I lost my voice when I was almost four, but that’s another story for another day. I became invisible too – so invisible in fact, that people couldn’t see me, even if I was right in front of them. So invisible, that they would bump into me when I was walking on the street., I’m not a ghost, so they couldn’t walk through me, so I got some nasty jolts and bumps on occasion.
This is not a fantasy, it’s real, and it was painful then, but now I’m grateful. This condition made me an extraordinary “fly on the wall”. An invisible, extraordinary, “fly on the wall”.
My powers of observation were honed to a degree, that I could see beyond what was said or demonstrated. I could feel them, smell them, all the invisible memories and thoughts. The thoughts and memories would bounce from them onto a screen in my mind so I could watch them there.
Sometimes I would feel them there too. Sometimes, I could see other movie clips of other times. But after a while, I chose not to. Mostly because it became too jangled inside me. It became difficult to separate my movies from theirs, and it was a pain, a nightmarish pain to separate it all, especially because feelings slide around, they’re slippery and sticky at the same time. They will stick to yours so you don’t see them at first, then pretend to feel like your own, but they’re really not.
That’s also around the time I just got tired of people. My friends became the books. Books became my real family, and my safe place became the space between the rows and walls of them. Whole entire tribes of them. They became my insulation from the bothersome feelings and thoughts floating around other people.
Hearing one thing coming from their faces was one thing, but seeing and feeling the inside percolating with something very different was confusing, unsettling, and very annoying. I was very irritated because others around them couldn’t see the inside of what that person really was. That their words were lies. Smarmy lies that covered dirty cores, dirty cores full of desire to cheat and hurt.
So, on occasion, the rare occasion I’d come across someone who was whole and complete, which to me means, the same on the inside as the outside. In those rare instances, I would just be still. Or the opposite, my words would flow out like chipmunk chatter, an endless flow of thoughts, dreams, and observations.
They would just nod and listen. Didn’t happen very often. I can count the times on one hand.
—Ossibell
Ossibell 