LOVE WINS ERA · THINK ABOUT THIS

Being Invisible Has Consequences

Sat, 12 Sep 2026

Someone can tell every person they know that they're seeing someone.

They can tell an ex. They can tell friends. They can say they're in a relationship.

But there is something different about being visibly integrated into someone's life. If nobody ever sees you there, you remain theoretical. People don't encounter your presence. They don't adjust to a changed reality. They don't walk through the door and discover you sitting at the table with your laptop. They don't learn, through ordinary repetition, that this person who used to move through the world as one is now building something with someone else.

Maybe your presence would change nothing. Maybe certain people would keep showing up exactly as they always have. Maybe some wouldn't.

But you cannot be kept invisible and simultaneously be expected to somehow influence an environment from which you are excluded. And you certainly cannot be held responsible for the condition of it.

You Cannot Exclude Someone and Blame Them for Their Absence

This may have been the realization that finally broke something open for me.

I was told, essentially, that someone felt responsible for staying with me, because they were concerned about me, to protect me, but that doing so meant he wasn't getting the things done that he needed to get done.

So I offered what seemed like an obvious solution.

I'll come with you. I'll bring my work. You do what you need to do. I'll do what I need to do. You don't have to choose between where I am and where you need to be.

I wasn't asking anyone to neglect his life for me. I was offering to participate in it. And somehow that wasn't an acceptable solution.

That's when I understood something:

You cannot refuse someone access to your life and then blame that person for your absence from it. I cannot be responsible for the condition of a life I am not permitted to participate in.

If I offer to walk beside you and you choose instead to remain with me while resenting everything you aren't accomplishing elsewhere, that choice belongs to you.

I cannot carry responsibility for a decision I wasn't allowed to make.

If you need me, I will be 42 Degrees From Here.

Brandy Lee Novak