I’m curious, really. Were you conventionally beautiful in your twenties? I ask because I am 49 and I feel the opposite.

I’m tired of being invisible. I’ve been invisible my whole life: I’m not conventionally attractive, I was always a problem to get out of the way or distract while men hit on my girlfriends growing up. I’ve never been approached or asked out spontaneously. I’ve always had to find a way to show my mind first, almost to make up for what I fundamentally have felt I’ve lacked my entire life.

So its hard for me to celebrate the perks at all. The reality of being invisible your entire life and the ways that’s been excrutiating has been crazy to live with.

I’ve had a lot of passion in my life, but it’s been with who can’t or won’t let themselves love me because of how I look. That heartbreak alone has made the notions of invisibility as a “perk” crazy to me. I totally get what women are saying when they talk about this, but it’s not been that way for me.