When I stand in line, the cashier actually looks past me to the person behind me. When teachers pair everyone up, I’m always out in the cold and, later, when we’re halfway through the assignment, they’re like, Who’s your partner, Hannah? And I’m like, You tell me, bitch.

Back when I had friends, when I cared about that sort of thing, I’d be sitting at a table in the caf and they’d walk right by—not to be mean. There was always a moment when one of them would sit down and kind of look around and then shrug. After, they’d be all, Where were you at lunch?

Back when I was online, I’d post things and get, like, two likes. Cool things—found poetry and the beach and Priscilla’s circus tats—but no one cared. It’s like everyone had cracked some code, some code of being seen, and I just couldn’t.

There’s no place for a zero-followers person in this world. If you don’t exist on the internet, you don’t exist at all.

Add that to real life, with Dad’s colleagues at every party being all, Oh, you’re the other daughter. I don’t know shit about astro-whatever, but I know this: Mae is this crazy-cool star like what you see on posters in science class, and I’m space debris orbiting her. You don’t see the debris. You can’t. All that light.

And, okay, boo-hoo or whatever, privilege, first-world problems, all the things I’m supposed to say, but here’s the point: I’m fucking sad and I feel like a goddamn ghost, okay, and I’m sorry if that’s politically incorrect, I’m sorry if my invisibility comes with my own savings account and matcha lattes, but it’s mine, okay, it’s mine and it’s real to me, so just let me freaking have it. I know, I know that other people, so many other people, are invisible in ways that can get them killed or never have a good job or a seat at any table. I know this. But invisibility is a spectrum, like anything else. And I’m on it. So when some white kid in my Circle of Sad was all, white fragility, white tears, check your privilege after my turn, I was like, DUDE. Really? Really? So sad is just off the table for me. Like I can’t feel it. Or express it. I’m in a freaking therapy group, what the fuck? I’m just trying to explain, to explain how the entire cosmos is like flashing these neon signs about how I’m a worthless piece of shit and don’t you ever wonder what’s the point of you and maybe there’s no point at all?

And I hear Micah tell me in March, when things were so bad: I can’t carry you.