A story by Claire
For most of my twenties I was the woman people forgot they'd met.
For most of my twenties I was the woman people forgot they'd met.
Not in a sad way. I had friends, a job, a life. But I'd be at a work thing, or a friend's birthday, three drinks into someone's housewarming, and I'd watch other women just land. They'd say something and the table would lean in. They'd walk off and you could tell the other person was going to remember them.
I'd walk off and dissolve. 'Claire? Tall-ish, brown hair?' Nothing.
I used to think the fix was personality. That I needed to be funnier, or faster on my feet, the kind of person who always has a story ready. I'm not that person. I freeze in the moment and then think of the perfect line in the car on the way home, like an idiot.
So at some point I stopped trying to be memorable and just tried to be pleasant. Which, if I'm honest, is a polite way of being invisible.
This took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out.
The women I envied weren't all louder than me. Some of them were quieter, actually. But nearly every one of them had something about them that gave you a reason to start talking. A ring with a story behind it. A tattoo you wanted to ask about. One friend of mine wears a tiny gold tooth on a necklace and I swear half her conversations open with someone going 'okay, you have to tell me about the tooth.
They had a door. People could knock on it.
I didn't have one. I was a smooth wall. Nice enough to look at, nothing to grab onto.
And here's the part I didn't want to admit: it's almost impossible to be memorable when you've given people nothing to remember you by. We treat 'being interesting' like it's a personality you're born with. A lot of the time it's just having one visible thing somebody can ask about.
How I solved the problem
A week later she emailed me about something completely unrelated and opened with 'hope you got your window seat back.'
She remembered me. Off the back of forty-five seconds about a coffee cup."
So I added another charm. A little airplane, for a trip I took on my own and was quietly proud of. Then a tiny book. Then one that's an inside joke I'm not going to explain because it's mine.
And the asking just kept happening. Not in a 'look at me' way. The whole thing is the size of a few buttons. But it sits right there when you're holding a glass or sliding a notebook across a table, and people get curious. 'What's that one?' And I'd tell them some thirty-second story, and the story was always actually about me. A place I'd been. A thing I love. A year I got through.
I wasn't performing being interesting. I'd just given people somewhere to knock.
To Wrap Up My Story
We assume the memorable people were just born that way. Some of them were, sure. But plenty of them simply worked out, on purpose or by accident, that you don't have to be the loudest one in the room. You have to be the one people have a reason to talk to, and a reason to bring up later.
You don't fix being forgettable by getting bigger. You fix it by giving people one true thing to ask about, with a real story sitting behind it.
I'm still not the loudest person at the party. I still come up with my best lines in the car. But it's been over a year since anyone called me 'tall-ish, brown hair.'
Now I'm the one with the bracelet. Works for me.
The piece Claire mentions:
It's part of a small comeback the stainless steel Italian charm bracelet is having. You build it one charm at a time, and each one means something. Waterproof, won't tarnish, and it ships from our warehouse in Italy within 24 hours.
No rush. Have a look around first!
