For a long time, I felt invisible in rooms where everyone else seemed to shine. I wasn’t the person people noticed first, and I learned to make myself valuable in other ways—by being kind, dependable, and easy to be around. I became the friend who remembered birthdays, the partner who showed up on time, the one who tried to make life lighter for others.
That’s who Sayer met at a trivia night. He joked that I “carried the table,” I teased him about his beard, and by the end of the night, we were laughing like we’d known each other for years. Later, he texted me, “You’re refreshing. You’re real.” At the time, it felt sincere. Looking back, I realize I wanted to believe in those words more than I questioned them.
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