art—a preemptive strike against hope. If I convinced myself I was unworthy of joy, then I wouldn’t be blindsided when it was taken from me. At some point, I became both prisoner and executioner.
And so, I escaped. Any way I could. Some people drink. Some smoke. Some fuck strangers just to feel something, anything. Some carve lines into their skin to prove they still exist.
I wrote.
It was the one thing he couldn’t touch. My mind. My stories. My worlds. I built them as fortresses, as sanctuaries. In books, people were kind. In books, suffering had purpose. In books, there were heroes, and they won.
I found solace in fiction, devoured it like a starving thing, swallowed whole the possibility that there was more beyond the four walls of my childhood. And when that wasn’t enough, I created my own. At first, just whispers of ideas. Fragments. A boy who runs away and never looks back. A girl who is invisible until she isn’t. A man who fights monsters and wins. Characters who weren’t broken, or if they were, they weren’t weak. They owned their scars. They turned their pain into something sharp, something useful. Unlike me.
But writing wasn’t just an escape. It was a rebellion. He could take everything from me—my sense of safety, my childhood, my belief in love—but he couldn’t take my words.
The scars hardened, but the instinct remained. The instinct to retreat, to disappear, to create.
I no longer needed to hide from him, but I still hid. From others. From myself.
I built walls out of words, shaped my solitude into something noble, something necessary. Some people go to bars. Some drown themselves in the neon haze of television, let the static wash over them. But me? I sit in the dim solitude of my office, hammering at the keys, trying to bleed the ghosts out onto the page. Because writing is not just something I do. It is not a choice. It is not a hobby. It is oxygen. Maybe It’s Unhealthy. Maybe It’s Just Another Kind of Escape. But it is mine. And for the first time, I am the one telling the story. No one speaks for me anymore. Not him. Not the echoes of his voice that once lived in my head, whispering worthlessness like scripture. Not the ghosts of his hands, his rage, his lessons in how to disappear. I speak. I write.
I take every word that was ever thrown at me, every insult, every knife disguised as language, and I twist them into something else. Into something mine. Into something that breathes, that moves, that fights back. Because worthlessness is a lie. It was always a lie. A myth I was force-fed, a story I once believed. But now? Now, I write my own.
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