Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance

by Alison Espach

We found her curled up under the deck one day, and I felt so bad as Dad removed her. Cried for days until Mom said, “Sally, it’s just a cat,” which was exactly why I was crying. That whole time, it had just been a cat.

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

I didn’t like hearing myself through Dad. It was only when Dad ordered Mom to stop crying that I understood we were bullies. We ordered her to be happy as if we knew what it meant to be happy. As if a person was not happy because they simply forgot to write it on their to-do list. We knew from experience that nothing we said or did would work, but we couldn’t help ourselves; it was our job as the slightly happier people to make her happier. We were like corrupt policemen at the dinner table. We applied blunt force. We did not listen very well, and often spoke in commands. Go outside. Get a job. Do some gardening. Take a walk. Try harder. Don’t give up. Don’t be depressed. Stop crying. Which was exactly the kind of instruction that made a crying person cry harder.

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.

Not having a center is, according to the therapist, the one problem that explains all my problems. It’s the thing that connects the dots, the cancer that explains the strange symptoms; for instance, Why don’t I want to leave the city and buy a house with my fiancé? People with fiancés love houses. Yet people without centers are afraid of houses. People without centers do not like thinking about mortgages, because people without centers do not value commitment, since they can’t even commit to themselves.

New York City was a city for people who wanted to be seen without context.

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.