We Are All Invisible Things

‎I learned, at some point, that emptiness is a lie.‎It was something I realized under bright lights, standing still for long stretches of time, waiting for things too small to see with the naked eye to prove they were there. Quiet lives unfolding in places we rarely look, shaping outcomes we’ll later call luck, or health, or fate.‎What struck me wasn’t how small they were, but how much they mattered.‎Every surface, every breath, every inch of skin is occupied. ‎That was one of the first things that stuck with me. Not the diagrams. Not the long names I had to memorize and forget and memorize again. Just that sentence. The idea that nothing is ever really empty. That life is constantly happening, even when it looks still.‎I think about it in moments that feel hollow. In rooms after people leave. In silences that are supposed to mean the end of something.‎I know better now.‎I know that absence is often just life happening somewhere you haven’t learned to look yet.‎i was taught that balance is fragile. That the body isn’t about eliminating everything that could harm it, but about keeping things from growing out of control. Too much of one thing, even something normal, and suddenly everything shifts. Health becomes sickness. Order becomes chaos.‎That idea followed me into real life.‎How often do we ignore small things until they become impossible to manage? How often do we let habits, feelings, resentment, exhaustion pile up because they don’t look dangerous at first? Because they’re quiet. Because they’re familiar.‎In the lab, we spent so much time waiting. Watching. Letting things grow. You learn patience, whether you want to or not. You learn that life doesn’t rush just because you’re anxious. It moves at its own pace, in its own time, whether you’re ready for it or not.‎That stayed with me too.‎I learned that not everything living inside you is your enemy. Some things protect you. Some things keep other things in check. Some things only become harmful when the balance is disturbed.‎I started thinking about how often we label parts of ourselves the same way. Calling things bad instead of asking what caused them. Trying to wipe things out instead of understanding them.‎It made me softer with myself.‎More aware of how much of existence happens quietly, beneath the surface, or in places we don’t celebrate or even acknowledge.‎I don’t walk around thinking about microbes all the time. But I do move through the world differently. Slower. More observant. More open to the idea that there’s always more happening than I can see.‎We are not just what shows. Not just what’s loud. Not just what’s easy to name.‎We are ecosystems. We are histories. We are habits and memories and invisible work happening all at once.‎We are never as empty as we think.‎We are all invisible things.

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