I know where the birth certificates are. I know which drawer holds the batteries, which batteries go in which remote, and that the remote everyone is currently searching for is wedged between two couch cushions where it has been living its best life since two Thursdays ago. I know we're almost out of the good paper towels, that somebody's appointment is next week and somebody else's is the week after, and that the freezer contains exactly one more dinner than anyone realizes. I know all of this the way you know your own phone number. Nobody taught me. It just downloaded into my brain one day and refuses to uninstall.
And I'm good at it. I want to say that out loud, because I think women like me spend so much time apologizing for being tired that we forget to admit we're also kind of excellent. I wear a lot of hats, and I wear them well. Planner. Finder of things. Keeper of the calendar. Human search engine, except Google at least gets ad revenue. I can run a house, a work week, a business, and a group text at the same time, and I can do it on three hours of sleep and a Lotus energy drink that has basically become a personality trait.
So here's the part I've been avoiding saying, because it sounds ungrateful, and I really don't mean it that way. Sometimes, in the middle of all that competence, I feel like nobody actually knows me.
Not in a dramatic, slam-the-door, nobody-loves-me way. I'm surrounded by people who would help me move a couch, drive me to the airport, and show up if something truly fell apart. It's quieter than that. It's more like standing in a crowded room where everyone is glad you came because you brought the snacks, and realizing no one has asked you a single question that doesn't have a deliverable attached. How are you? shows up somewhere in the neighborhood of Where's the tape? and Do we have anything for dinner? and What time do we need to leave? Those are all fair questions. I'd be a hypocrite to resent them, since I'm usually the one who has the answers. But when the questions are the only conversation, you start to wonder whether you're a person or a very well-organized utility.
Take a normal Tuesday. Nothing special. You're moving through your list, and the list is long, and every item on it is real. Somebody needs something signed. Somebody needs a ride. Somebody needs to know where the other shoe went, and I'm not exaggerating when I say I can usually tell you, because the shoe and I have a relationship. You move through the whole day like a competent little machine, and you get to the end of it, and nobody says anything unkind. Nobody did anything wrong. And you're lying in bed with this strange ache anyway, because you realize you were useful all day long and not once did anyone seem curious about you.
That's the difference I've been circling. Being needed and being known are not the same thing, and I think I mixed them up for years. Being needed feels like love when you're tired enough, because at least somebody's reaching for you. But needed is about what I can do. Known is about who I am when I'm not doing anything at all. Needed asks, can you handle this? Known asks, what's it like to be you right now? One of those gets you thanked. The other one gets you held.
And can I be honest about the layer underneath? Part of this is on me. I'm the one who made it look easy. I got so good at anticipating everyone's needs that I trained an entire household to never have to think about them, and then I felt invisible when no one thought about mine. That's the part that makes me laugh and groan at the same time. If I'm the reason everything runs smoothly, I'm also, accidentally, the reason nobody ever had to notice me. A good system is quiet. I built a quiet system and then felt lonely inside it. I'd roll my eyes at this plot twist if it weren't happening to me.
There's also the ADHD in all of this, which adds a special kind of irony. My brain can hold everyone's schedule, everyone's shoe size, and the exact location of a single missing phone charger, and it cannot, for the life of me, remember to eat lunch. I will mentally track what the whole family needs and forget I'm a member of the family. I don't mean that as a joke, even though I'm telling it like one. It's easy to disappear in your own house when your whole attention is pointed outward, and nobody has to be a villain for it to happen. It's a slow fade. You become wallpaper with a calendar.
Then there's the other possibility, the one that's harder to say. Maybe some people do know me. Maybe they know me better than I give them credit for, and the feeling of being unseen has less to do with them and more to do with something I carry. Because even when someone does notice me, even when someone says something kind, there's a little voice that goes, sure, but they like you because of what you do. Take away the planning and the finding and the fixing and see how long that lasts. That's the thing that gets me. Not that I'm unloved. It's that some part of me doesn't believe I'd be wanted if I stopped being useful. That I'd be a lovely woman standing in a kitchen with nothing to hand anyone, wondering if the room would still turn toward me.
I don't think I invented that fear in a vacuum. A lot of us learned it early. Somewhere along the way, someone praised us for being helpful, being easy, being the one who could be counted on, and we filed it under who I am instead of what I do. It's a compliment that quietly turns into a job description. And then you grow up, and you collect more hats, and the hats start to feel like the only proof you're allowed to take up space.
I've been thinking a lot about a woman in Genesis named Hagar, who gets almost no airtime in Sunday school. She's a servant. She's used, essentially, as a means to an end by people who had power over her, and then she's sent out into the wilderness with a little bread and a skin of water. She is about as invisible as a person can get. And in the middle of that desert, she does something no one else in the Bible does. She gives God a name. She calls Him El Roi, the God who sees me. Not the God who uses me, or the God who needs me to hold it together, but the God who sees me. She's out there with nothing on her checklist, no usefulness to anyone, and God turns toward her anyway.
That wrecked me a little, honestly. Because I think I've spent years assuming God's attention worked like everybody else's. Show up, perform, be productive, and then maybe you'll get noticed. But Hagar didn't earn it. She was running away. She had nothing to offer. And the first thing God did was see her, and ask her a question, which is a very different thing from handing her a list. He asked where she'd come from and where she was going. I'd love to be asked that. And apparently, He already is.
I don't think that fixes the ache entirely, and I'm not going to pretend it does. I still want a person, a flesh-and-blood one with a face, who looks at me on an ordinary night and says, you seem tired, and not tired from doing, but tired from carrying. I still want someone to notice what I like and not just what I handle. I want to be asked what I'd choose if nobody needed anything. I think that's allowed. I think wanting to be known is one of the most human things there is, and it isn't selfish, and it isn't ungrateful. It might even be the thing God built into us on purpose, a little hunger that points back toward Him and toward each other.
So I'm trying something small, and it's honestly a little scary for a woman whose whole brand is being fine. I'm trying to say it. Not as a complaint, and not with a fifteen-minute wind-up and three apologies. Just plainly, to the people I love. I'd like to be asked about me sometimes. I don't need a parade. I just want to be wanted for my company and not only for my competence. And I'm trying to let myself be known before I've earned it, which means letting the tired parts show, the ones that aren't any use to anybody.
If this sounds like you, if you're the one who knows where everything is and what everyone needs and when, and you're quietly wondering whether anyone knows you, I want you to hear this clearly. You aren't ungrateful. You aren't needy. You're a person who's been giving from a very full set of hands for a very long time, and you're allowed to want somebody to look at you and ask a question that isn't about the list. And on the days when no one does, there's a God in the desert who turned toward a woman with nothing to offer and called her by name.
A short prayer, if you want it: God, You see me, even when I'm busy being helpful and hard to see. Help me believe I'm wanted when I'm not doing anything. Give me the courage to let the people I love actually know me, and the grace to forgive the ones who didn't notice I was waiting. Amen.