The Disappearing Act

There's a version of me that has gone quiet in rooms I used to fill. That stopped texting back as fast. That started with saying "I'm fine" and meaning something closer to “I don't have the words yet."

And I don't think I noticed it happening. That's the strange part. I didn't decide to disappear; I just slowly became less present. In conversations. In plans. In my own life. Like a light that doesn't go out all at once, it just dims gradually until one day someone notices and you realise you noticed too, a long time ago, and said nothing.

Sometimes disappearing isn't dramatic. It's just cancelled plans. It's the unread messages you'll get to later. It's showing up physically and being somewhere else entirely. It's laughing at the right moments, so nobody asks questions.
I've been performing presence for a while now.

And underneath that, underneath the going through the motions and the "I'm just tired" and the shrinking, there's something that has been trying to get my attention. Something quiet.
Something that's been waiting for me to stop long enough to hear it.

I'm not sure what it's saying yet. But I think the first honest thing is just admitting that somewhere along the way, I started disappearing.

And maybe that's true for a lot of us. Maybe the disappearing act isn't a personal failure; it's just what happens when life gets heavy, and nobody handed us a script for how to carry it. Maybe recognising it, even quietly, even just to yourself, is already something.
Not the end of the story. Just the part where you finally look up.

-Oluwademilade from MANI