There are times I do not want to be perceived. Whole stretches. Weeks when I am strictly available to my tiny family and no one else. I’ve always been like this: I withdraw, go hermit, disappear.

In chat apps you can flip yourself to “away.” Your dot dims. People can still ping you, but the world knows you’re not there. I want that for real life. I want a button that makes me blurry, that reroutes everyone’s nervous energy someplace else. I want to do it without making anyone worry.

When people I don’t know well fret about my silence it lands like an unwanted intimacy. Their worry assumes a seat at my table. It presumes access I did not give. That assumption, that someone else’s fear makes me accountable for my quiet, is what makes disappearing costly.

Not in danger. Not available.

Not an explanation. Not a promise. A boundary in two sentences.

There’s a kind of privacy only possible in not being perceived. Think of the last time you had your home to yourself for a whole day. No one else’s breath in the room. No half-heard judgments. No need to shape yourself around someone else’s gaze. On days like that I sometimes don’t even speak to myself. I am at rest.

Those are some of my happiest hours. When no one expects me, I can stop performing. The quiet isn’t empty, it’s spacious. It’s the place I meet myself without interruption, and for once I feel entirely my own.

With all the talking I do when I’m uncomfortable, I’ve often dreamed of a silent retreat. No conversation. No small talk. No human voice at all. Just the quiet click of the fridge cycling on, the hum of my own thoughts, the lightness of not having to answer.

That’s what I’m reaching for when I fold myself away: the lightness of not being held accountable to anyone. No explanations. No reassurances. Just the quiet certainty that my silence is mine.

When have you felt most your own, unobserved, unaccountable, untouched by expectation? Or is it something else that makes you feel your own?