I watched them laugh and converse effortlessly with one another, so comfortable in their own skin, and the entire time I was thinking, what is wrong with me. It was a feeling I couldn't quite shake off, this peculiar sensation of ghostliness, of being an outsider.  I hovered at the margins, never quite belonging, always gazing in, wondering what was it that made me so different from everyone else. I felt like an impostor masquerading as a real, live, normal human being, mirroring the gestures of those around me, hoping that no one would discover it was all a farce. When people talked I withdrew into myself, finding it difficult to even look at them in the eyes. It was as if I wasn't even there, just invisible, like a ghost drifting about, observing what went on with a gentle indifference, sometimes with an almost clinical detachment. I sometimes suspected that I was dead inside, impossible as that may sound. Perhaps some part of me had been lost along the way. It seemed to be the only explanation for the perpetual numbness I carried around.

Putting these thoughts into words turns out to be harder than I thought. Perhaps a quote will succinctly capture what I'm struggling to say.

" It was a source of both terror and comfort to me that I often remained invisible-incompletely and minimally existent, in fact, it seemed to me that I made no impact on the world, and that in exchange I was privileged to watch it unawares." - Housekeeping