Our memories can run a mile a minute and mine did just that this morning. While reading a post written by another wife dealing with her husband’s Aspergers. With that and remembering myself years ago feeling the same, I could totally relate, in her saying, “I could not deal with being and feeling invisible any longer” so with her young child, she will leave the marriage. Of course, other issues were present but this one made me go back to a period that was just unbearable for myself.

My boys were young, too, perhaps eight and ten. This one instance that is etched in my mind is one where we all left church to go get lunch at our favorite pizza joint.  As I remember, that whole morning and church service was uneasy. I would mention something and he would deny, like before, over and over. This was an ongoing dialogue between us. The craziness of that day in and day out was enough to tip me over the edge. Trust me, I wanted to jump many times, no tip needed. I stayed for my boys and dealt with the circumstances.

As the boys and my husband were enjoying the pizza buffet at the table, talking among themselves, I am sitting there being totally ignored. To remember, I feel and sense the sadness after all of these years still, just a lighter degree from then, thank God. I am eating and on the verge of crying but what good would that do? I sat there alone, emotionally distraught, feeling like a homeless person with my family. Exactly my feeling and I remember that thought so well, and the pain within.

A blanket of doom and gloom of this marriage was choking life from my body. This was about twenty years ago, as I write, and I had no inkling of Aspergers then or up until five years ago.

As I met with my former counselor who alerted me of Aspergers, that seemed to fall into the scope from my sessions, I felt the blanket lifted from me and the craziness that Aspergers can cause in a marriage relationship, which is a sad, lonely one.

In our many sessions, of course, my childhood was discussed.  A lot of adult problems are unhealed childhood issues, which I have heard over and over again from my Pastor, in his messages. As a child living in an alcoholic home, not realizing it then as it was just my life, but I was present while I listened to conversations and observed my surroundings.  I remember my counselor commenting that it was interesting that I was invisible as a child and now as an adult in my marriage. I guess interesting although I understood what she was saying, more depressing than anything. I was invisible and had no voice.

Now, just recently, I did my two weeks, the eighty long hours required in clinicals for Phlebotomy certification, the worst two weeks of my life. I remember a couple of times when I was alone in the lab office area, I held my hands up and moving like a Mime stating, am I invisible?  I did all I knew to do, and I am trying to help them and understand the process, as I was their legs to save them time but the training I should have had was weak in each of them, a waste of my time. When there was time to ask questions and time for them to explain this or that, they each had their nose in their cell phones. I was at a loss. I was being ignored, not trained properly and I felt invisible, yet again. Although now I know the role of being invisible, so I am there at this point to get my hours and required sticks, ignore me if you want. I am doing my time and I am out of there, just learning to hate a profession I thought I would enjoy.

So to read this mother’s woes of feeling invisible brought me this point of my writing.  Perhaps to remember what I came through and to treat others as they truly matter, that they are not invisible at all. Even the homeless matter. My heart is bigger knowing and feeling the pain that I dealt with and in that I do not regret what I have grown up with, my marriage and this past experience.

Each one of us need to be aware of those around us. We never know what they might be going through. Just a smile, costs you nothing, but can bring hope to a person who has none.

Thankfully, we are not invisible to God. He knows each of our names, where each of us are and the number of hairs on our head. Trust Him.

 

She [Hagar] gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi [the”well of the Living One who sees me”]. (Genesis 16:13-14)

Invisible