Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

by Alison Espach

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.

I like knowing that my problems exist within a large and respected tradition of problems. That ever since the beginning of civilization, humans have been very upset.

We laughed a lot, but I don’t remember about what. I just remember laughing. And wasn’t that the most important thing? Wasn’t that all a person wanted to remember?

Their careers are all about pretending to know things they don’t really know that well. Knowledge is power, including knowledge a person pretends to have.

This is how adult conversations begin and end: with the weather. Like the weather is the only thing that binds us. The weather is the only great battle we have left. Something we are all preparing to fight until death.

My therapist believes that being honest is easy. She says that you just open your mouth and that the truth comes out. And perhaps this is so, but this assumes that we all know what is the truth.

I know that these are the kinds of things you do when you’re in love. Love is crazy. Love turns you into something you’re not, or something you never knew you could be.