The Wallflower

Can you see her? Just one woman among many, nothing outstanding or interesting about her. Average height. Average weight. Brown hair. Glasses. Looks friendly enough although she clearly has an air of reserve surrounding her. You think you might even know her when she smiles politely as your gaze flits over her, but just as quickly as you glance her way, your mind forgets all about her. She is one in a crowd. A shadow. A nobody.

But let's look at her a little more closely. She is shy, perhaps. And, most likely she is an introvert completely out of her element. Literally in this case, a wallflower, clinging to the edges in hopes that no one will notice. Yet, she is not detached. She isn't purposely isolating herself, just unsure how to break into a world in which she feels the outsider. She observes all that she is going on around her, picking up minutiae of other people's lives in hope that knowing more about these people will finally give her entrance into a world to which she doesn't really belong. She likes the people around her, thinks they are fun, interesting, good-hearted people. But, for reasons she herself does not understand, she is scared to join in conversations, thinking it better to be invisible than to be rejected. Self-conscious, she is afraid she will be found lacking in humor, charm, intelligence. Better to never be acknowledged than to be found wanting.

A skill honed from childhood, being invisible has its uses. If no one thinks you are listening, you learn some interesting if not random stuff. Sometimes, she wonders if she could make it as a spy considering how much information she has gathered over the years. Unfortunately, there isn't much use for intelligence about the day-to-day lives of modern Midwesterners who fall in the 23-40 age bracket, at least at this time. And it isn't like she is going to share what she hears. Doing so would violate her sense of loyalty, broaching an unspoken trust between her and the others. Still, people reveal more about themselves when they do not realize others are observing them, not only in what they say but in what they do. When you are invisible, you see what others are too distracted to see. 

Will she ever change? Intellectually, she recognizes what she does to "protect" herself from being hurt only serves to further isolate herself.  Yet, she cannot take that next step to make herself visible in this new world, to speak up and acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, people may be interested in what she has to say. Having spent so many years believing otherwise makes it difficult to change one's perspective. But, to be honest, she has made great strides over the years. There has been the rare occasion where silence became too quiet, the loneliness too isolating, and she rose above her shyness and was all the better for it, so there is hope. Still, those times were definitely the exception. She does hope that one day she will finally be able to reconcile what she knows rationally with what she feels--that she doesn't have to resign herself to a life in the shadows because she is somehow unworthy of any kind of attention. That sometimes, it isn't a bad thing to be in the spotlight.