The Incorrigible Night Owl

I feel as though I’m invisible. It’s really starting to get to me.
Did I say something wrong? I wonder. Do I not try hard enough? Try too hard? Perhaps I am too….something, and people who used to find me a novelty have now grown tired of listening to me. Maybe it’s some inherent character flaw that I can’t fix. I sincerely doubt that 75% of the people I know are jerks, so then that points the finger of blame back at me. Maybe I said too much, said too little, was too different, wasn’t different enough. Or maybe I’m just boring. Bland and boring and mousy.
For whatever reason, I just get the feeling that people are ignoring me, whether by design or natural, subconscious impulse. They look in my direction but look through me, around me, over me. I feel like any little bit of presence I had anywhere is fading fast. I try to make myself known, to join conversations, and people just go right on as they were before, as though I haven’t said a word. In turn, this makes me about a hundred times less likely to put forth any effort at all, and I fade away even more. Soon I might cease to exist at all. I’ll be nothing but a whisper in the breeze….an old, faded, indistinct memory like the blurs in a photograph left in the sun too long. And no matter where I am I’ll still be left wondering, what was it about me that was off-putting, or unlikable enough to repel people?
(Comments remain closed due to spammers, and because this is not a plea for people to give me pep talks or scrape up something complimentary to say about me. For those curious, this was not inspired by one particular group or faction of people but by an overall tone in various arenas of my life recently.)