Spoken Word: I Am Seen and Heard

We see the phrase "you are seen, you are heard, you matter" everywhere in social media now. But do we really know how it feels? I do. 

For so long, I've been a ghost.

A flicker in the background, a fleeting image in the periphery of people's lives. 

Nobody really looked, did they? 

They saw a facade, a veneer of who I wanted to be, who they wanted me to be. 

Smile, nod, laugh at the right moments—play the part, and then vanish. 

I perfected the art of being pleasantly forgettable. 

But he... oh, he sees me. 

When I'm with him, 

I can't just blend into the wallpaper. My camouflage fails. 

He strips me of my invisibility with a mere glance, a simple question:  "How are you really doing?" 

He'll ask, and I'll falter. Because he's not asking to fill the silence. He's asking because he genuinely wants to know.

It's unsettling but liberating. 

When I think something, he notices; he reacts. 

He catches that fleeting shadow across my face, that split-second furrow of my brow.

 It's like he's tuned into a frequency that only broadcasts me, static-free.

 I can't just drift away into the background, lost in a sea of faces, forgotten in the crowd. 

Because he makes me feel found, genuinely seen, like I'm the only person in a room full of people.

I can't give him half-truths because he wants the whole story, flaws and all. 

I can't just show him a facade because he is interested in the foundation, the messy, complicated scaffolding behind it. 

For the first time, I feel like I don't have to perform, don't have to put on a one-man show where I play all the roles. 

With him, I can just be. Be vulnerable. Be flawed. Be real.

He cares. 

Not in that distant, superficial way that I've grown so accustomed to. 

He cares in a way that's almost disarming, like a light turned on in a room I forgot had a switch. 

It's like finding out you've been speaking in a language that everyone heard but only he understands. 

I feel seen. I feel found. And for the first time, I realize that maybe, just maybe, there's a life to live outside the corners of my own mind. 

With him, I'm not just a flicker in the background; I'm the whole damn scene.

Nobody’s cared like he cared, you know? 

And that makes all the difference.