Elle Vampa

Jag ser dig

I click on the correct English translation and the little green devil owl gives me an elated wink.

Dingaling!

At least DuoLingo appreciates me…

Oh no, Elle, what happened?

I feel invisible, that’s what’s happened. Despite that being far from new, it still hurts when people don’t see me. Especially when those people are supposed friends.

It first happened a little over a month ago after I went shooting with two of them. We always gather at one friend’s house, and thus we also always leave from there to go back home.

Picture the one friend in the doorway, me and the other one outside en route to our cars, and a very simple non-plural: “Do you want to walk the dogs with me?”

Her. Not her and me. Therefore: not me.

Then it happened again this week. Another almost easy to miss moment of invisibility: its two other friends and yours truly in the cinema. The trailers start and Marvel shows off its latest addition to “the family”. One friend coos: “Oh, I love Fantastic Four!” and the other shoots in a: (again non-plural) “You want to go see it together?”

Jag känner mig själv osynlig

BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ!

DuoLingo appreciates my perfect score and I can only hope that one day I’ll impress a Swede with my bare minimum linguistic skills – a girl can dream, right?

I see the irony in my ordeal, as I used to believe I wasn’t good enough but now I wonder if I am too much?

Perhaps I’m the one who sees it wrong. I don’t know.

I just want to be seen. Not by everyone, but by someone.

Somebody who’ll catch my broken Swedish in an unobserved moment, smile, and reply: jag ser dig också

Well.

A girl can dream, right?