Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

by Alison Espach

Silence was like a big watery void that reflected back whatever they feared the most.

But I knew then that anybody who chose to be alone had no idea what it really meant to be alone.

“Of course, you do,” he said. “You’re always thinking, Holt. It’s what you do.” “How do you know that?” I asked, confused that Billy had, at some point, drawn conclusions about me. “Because you always look like you want to say something, but then you don’t.”

Mom would always be surrounded by a ring of women, everywhere she went, while Dad would grieve alone, like a dying wolf. Always inside. In his car. In his office. Dad, I would realize, didn’t belong to anything in this town, except to us.

That’s what death does to a person. Death destroys people, splits them open. Reveals who we really are inside, and it’s not a pretty sight. It’s quite bloody, actually.

Amazing things always dulled me into nothingness.

Sometimes, when Dad was yelling his loudest at me, this was what he seemed to be saying: Do you people know how many ordinary days I’ve provided for you?

They were not even trying to escape. It’s like they knew they were worth nothing. Like they agreed to this price.

Wendy and Mom were both extremely depressed, and if there was anything that depression gave you, I learned, it was the freedom of not giving a shit.

But I knew enough by then to know that it was unfair to use a woman’s past self against her.

And Billy, somehow, was the truth about my life.

We were like corrupt policemen at the dinner table. We applied blunt force. We did not listen very well, and often spoke in commands.

I was thinking that there was nothing better in this world than to discover someone who was weird in exactly the same way I was weird. To be weird and then loved for it.

And this is what I liked about Jan: She didn’t even hesitate. Jan was a good mother, I could tell. She held me firmly to her chest, like I was one of her daughters, and it was there where I could finally cry.

And reality can be quite painful.”

you can stop loving someone if you need to. You can stamp love out of your brain like a tiny fire.

Knowledge is power, including knowledge a person pretends to have.

But Jan was right; grief gets stored in the body. It rots over time.

It is through those spaces where you gain and lose the most.