The Invisible Black Woman

Depression has had me in a chokehold the better part of 2026 and definitely the tail end of 2025. So much so I couldn’t quite tell the difference between what was true depression or hurt/anger for what transpired in the last half of 2025.

When I tell you 2025 had a single mission of leaving the deepest most guttural scars possible… WHEW. If there was some kinda contest vying for top spot of most shittastic end to a year, 2025 won by a LOT.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

2025 didn’t start off trash. I stepped outside my comfort zone in ways I didn’t expect or imagine—the real me, that is. I took some incredibly huge swings and most of them, I’m proud to say, hit.

But I also took some L’s… like a good bit. I made friends in spring that I lost by winter. Connected with people that were super gunho to connect but soon revealed to only wanna ride the wave while the iron was hot. When shit got real or quiet, I couldn’t find them with a magnifying glass and a map.

I saw firsthand how extractive and performative it is to put yourself out there and for people to see opportunity rather than you the person. I learned that proximity to virality and exposure is a hell of a drug. And the moment it fizzles, so does the high and the interest.

I learned that the fastest path to betrayal (for some) lies in your follower count—or lack thereof. That people will quickly drop you for the next shiny object if but for the possibility of having a sprinkle of that internet fame land on them.

And all the while, I struggled with the balance of being treated like stale, old refried beans in real life from the very people that can’t get enough of me as I truly am in this space: invisible. Here there is no competition. Many of you wouldn’t know me from a can of paint and while it is 100% by design, there is comfort and ease in seeing me as nothing more than a platform that has a single, solitary mission. The notion or truth that I myself am a Black woman doesn’t register because I exist here for no other reason than to ensure the shine of other Black women (on socials, anyway; in this here blog, you get wittle ole me—but I digress and you get my point). I know that’s gonna make some of y’all squirm, but it don’t make it any less true. Or, as Dek says to Tessa in Predator: Badlands (great movie, btw, highly recommend): I’m a tool.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I knew all these things to be true. I just didn’t experience them until 2025. In 2025, all of these truths took hold and shook me every way but loose.

So naturally, my dark passenger paid me a visit. And they have yet to leave. Because despite what I supposedly know to be true deep deep down on the inside, what I experienced is doing a phenomenally convincing job of proving that wrong.

So now, all the lies I’ve told myself over the years have an extremely captive audience:

You’re only as useful as what you can offer people.

If you don’t conform or be the person people expect you to be, you are of no value.

You’re worthless.

You deserve to be discarded.

You brought this on yourself.

And on and on and on they go. So I did the only plausible thing I could think to do. Hide from the feelings and emotions. From the hurt. Live in blissful denial that what happened didn’t faze me.

It’s worked for the most part.

Something else I’ve struggled with? Loss. Start of 2026 aside, the losses of 2025 stung more than a little. And for the most part I locked them away for fear of someone seeing these words and either reveling in knowing they were the architect of the hurt, or being vulnerable enough to name it without care of how this would be perceived if those responsible put two and two together.

But like I said in my previous post, those are no longer my burdens to bear.

Because the truth is, I don’t know yet where all of this lands. I don’t know what survives and what doesn’t. I don’t know which lessons harden into wisdom and which ones just ache for a while.

I only know that if you’ve ever felt useful but not valued, visible but not known, celebrated but not chosen, you are not crazy for feeling every bit of how deeply that cuts. You’re also not alone.

If you’ve ever watched people circle when it was convenient and scatter when it wasn’t, I promise it’s not in your head.

If you’ve ever told yourself you were fine while something inside you quietly dimmed or all the way broke, that doesn’t make you weak.

Maybe this is what grief looks like when it isn’t about death (the irony of this statement, given the way 2026 began, isn’t lost on me). Maybe this is what betrayal feels like when it doesn’t make headlines. Maybe this is what happens when the illusion cracks and you’re left holding the truth.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t have a bow to tie on this. I just know that hiding didn’t heal me. And pretending it didn’t hurt didn’t make it hurt less.

So if you’re in that place, wherever that place is for you, consider this permission to name it. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just honestly.

You don’t have to carry what was never yours to begin with.

And, frankly, neither do I.

Until next time, I wish you nothing but sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns, which are no less fictitious than the work in progress you are.