Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

by Alison Espach

You disappeared on a school night. Nobody was more surprised by this than me. If I believed in anything when I was thirteen, I believed in the promise of school nights. I believed in the sacred ritual of homework, then dinner, and then the laying out of our clothes for the next morning—something Mom insisted on from the very beginning.

I asked, but you didn’t answer. You were done with the conversation—and I hated that you got to decide things like that.

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

and for the first time in my life, I wanted to hurt you. I wanted you to feel what I was always feeling. I wanted you to sit up the next morning and wonder where I was.

“But how do I know what’s important?” This had been a problem for me lately. Everything I thought was important was turning out not to be important.

We were teenagers now, and we preferred, when given the opportunity, to suffer.

“You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.” When you start applying for college senior year, people start saying this to you a lot. Mom and Dad said it during dinner, guidance counselors said it at the end of meetings, and the doctor said it when he put a stethoscope up to my heart during my last physical.

Mom drank a lot of tea. Teas that promised her things like SLEEP NOW and RELAX, but I didn’t think they were working.

“That’s what college taught me,” he said. “That I know absolutely fucking nothing.”

My therapist is always giving me permission to stop loving Mom. That is why I go to her—she is always reminding me that Mom has damaged me, stunted my grieving process.

But most days, a mother’s grief was a child that could not be reasoned with. At some point, it could only be put to bed.

“It seems like the one thing you can’t go back and add is a center. The center has to be there from the start.” She paused, for dramatic effect. “You’re not a building,” she said. “You frequently talk like that, you know.” “Like what?” “Like you’re a structure,” she said. “Like you’re just a building.”

I was outgrowing my sadness. I was becoming an entirely new person, all muscle and sunlight.

This is how adult conversations begin and end: with the weather. Like the weather is the only thing that binds us.

I am just at the start of something, though I feel like I have reached the end of something. I am (finally) in a healthy relationship. I (finally) love all vegetables, especially the ones rich in vitamins. I (finally) have an office with a lock on the door and enough free time to go leaf-peeping on weekends with my fiancé. And last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I (finally) took one of those happiness quizzes online. Scored a 9 out of 10, which means that I am very happy.

“That’s what happens when parents die,” he says. “All of a sudden, you want an answer to every question you never thought to ask them.”