The Invisible Me

There’s a specific spot in Hyde Park that you can stand, sit, or lie down in, and no one can see or hear you. I’m no sci-fi geek, but I reckon it has to be some sort of phenomena.
Here it is: you become completely invisible. Seriously.

You’ll know you’ve found it when your ears become heavy with the lack of any sound.
Sit there and the grass doesn’t even bend under your bum.
Stand there, and any wind blowing only skirts its edges (watch the breeze swirl around you as if you’re standing in the eye of a tornado).
If the sun is screaming at you, it never burns your skin.
No one can see you, judge you, or mock you.
It’s so cool!

In those several inches of space you are the absolute opposite of the self you know at work, with your friends, with your boyfriend.
With yourself.
That’s what’s so scary and amazing about it. It's no bigger than a seat at the cinema, but it feels like a throne room.

It’s between the Serpentine and in plain sight of the café and playground. In amongst the many scattered bodies that lounge in deck chairs, canoodle as couples; read, picnic, play Frisbee and tennis with those tiny wooden paddles without nets. Children of all ages play, fight, cry, create childhood memories like the ones I had before I forgot them.

The best time to go is in the summer, of course, because (remember), the sun becomes nothing more than a heavenly flood light casting everything into the illusion of perfection; scene in the park, take one.

I lay there yesterday, butt chocolate naked, splayed like a star fish, enjoying the feeling of not wearing a bra.

Last week I took some old tennis balls (fully dressed this time) and threw them far and wide in different directions. A little boy, maybe six, ‘looked’ to me, then to the ball lying at his feet, then to ‘me’ again. The mysterious me. The one who’d created that look on his innocent face.

Today I was bolder than I’d ever been, almost landing me into trouble. I admit that with a deep sense of misguided satisfaction; an idea of what shame should feel like, but don’t actually feel. That’s what being invisible does to you.

I found a large stick and began moving it up and down in the air, so that its end could be seen. A young couple sat seconds from me. I knew I’d caught their eye the minute they froze mid embrace; Disney meets Stephen King. Excitement zipped up and down my body in thick shuddering jolts. I felt naughty, downright bad; powerful. I should have felt terrible messing with them like that.

My confidence thawed the minute they edged closer to investigate. Dripped out of me as they approached my spot, my cheeky freedom. Panicked I threw the stick in their direction, missing them by inches. The girl cried out a ridiculous stereotypical cry. They gawped at the stick as it landed behind them and I took the split second opportunity to step out before them. I’d be discovered, surprising them, important. To my disappointment they didn’t even register my celebrity entrance.

Don’t look for it.

It’s all mine and taken.

I have plans for it, my temporary anonymity and self-esteem re-organiser.
I’ve come a long way from where I used to be since I found it because I’m not so afraid and sad anymore.
There, I exist.
I’m happy.