You Are Not Forgotten or Expendable

A friend posted to a private list feeling forgotten, expendable, not interesting or important enough. I read it and felt it immediately, because I know that feeling from the inside. The gap between what you know and what you feel is what makes it so hard. I can run through the list of people who genuinely care about me and still wake up the next morning feeling like garbage because nobody noticed whatever I thought would be noticeable. The logic doesn't hold up under inspection, but you can't inspect your way out of it when you're inside it. The standard advice (walk, water, sleep, eat) is all true and genuinely helpful, but what actually moves the needle for me is being pulled into a situation where I have to interact with the world outside my own head. A neighbor stopping me on the way to my truck, a friend needing technical help, my kids, my wife, a random interruption. The embarrassment of acting like I don't matter to the people around me overrides the brain signal saying I don't. The frustrating part is you can't always force it. When you're feeling invisible, the last thing you want to do is reach out and risk confirming that nobody cares enough to respond. If you're in that place right now, feeling forgotten or not enough in whatever direction, the opposite is true. Knowing that and feeling that are two completely different experiences, and I'm not pretending otherwise. But if it helps to have someone on the other end, reach out. And if things are darker than a rough morning, please seek proper help. You deserve more than a video for that. Published on Subwave https://subwave.app/@thespacebetween/post/you-are-not-forgotten-or-expendable