The Day I Disappeared

by Brandi Reeds

We hold women to a different standard. And I know this better than anyone.

It doesn’t come naturally to all of us, you know. We’re not all meant to spend our lives performing puppet shows and building with blocks and coloring in books and singing nonsensical songs to entertain our offspring. That doesn’t mean I don’t love my daughter.

Was justice served? Far. From. It.

Like my father used to say to my mother, nothing changes if nothing changes.

Dearest Holly, I want you to be happy today. You’re special, the prettiest almost-five-year-old I’ve ever seen. Are we friends? I’d like to be your friend very much. I love you. Alan

But the funny thing about inebriation: it silences you as soon as it steals your ability to think and walk in straight lines.

Weeks upon weeks of the same questions followed. It felt like a witch hunt, a ducking. Toss me, bound, into deep, riotous water. If I drown, I’m innocent. If I survive, I’m a witch.

Think, Cecily. Think. There was something Kohlbrook had said once. I’d love to have a daughter. And what was my reply? Borrow mine for an afternoon.

My parents aren’t like other couples. They exist in the same space, but they don’t seem to share it, you know?”

It was like hearing stories of something you did when you were a little kid. Everyone else remembers and tells you about it. So it becomes real to you. Not because you remember it. But because everyone else does.

in times of trauma, you have to save yourself before you can tend to others.

I wasn’t like Susan. I didn’t love the park, I hated mommy-and-me yoga, and arts and crafts with a four-year-old was damn near frustrating. And I couldn’t handle watching a kid puke. None of this meant I didn’t love my daughter, but did I love being a mother?

But the thing about feeling comfortable . . . sometimes you feel comfortable in a bad situation because you’re used to it. It’s comfortable because it’s familiar. Not because it’s good for you.”

One of the hardest things about being a mother: watching your kid trip on the same cracks in the pavement you stumbled on.