It’s a pretty bad feeling to suddenly realize you have forgotten something. To realize that you forgot you had a meeting. To wake up and know you forgot you had a test to study for. To get somewhere and reach into your pocket and find out you forgot your wallet. To go to sleep and wake up in the middle of the night knowing you forgot someone’s birthday. That’s a bad feeling.
But it’s not nearly as bad as being the thing that is forgotten. We can drift in and out of periods of sadness; we can walk through seasons of anger; we can experience the pain of regret; but there is something unique about feeling forgotten.
See, as bad as those other emotions and experiences might be, you can still feel validated as a person inside of them. But to feel forgotten? That’s a bit different because when you feel forgotten, your self worth is called into question. To be forgotten means, at least in the mind of the one forgotten, that you are not worth remembering. It’s worse in some ways than feeling sad; it’s as if you don’t exist. Because you don’t really matter.
That said, it’s worth it to be able to sit down with yourself and say, “I’m happy with you”!
Let’s call this process self-talk, building a helpful dialogue in ourselves. The bottom line is that when we are happy with ourselves and are listening to our beautiful inner voice, we feel a lot less forgotten about. (Or at least this feeling becomes less significant in our minds).
So there it is. A little exploration into why we feel invisible and what to do about it.
Feeling forgotten about is not your fault. Our society has thrown us a bit of a curveball and now it’s time to throw that ball back and hug ourselves and someone else experience this same feeling.
xo,
Camellia