A pre-covid realization — A Foothold
The glare on the silver of the lamp seared into my retina. Clothed in jade green, the surgeons hovered around me. I shifted uncomfortably as their unsettling eyes glanced at me every passing second. Hearing my pulse banging in my ears, I could feel sweat dripping along my neck. Every time they approached me, I flinched. I felt exposed — suddenly so aware of myself, with all my flaws. As the anesthetic needle burrowed deep into my skin, I found my eyes focused on the cold steel of the doctor’s scalpel sitting on a tray to my right. The handle was dotted with silver squares, but in my eyes, they transformed into all the places I ever wanted to visit: Finland, Faroe-Islands, Stockholm … the darkness swept in with a sense of familiarity. It was a limbo. To the doctors, I was the center-of-attention. Yet I felt invisible. The in-between brought home serenity. Suddenly, I was not afraid.
In my everyday life, the scalpel was the spotlight where I felt comfortable expressing myself among strangers. I had found this version of myself on a late-night upon the stage of Merchant of Venice: it was surprising how well I got into the character of Portia, despite the massive audience before me. Bathing in the applause doled out for my performance, I learned that I too could stand fearless and truly be myself.
Yet among the people I knew, the idea of being myself remained a glare from the surgical lighting of mortification that seared out every shadow of sociability I tried to muster. As my school semester commenced, I was to give a speech to my grade. Taking courage to dive into the center-of-attention, I planned to be spontaneous, unlike the times I had made prim layouts. I began with an enthusiastic “Hey everyone,” but it was unnerving looking at all my friends in the audience. As their blank faces started to loom over me, I stuttered. I paused. The speech ended mid-way through.
To proclaim my true-self around those I knew, I had only one choice before me: a search to be invisible. I advanced to renew my acquaintance with myself. On the way to a camp, I began this mission of discovery. My peers began to debate about the morality of murder, a conversation that I yearned to join in. Anxious that they would think of my opinion to be too strong, I suppressed myself, testing the grounds of invisibility. I certainly had myself to make conversation with, but it wasn’t what I wanted. Restraint compelled me no longer; it was no solution to my weakness.
I woke up to a blurred vision that cleared out. I begin to hear the distinct beeps of the machine next to me. I was alive again. This is how the limbo of visibility and invisibility felt like. The stitches on the gum stung, but I was okay.
I try once more, why not be invisible inside your mind and be the center of attention in theirs. Tell them something eccentric about you. Staring at the laptop, oblivious to the world around me, “I like my own feet,” I spurt out, sitting on the floor. My friends burst out into a cackle, loud but not harsh. Shoulders shaking in silent laughter, I had joined in and I couldn’t stop.
The dark lay silent. The limp curtain separating me from the other beds opened. The light from the dim bulb, reflecting off the tinted windowpane, gently stroked my face. As a nurse proceeded to adjust my saline, I looked across at the completely black windowpane. Behind the tinted windows on the other side, the entire world with all its strangers and my acquaintances bustled in the night, maybe they could see me. But all I could see was my reflection in a rectangle of glass, a reflection of the best version of me.
